17

TIME BELONGS TO MAN: Not only does man differ from other life forms in terms of appearance, language, and custom, but also in terms of the fact that he alone lives in a given time, whereas animals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects, etc., live in the timeless eternity of nature, and can therefore be said to exist negatively.

What, for example, can a pigeon, cat, or dog know of the minute of the hour, the hour of the day, the day of the week, the week of the month, the month of the year, the year of the century, or the century of the millennium? There is no regulative system by which other life forms could be obliged to live in strict accordance with twentieth-century procedure, for they have no criterion which could enforce any such obligation.

Indeed, the fundamental ignorance of other life forms as to the establishment of a timescale permits them a degree of naturalness unknown to man, a naturalness which exists, moreover, in direct opposition to the positivity of created time. For man, the creator of unnatural or artificial criteria, can never wholly escape his consciousness of being in a given century or of living from Sunday to Saturday in a certain month, and is thus forever obliged to live outside of natural eternity. In a sense, the only eternity known to him is that which is granted through intense preoccupation - the transient forgetfulness of the burden of time as induced by excitement, whether physical or mental, though especially the latter.