CONFESSIONS(BOOKXI) 283
What kind of time, then, can be referred to as “a long time”? Future time, per-
haps? Then we must not say, “That is a long time,” because there is as yet nothing to be
long; we will have to say, “That will be long.” But when will it be so? If at the point of
speaking that period is still in the future, it will not be long, because nothing yet exists
to be long; if, however, at the moment when we speak it has begun to exist by emerging
from the non-existent future, and so has become present, so that there is something in
existence to be long, then this present time proclaims itself incapable of being long for
the reasons already discussed.
16, 21. All the same, Lord, we are conscious of intervals of time, and we compare
them with each other and pronounce some longer, others shorter. We also calculate by
how much this period of time is longer or shorter than that other, and we report that the
one is twice or three times as long as the other, or that it is the same length. But when
we measure periods of time by our awareness of them, what we measure is passing
time. Could anyone measure past periods that no longer exist, or future periods that do
not yet exist? Only someone who is bold enough to claim that what has no being can be
measured. So then, while time is passing it can be felt and measured, but once past it
cannot, because it no longer exists.
17, 22. I am asking questions, Father, not making assertions: rule me, O my God,
and shepherd me. For who would make so bold as to tell me that there are not really
three tenses or times—past, present and future—as we learned as children and as we in
our turn have taught our children, but that there is only present, since the other two do
not exist? Or is the truth perhaps that they do exist, but that when a future thing becomes
present it emerges from some hiding-place, and then retreats into another hiding-place
when it moves from the present into the past? Where, otherwise, did soothsayers see
future events, if they do not yet exist? What has no being cannot be seen. Nor would
people who tell stories about the past be telling true tales if they had no vision of those
past events in their minds; and if the events in question were non-existent they could not
be seen. The future and the past must exist, then?
18, 23. Allow me, Lord, to press the question further: O my hope, do not let me
lose the thread. If future and past things do exist, I want to know where they are. If this
is not yet within my compass, I do know at any rate that, wherever they are, they are not
there as future or past, but as present. For if in that place too future things are future,
they are not there yet; and if there too past things are past, they are there no longer.
Clearly, then, wherever they are and whatever they are, they can only be present.
Nonetheless, when a true account is given of past events, what is brought forth from the
memory is not the events themselves, which have passed away, but words formed from
images of those events which as they happened and went on their way left some kind of
traces in the mind through the medium of the senses. This is the case with my child-
hood, which no longer exists: it belongs to past time which exists no longer, but when
I recall it and tell the story I contemplate the image of it which is still in my memory.
Whether something similar occurs in the prediction of future events, in that the
seer has a presentiment of images which exist already, I confess, O my God, that I do
not know. But this I undoubtedly do know, that we often plan our future actions before-
hand, and that the plans in our mind are present to us, though the action we are planning
has as yet no being, because it is future. When we set about it, and begin to do what we
were planning, then the action will have real being, because then it will be not future but
present.
- However the mysterious presentiment of future events may be explained, only
what exists can be seen. But what already exists is not future but present. Therefore