Time and space play a far more important part in the garden of Eden story than is commonly credited to them. They are so customary and usual, a sort of daily event, so to speak, that they are accepted at their face value and without much, if any, question. No one, as a general rule, ever stops to ask himself, What is time? or, Where and what is space? To define either of these seemingly necessary and natural elements of human existence, in the opinion of the average man, would be a useless endeavor, and there are not many who try to do it. Everything we do, says the materialist, is done in space; we are here or there; we move from place to place through the indefinable thing called space. But, he argues, since everybody knows there has to be a place in which to put all the multitude of material things that exist, from an iron mountain down to a microbe, there is no need of defining it.
Then, too, all that mortals do, is done either on time, ahead of time, or behind time. We are usually either early or late, but whichever way it turns out, time is an essential part of the history of the human race. History, indeed, is a record of events, of things that have happened at one time or another; it is a tracing of the development of mankind from the crude conditions of prehistoric times to the present highly civilized state of society. As a consequence, history depends upon time. Without time, there could be no history.
After this manner the skeptic reasons, shrugs his shoulders, and goes his way, complacently satisfied that time and space are eternal realities,— so why argue about them. The two chief conspirators against the harmony of man, which have skilfully and persistently cultivated and promoted the fallacy of time and space, are medicine and scholastic theology, both of which have so appealed to ignorance or to innate fear that mortals have become convinced that everything they are or do, everything they need or have, depends upon the question of time and space. All hope of success, all expectation of future happiness, as well as all the misery crowded into the agonized recollection of the past, to say nothing of the abiding anxiety for the future, are virtuously exploited by these two offsprings of that false sense which gave material names and ascribed material natures and characteristics to God's spiritual and perfect creation.
