The outcome of our first article then may be expressed by saying that human beings show a marked tendency to believe that so far as the value of the individual life is concerned, its later stages are of supreme importance.[1] Later excellence, men seem to think, makes up for earlier defect, makes it as if it had not been; and in similar fashion later evil swallows up, destroys, earlier good. The task of the present paper is to try to determine the connection between this belief and the problem of the relation of the individual life to the time-process. My purpose is primarily neither to defend the belief nor to offer arguments in support of any particular theory of the time-process, but rather to ask what conception of the relation of the individual life to the temporal process is logically implied in the belief.
Some might feel inclined to dispose of our task at once by the simple method of condemning the belief outright. Men seem, they might tell us, to regard the later stages of life as supreme in importance, but this opinion, however cherished, is quite mistaken. If pleasure, and goodness, and intellectual and æsthetic activity have any value, they have as much at one time as at another. The belief to the contrary is simply one of the many errors to which popular opinion is liable. It seems to me, however, that we are scarcely justified in throwing aside the belief in this summary fashion. And in point of fact I think that few philosophers are willing to reject it altogether. Many whose theory of the nature of time seems incompatible with it try, none the less, to find some place for it in their account of reality. And since this is the case, it may be worth our while to inquire somewhat carefully into the relation between the belief and the various ways in which the temporal aspect of human life may be conceived. I proceed at once then to ask how we must regard the temporal character of the individual human life in order that our conception may be consistent with the belief in the supreme importance of the later stages. The first thing to be said is that we must regard the time-process
- ↑ In this paper, as in the preceding one, we shall limit our consideration to the life of the human individual. To ask as to the value of the life of the race, taken as a whole, would be to raise questions which are of much interest and importance, but which lie beyond the scope of this discussion.
