Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/99

62 would be there in the former case as in the latter, and we have already maintained that first and last and intermediate notes are to be coexistent. The first do not cease to exist, the next come into existence, ceasing in turn, and giving place to those that follow. They all exist at once; that has been admitted. The question I am now considering is the possibility of reversing any significant process without utterly destroying its significance; or, if reversing be too strong a word, the possibility of conceiving any whole of facts that appear to us as a succession quite indifferently as regards their order, — backwards quite as truly as forwards. Ordinarily, you see, we view the end as if it were the product of the beginning. The facts are looked upon as having a true order, from A to Z, say, while the order from Z to A is declared unreal. Now, if we are right in maintaining that in some true sense the movement of things is in one direction, we have not done away with time entirely. The full meaning of Eternity is not attained. We still admit a difference between past and future. This difference is not one of existence; it is not that the past no longer is, and the future is not yet. Both past and future most really are; and yet, if our ordinary view is correct, the past is not the same as the future.

But suppose our ordinary view is not correct; what is the penalty for its incorrectness? I answer, in a word, it is death to all significance. The world, as a whole, is emptied of meaning: art is no longer real; morality ceases to be. For morality is victory achieved over temptation, and not temptation following upon victory. Temptation does succeed to victory