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Nugent, Homer Heath

"A Book of Exposition"

So to us, if we could move only from north to south, the
house would begin to exist only when we reached its north door. That
point would be the "birth" of the house. Passing through the span of
space covered by the house--this would for us be its existence, its
"life," and when we stepped out of the south door the house would cease
to exist for us, we could never enter it and turn back to it again--that
is, it would be dead and extinct, just as the life when we pass beyond
its end point in time. Thus birth and death, appearance and extinction
of an event in time, as our life, are the same as the beginning and end
point of a thing in space, like a house. But the house appears to us to
exist permanently, whether we are in it, within the length between
beginning and end point, or not; while the event in time, our life,
appears to us to exist only during the length of time when we are
between its beginning and its end point in time, and before and after it
does not exist for us, because we cannot go back to it or ahead into it.


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