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.You see the distances were con-stantly diminishing; and so But if they had been constantly increasing? theTortoise interrupted. How then? Then I shouldn t be here, Achilles modestlyreplied; and you would have got several times roundthe world, by this time! 11While Zeno may have been confused about the natureof space, we re all confused about the nature of time, partlybecause we tend to think of time in terms of space.When wemeasure time we think of it in terms of space.But for Bergsontime cannot be reduced to space; as soon as we try to measureit, we unwittingly replace it by space. 12 To think spatially isnot to think properly about time.Bergson explains that timeis duration, and duration is real regardless of whether spacehas been traversed or not.In the second chapter of Throughthe Looking-Glass, The Garden of Live Flowers, Alice and theRed Queen illustrate this quite well: Now! Now! cried the Queen. Faster! Faster! And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skimthrough the air, hardly touching the ground with theirfeet.The Queen propped her up against a tree and saidkindly, You may rest a little now. Alice looked round her in great surprise. Why,I do believe we ve been under this tree the whole time!Everything s just as it was! 13 Of course it is, said the Queen. 172M ARK W.W ESTMORELANDAlice expected to be in a different location because theact of running occurred in duration.Through the Queen sexplanation, however, Alice comes to recognize that they haveexperienced duration and change even though they have notactually moved across space.Everything changes regardless ofspatiality.Because each present is uniquely different from all others,the human perceiver does not have access to the present assuch.Rather, a person has access to the quality of that whichis experienced.The quality of time varies depending on a per-son s mental state.Moods condition everyday experiences.Forexample, a guy who is happy to be with his girlfriend will findthat time flies when the two are together.A bored student willfeel as if an average lecture lasted for hours. No doubt, peopleare aware that some experiences feel longer or shorter than oth-ers; yet, when questioned, they will appeal to the mathematicaltime of discrete, homogenous instants.They will return to theidea that every moment is quantitatively equal in terms of sec-onds, minutes, hours, and so on.This, in turn, fails to accountfor the qualitative nature of experience that leads a person todescribe his or her experience by using expressions such as time flies. Not every moment feels the same.Sometimes anhour passes too quickly, and sometimes an hour lasts forever.Bergson often contrasts his notion of duration with theparadoxes of Zeno, in which time is reduced to the movementof an entity from one position to another.14 Motion contains thefollowing two elements: (1) the homogenous, divisible spacethat is traversed, and (2) the indivisible, consciously real act oftraversing.Zeno s mistake, according to Bergson, arises from[his] identification of this series of acts, each of which is of adefinite kind and indivisible, with the homogenous space whichunderlies them. 15 Bergson notes that we divide space into unitssuch as meters, centimeters, millimeters, and so on; or, as in theworld beyond the looking glass, the world is marked out justlike a large chess-board! 16 While space is infinitely divisible WI SHI NG I T WERE SOME OTHER TI ME 173as extension, it would be a mistake to equate two simultaneouspositions in space with the movement of objects across space.Although each square on a chessboard is equal in size, Alice sexperiences of the Fourth Square that of Tweedledum andTweedledee and the Sixth Square that of Humpty Dumptyare uniquely and qualitatively different.And, of course, even ifan object appears to remain in place, it is ceaselessly changing.You have changed since you started reading this chapter; you areolder.Imagine the following: A person stares at a sheet of paperfor three minutes.Did the paper change? The person respondsin the negative.However, this person accepts the idea that thepaper will deteriorate over centuries.This would be true even ifthe paper were to remain in the same position for many centu-ries.We can conclude that the negative response given initiallywas based on confusing duration and change with space.We aresimply used to change occurring over a period of time
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