It is also against common sense, that there should
[p. 418]
be a time future and past, but no time present; and that
erewhile and lately subsist, but now is nothing at all. Yet
this often befalls the Stoics, who admit not the least time
between, nor will allow the present to be indivisible; but
whatsoever any one thinks to take and understand as present, one part of that they say to be future, and the other
part past; so that there is no part remaining or left of the
present time: but of that which is said to be present, one
part is distributed to the future, the other to the past.
Therefore one of these two things follows: either that;
holding there was a time and there will be a time, we must
deny there is a time; or we must hold that there is a time
present, part of which has already been and part will be, and
say that of that which now is, one part is future and the
other past; and that of now, one part is before and the
other behind; and that now is that which is neither yet
now nor any longer now; for that which is past is no
longer now, and that which is to come is not yet now.
And dividing thus the present, they must needs say of the
year and of the day, that part of it was of the year or day
past, and part will be of the year or day to come; and
that of what is together, there is a part before and a part
after. For no less are they perplexed, confounding together these terms, not yet and already and no longer
and now and not now. But all other men suppose, esteem, and think erewhile and awhile hence to be different
parts of time from now, which is followed by the one and
preceded by the other. But Archedemus, saying that now
is the beginning and juncture of that which is past and
that which is near at hand, has (as it seems) without perceiving it thereby taken away all time. For if now is no
time, but only a term or extremity of time, and if every
part of time is such as now, all time seems to have no
parts, but to be wholly dissolved into terms, joints, and beginnings. But Chrysippus, desiring to show more artifice
[p. 419]
in his division, in his book of Vacuity and some others,
says, that the past and future time are not, but have subsisted (or will subsist), and that the present only is ; but
in his third, fourth, and fifth books concerning Parts, he
asserts, that of the present time one part is past, the other
to come. Thus it comes to pass, that he divides subsisting time into non-subsisting parts of a subsisting total, or
rather leaves nothing at all of time subsisting, if the
present has no part but what is either future or past.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.