Not so with time. On approaching a thing
in time, an event such as a human life, it extends from a point in
time--birth--over a length of time--the life--to an end point in
time--death--just as the house in space extends from a point in
space--say the north wall--over a length of space--its extent--to an end
point in space--say the south wall. But when we pass beyond the end
point of an event in time--the death of a life--we cannot go back to the
event any more; the event has ceased, ended, the life is extinct.
But let us imagine that the same irreversibility applied to the
conception of space--that is, that we could move through space only from
north to south, and not in the opposite direction. Then a thing in
space, as a house, would not exist for us until we approached it. When
we were approaching it, it would first appear indistinctly, and more and
more distinctly the nearer we approached it, just as an event in time
does not exist until we reach the point of its beginning, but may appear
in anticipation, in time perspective, when we approach it, the more
distinctly, the closer we approach it, until we reach the threshold of
the time span covered by the event, and the event begins to exist, the
life is born.
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