Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (2 page)

WHEN
TIME STOOD STILL

No
S
hips
P
ass
by Lady Eleanor Smith
                                                        
349

"There's no death on
this island.
We're
here
for all
eternity!"

T
he
C
lock
by A. E. W. Mason
                                                                     
373

"For a while it would tick almost
imperceptibly, and then . . ."

O
pening
the
D
oor
by Arthur Machen
                                                  
393

"This flower . . . was still in my hand
six weeks later. But it was quite fresh."

TIME
OUT OF JOINT

T
he
C
urious
C
ase
of
B
enjamin
B
utton
by F.
Scott Fitzgerald
409 "Crammed into one of the cribs,
there sat an old man. . . ."

T
he
A
lternative
by Maurice Baring
                                                      
435

"Supposing you were to eliminate the
great men of history. . . ."

VISITORS
FROM OUT OF TIME

M
r.
S
trenberry's
T
ale
by ƒ. B.
Priestley
                                              
451

"He was trying to get out, to escape
from his own time. . . ."

P
hantas
by Oliver Onions
                                                                          
461

"He knew her, this ship of the future,
as if God's finger had bitten her lines into his brain."

T
he
H
omeless
O
ne
by A. E. Coppard
                                                     
477

"It was there upon the earth again after
centuries of voyaging beyond unknown offings."

Introduction

By PHILIP VAN
DOREN
STERN

M
an,
who has conquered terrestrial space, is helpless in the
time dimension. The onward-rushing hour hand
cuts down his numbered days, for the clock is a dreadful instrument, the
impartial ruler of the brief span of consciousness which lies between the warm
darkness of the womb and the cold everlasting night of the grave. Yet we
surround ourselves with clocks, place them on towers high above our cities,
mount them as the guardians of our streets and highways, and even bring them
into our homes, where their sharp, brisk ticking marks the passage of the
fleeting seconds with which we
a'2
all
too meagerly endowed.

But
the abstract image of the clockface, with its hands racing around a fixed
course, is less a reminder of mortality than the cruder instrument it replaced,
for the hourglass, in which the tangible representation of life could be seen
draining away, was a symbol terrible enough to make any thoughtful person
shudder. Perhaps man was driven to invent the clock in order to get away from
having to watch the hourglass. Its running sand was too direct a memento mori.

The
instruments that measure time have about them a fascination which far
transcends their mechanical ingenuity. Throughout the ages, scientists have
made them more and more precise; artists have lavished their skill upon them to
make them beautiful; and mechanics have constructed them lovingly out of fine
metals and precious jewels.

But
every
device
for
measuring
time,
from
the
primitive
clepsydra to
the
electric
chronometer,
has
only
one
purpose:
to
tell
man
that it
is
not
only
later
than
he
thinks,
but
that
even
as
he
thinks
so,
it has
become
later
still.

For
the
present
cannot
be
grasped;
as
one
attempts
to
seize
it,
it is
gone,
transferred
instantaneously
from
the
future
to
the
past.
Time never
stands
still.
It
rushes
by
us
at
terrifying
speed,
forever
converting
the
unforeseeable
future
into
the
irrecoverable
past,
and
leaving
the
mind
that
tries
to
comprehend
the
process
isolated
upon
the non-existent
point
we
call
the
present.
Yet
common
sense
makes us
refuse
to
admit
that
time
does
not
exist;
we
sense
intuitively
that it
does.
We
know
that
there
is
some
kind
of
time,
but
we
can
never fasten
it
down
long
enough
to
examine
it.
The
future
is
the
black womb
from
which
all
things
come,
but
we
do
not
know
what
they
are until
they
are
upon
us;
then
they
flash
by
and
are
gone
to
be
buried in
the
yawning
grave
of
the
past
where
there
is
only
decay
and
forget-fulness.
We
cannot
recapture
our
yesterdays
and
relive
them
at
will, and
the
shadowy
images
we
call
memory
are
only
ghosts,
insubstantial, impalpable,
and
taunting
simulacra
that
must
perish
with
the
brain cells
that
give
them
brief
refuge
from
oblivion.

Man
lives
in
an
exceedingly
tenuous
universe,
but
in
everyday life
he
must
refuse
to
believe
so.
The
harsh
facts
of
reality
are
at least
as
real
as
any
philosophical
concept,
and
they
are
always
with
us. Even
reality,
however,
must
exist
within
the
space-time
continuum, for
all
matter
must
have
both
physical
extension
and
duration.
The dance
of
the
atoms
requires
space,
while
time
beats
the
controlling rhythms.

Perhaps
it
is
because
our
bodies
occupy
an
appreciable
amount of
space
that
spatial
relationships
do
not
seem
so
mysterious.
But time
is
a
concept
beyond
man's
limited
understanding,
an
idea
his cunning
but
inadequate
brain
cannot
quite
grasp.
And
there
is
one question
about
the
nature
of
time
that
is
eternally
baffling:
what was
there
before
time
began,
and
what
will
there
be
after
it
ends?

In
the
new
physics,
time
is
regarded
as
finite,
but
this
is
of
little help
to
most
of
us.
We
have
to
live
with
our
time
as
it
is;
we
are
its prisoners
and
cannot
ordinarily
escape.
Henri
Poincare
once
said
that if
the
world
expanded—or
shrank—a
thousandfold
overnight,
no
one would
notice
the
difference,
and
life
would
go
on
just
as
it
had
before,