The Purpose of HistoryWoodbridge, Frederick James Eugene
Philosophy
The Purpose of History
Woodbridge, Frederick James Eugene
History -- Philosophy
Clearly then time is not like a line already drawn. It is more like a
line in the drawing. You take the pencil and the line is left behind it
as the pencil moves. New points are being constantly added to what has
gone before. The line is being manufactured. Let us call so much of it
as has now been drawn the past and that which has not yet been drawn the
future. It is clear then that the present is not the middle point of the
line nor any point whatever upon it, for all of the line that has been
drawn belongs to the past and all the rest of it to the future. Its past
has already been done; its future is not yet done, but only possible.
Furthermore, it is clear that no point moves from the past into the
future. Such a movement is unintelligible. If there is any movement of
points at all, it is a movement into the past. That is, the line,
instead of growing into the future, grows into the past--continually
more and more of it is drawn. For remember that the future of the line
is not the place on the paper or in the air which by and by the line may
occupy. Its future is a genuine future, a possibility as yet nowhere
realized. It is the part of the line which always will be, but never is;
or, better, it is that part of the line which will have a place and a
date if the line continues to be drawn. The movement of time is thus not
a movement from the past to the future, but from the possible to the
actual, from what may be to what has been. The present is not the
vanishing point between past and future; it is not, so to speak, in the
same line or dimension with them. It is something quite different. It is
all that we mean by activity or eventuality. It is the concrete,
definite, and effective transforming of the possible into the actual. It
is the _drawing_ of the line, but in no sense is it a part or point of
the line itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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