The nature of time and the measurement of time are twin problems which have fascinated great thinkers down the ages. In the Old Testament, for example, the Preacher poses a fatalistic hypothesis, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Eccl. 3:1). He follows this proposition to its logical conclusion that there is a time to be born, a time to die, a time to heal, and so on. But in the last two chapters of Ecclesiastes he shows time in a different light, and life is no longer presented as a chain of preordained events. There is no trace of fatalism about his loving behest (11:1), "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days"; or, again, in his triumphant summing-up (12:13), "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."
Other thinkers followed other lines of thought and evolved other concepts of time; but, as our poets have long understood, mortal measurements of time bear no constant value in terms of human experience. "O time too swift! O swiftness never ceasing!" cried Peele; but, "O aching time! O moments big as years!" sighed the goddess in Keats' poem "Hyperion." And even when these thinkers believed they knew what time is, they found it no easy matter to evolve a clear definition. "Ask me not what time is, and I know," they declared ruefully, in effect, "but ask me, and I know not!"
Kipling was groping for the answer when he wrote,
