The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [340]
3. For when we concentrate on the present we do not notice time slipping by, so quick and invisible is its passage.
4. Do you ask the reason for this? All past time is in the same place; it all presents the same aspect to us, it lies together; everything slips into the same abyss.
5. The time we spend in living is merely a point; indeed, even less than a point;
6. But this point of time, infinitesimal as it is, nature has mocked by making it seem outwardly of longer duration.
7. She has taken one portion of it and made it infancy, another portion childhood, another portion youth,
8. Another the gradual incline from youth to old age, and old age itself is still another.
9. How many steps for how short a climb! It was only a moment ago that I saw a friend depart on a journey;
10. And yet this ‘moment ago’ makes up a large share of my existence, which is so brief.
11. We should reflect, therefore, that it will soon come to an end altogether.
12. In other years time did not seem to go so swiftly; now, it seems fast beyond belief, perhaps, because I feel that the finish-line is moving closer to me,
13. Or it may be that I have begun to notice this at last, and to count my gains and losses.
14. For this reason it amazes me that some people give the major portion of their time to superfluous things,
15. Time which, no matter how carefully it is guarded, cannot suffice even for necessary things.
16. If the number of my days were doubled, I would still not have time to read all the poets.
17. When a soldier is undisturbed and travelling at his ease, he can hunt for trifles along his way;
18. But when the enemy is closing in, and a command is given to quicken the pace,
19. Necessity makes him throw away everything that he picked up in moments of peace and leisure.
Chapter 6
1. Behold, then, the gathering clans, the fast-shut gates, and weapons whetted ready for the war!
2. I need a stout heart to hear, without flinching, the din of time’s battle that sounds round me.
3. And all would rightly think me mad if, when greybeards and women were heaping up rocks for the fortifications,
4. When the armour-clad youths inside the gates were awaiting, or even demanding, the order for a sally,
5. When the spears of the foe were quivering in our gates and the very ground was rocking with mines and subterranean passages,
6. I say, they would rightly think me mad if I were to sit idle, wasting time on petty and superfluous things.
7. And yet I may well seem in your eyes no less mad, if I spend my energies on trivialities; for even now I am in a state of siege.
8. And yet, in the former case it would be merely a peril from the outside that threatened me,
9. And a wall that divided me from the foe; as it is now, death-dealing perils are in my very presence.
10. I have no time for such nonsense; a mighty undertaking is on my hands: the summation of my life, and its value.
11. This is when men say: ‘What am I to do? Death is on my trail, and life is fleeting away;
12. ‘Teach me something with which to face these inevitabilities.
13. ‘Bring it to pass that I shall cease trying to escape from death, so that life may cease to escape from me.
14. ‘Give me courage to meet hardships; make me calm in the face of the unavoidable. Relax the tight limits of the time which is allotted me.
15. ‘Show me that the good in life does not depend on life’s length, but on the use we make of it;
16. ‘Also, that it is possible, or rather usual, for a man who has lived long to have lived too little.
17. ‘Say to me that I am mistaken if I think that only on an ocean voyage is there a very slight space between life and death.
18. ‘No, the distance between is just as narrow everywhere. It is not everywhere that death shows itself so near at hand; yet everywhere it is as near at hand.
19. ‘Rid me of these shadowy terrors; then you will more easily deliver to me the instruction for which I have prepared myself.
20. ‘At our birth nature made us teachable,