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It is obviously difficult for us to understand that the future
can thus precede chaos, that the present is at the same time the
future and the past, or that that which does not yet exists
already at the same time at which it is no more. But, on the
other hand, it is just as hard to conceive that the future does
not preexist, that there is nothing before the present and that
everything is only present or past. It is very probable that, to
a more universal intelligence than ours, everything is but an
eternal present, an immense punctum stans, as the metaphysicians
say, in which all the events are on one plane; but it is no less
probable that we ourselves, so long as we are men, in order to
understand anything of this eternal present, will always be
obliged to divide it into three parts. Thus caught between two
mysteries equally baffling to our intelligence, whether we deny
or admit the preexistence of the future, we are really only
wrangling over words: in the one case, we give the name of
"present," from the point of view of a perfect intelligence, to
that which to us is the future; in the other, we give the name of
"future" to that which, from the point of view of a perfect
intelligence, is the present. But, after all, it is incontestable
in both cases that, at least from our point of view, the future
preexists, since preexistence is the only name by which we can
describe and the only form under which we can conceive that which
we do not yet see in the present.
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