Page - 502 - in The Complete Aristotle

the future in the past: for past time will be marked off from future time at the actual point of division. Also the present will be a present not in the proper sense but in virtue of something else: for the division which yields it will not be a division proper. Furthermore, there will be a part of the present that is past and a part that is future, and it will not always be the same part that is past or future: in fact one and the same present will not be simultaneous: for the time may be divided at many points. If, therefore, the present cannot possibly have these characteristics, it follows that it must be the same present that belongs to each of the two times. But if this is so it is evident that the present is also indivisible: for if it is divisible it will be involved in the same implications as before. It is clear, then, from what has been said that time contains something indivisible, and this is what we call a present. We will now show that nothing can be in motion in a present. For if this is possible, there can be both quicker and slower motion in the present. Suppose then that in the present N the quicker has traversed the distance AB. That being so, the slower will in the same present traverse a distance less than AB, say AG. But since the slower will have occupied the whole present in traversing AG, the quicker will occupy less than this in traversing it. Thus we shall have a division of the present, whereas we found it to be indivisible. It is impossible, therefore, for anything to be in motion in a present. Nor can anything be at rest in a present: for, as we were saying, only can be at rest which is naturally designed to be in motion but is not in motion when, where, or as it would naturally be so: since, therefore, nothing is naturally designed to be in motion in a present, it is clear that nothing can be at rest in a present either. Moreover, inasmuch as it is the same present that belongs to both the times, and it is possible for a thing to be in motion throughout one time and to be at rest throughout the other, and that which is in motion or at rest for the whole of a time will be in motion or at rest as the case may be in any part of it in which it is naturally designed to be in motion or at rest: this being so, the assumption that there can be motion or rest in a present will carry with it the implication that the same thing can at the same time be at rest and in motion: for both the times have the same extremity, viz. the present. Again, when we say that a thing is at rest, we imply that its condition in whole and in part is at the time of speaking uniform with what it was previously: but the present contains no ‘previously’: consequently, there can be no rest in it. It follows then that the motion of that which is in motion and the rest of that which is at rest must occupy time. 502