No. 590.  Monday, September 6, 1714.  Addison.

’—­Assiduo labuntur tempora motu Non secus ac flumen.  Neque enim consistere flumen, Nec levis hora potest:  sed ut unda, impellitur unda, Urgeturque prior venienti, urgetque priorem, Tempora sic fugiunt pariter, pariterque sequuntur; Et nova sunt semper.  Nam quod fuit ante, relictum est; Fitque quod haud fuerat:  momentaque cuncta novantur.’

  Ov.  Met.

The following Discourse comes from the same Hand with the Essays upon Infinitude [1].

We consider infinite Space as an Expansion without a Circumference:  We consider Eternity, or infinite Duration, as a Line that has neither a Beginning nor an End.  In our Speculations of infinite Space, we consider that particular Place in which we exist, as a kind of Center to the whole Expansion.  In our Speculations of Eternity, we consider the Time which is present to us as the Middle, which divides the whole Line into two equal Parts.  For this Reason, many witty Authors compare the present Time to an Isthmus or narrow Neck of Land, that rises in the midst of an Ocean, immeasurably diffused on either Side of it.

Philosophy, and indeed common Sense, naturally throws Eternity under two Divisions; which we may call in English, that Eternity which is past, and that Eternity which is to come.  The learned Terms of AEternitas a Parte ante, and AEternitas a Parte post, may be more amusing to the Reader, but can have no other Idea affixed to them than what is conveyed to us by those Words, an Eternity that is past, and an Eternity that is to come.  Each of these Eternities is bounded at the one Extream; or, in other Words, the former has an End, and the latter a Beginning.

Let us first of all consider that Eternity which is past, reserving that which is to come for the Subject of another Paper.  The Nature of this Eternity is utterly inconceivable by the Mind of Man:  Our Reason demonstrates to us that it has been, but at the same Time can frame no Idea of it, but what is big with Absurdity and Contradiction.  We can have no other Conception of any Duration which is past, than that all of it was once present; and whatever was once present, is at some certain Distance from us, and whatever is at any certain Distance from us, be the Distance never so remote, cannot be Eternity.  The very Notion of any Duration’s being past, implies that it was once present; for the Idea of being once present, is actually included in the Idea of its being past.  This therefore is a Depth not to be sounded by human Understanding.  We are sure that there has been an Eternity, and yet contradict our selves when we measure this Eternity by any Notion which we can frame of it.