Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/79

 Hegel saw that very clearly, and covers the people who entered upon intricate arguments about this contradiction with merited scorn.

Let us proceed. Now, time has had a beginning. What was before this beginning? The unchangeable universe incomparable with anything else. And as no changes occur in this condition the particular concept time is transformed into the general concept existence. In the first place we have nothing to do with the transformation which goes on in the brain of Herr Duehring. We are not engaged with a concept of time, but with actual time of which Herr Duehring cannot so easily dispose. In the second place no matter how much the concept of time is transformed into the general concept existence it does not bring us one step nearer the goal. For the fundamental forms of all existence are space and time, and a thing existing outside of time is as silly an idea as that of a being outside of space. The Hegelian "past existence in which there was no time" and the neo-Schelling "being beyond the scope of thought" are rational conceptions compared with this being outside of time. For this reason Herr Duehring goes to work very cautiously "intrinsically it may be called time, but one cannot really call it time, as time does not consist in itself of real parts but is merely divided by us into parts to suit our own convenience," only a real filling up of time with distinct facts makes it capable of calculation. It is impossible to see the significance of piling up an empty duration. But it does not matter anyway. The question is whether the universe in this presupposed condition continues, that is persists, through a period of time. We have long known that it is useless to try and measure such empty space and to calculate without plan or aim and just because of the tiresomeness of such a