Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

44 SPIRITUAL SABBATHISM
from his experience of it, he finds it consisting of
three unreal parts—the past which no longer is, the
present which is a mere imaginary point, the future
which is not yet—and so he wonders whether it is
not a mere subjective illusion. His ardent prayers
for enlightenment do not solve the abstract problem.
During the middle age the Platonic and Aristotelian
views reappear with various modifications.
The
most significant of these is the schoolmen's distinction
between time and duration. Time, which applies
to man only, may be viewed either as duration
or as succession, but in reality includes both. Duration
is applicable to God, but succession is not.
At the beginning of the modern period, Descartes
makes time unreal, but space real. Spinoza regards
space as an attribute of God, but denies both
With
duration and succession to the divine nature.
Hobbes the modern spirit
of skepticism concerning
both time and space sets in. To Hobbes time is a
certain image or phantasm left upon the mind by
the motion of a moving body. To Locke time is
the mere succession of ideas, and reality is known to
us only through sensation.
To Hume the relation
between cause and effect is merely customary, not
necessary, and since cause and effect are a temporal
relation, the reahty of time is annihilated.
Kant meets the skepticism of Hume with the se-