and no future; all is and will be
ever, in now. For artificial purposes time is mutually agreed
on, but is really no such thing. The shadow goes on upon the dial, the index
moves round upon the clock, and what is the difference? None whatever. If
the clock had never been set going, what would have been the difference?
There may be time for the clock, the clock may make time for itself; there
is none for me.

I dip my hand in the brook and feel the stream; in an instant
the particles of water which first touched me have floated
yards down the current, my hand remains there. I take my hand
away, and the flow--the time--of the brook does not exist to me.
The great clock of the firmament, the sun and the stars, the
crescent moon, the earth circling two thousand times, is no
more to me than the flow of the brook when my hand is withdrawn; my soul has
never been, and never can be, dipped in
time. Time has never existed, and never will; it is a purely
artificial arrangement. It is eternity now, it always was eternity, and
always will be. By no possible means could I get into time if I tried. I am
in eternity now and must there remain. Haste not, be at rest, this Now is
eternity. Because the idea of time has left my mind--if ever it had any
hold on it--to me the man interred in the tumulus is living now as I live.
We are both in eternity.

There is no separation-no past; eternity, the Now, is
continuous. When all the stars have revolved they only produce
Now again. The continuity of Now is for ever. So that it
appears to me purely natural, and not super natural, that the
soul whose temporary frame was interred in this mound should be
existing as I sit on the sward. How infinitely deeper is thought than the