PHYSICS some of it must be past and some of it future—and in either case, therefore, unmeasurable If we waive these points, we can still ask how a current memory can be used to measure a past event Surely we can have a brief memory of a long, boring event in the past, and on the other hand we can dwell long in memory on some momentary but traumatic past event Augustine’s own text reveals that he was not happy with his solution Our memories and anticipations are signs of past and future events; but, he says, that which we remember and anticipate is something diVerent from these signs and is not present (Conf XI 23 24) The way to deal with his paradoxes is not to put forward a subjective theory of time, but rather to untangle the knots which went into their knitting Our concept of time makes use of two diVerent temporal series: one that is constructed by means of the concepts of earlier and later, and another that is constructed by means of the concepts of past and future Augustine’s paradoxes arise through weaving together threads from the two systems, and can only be dissolved by untangling the threads It took philosophers many centuries to so, and some indeed believe that the task has not yet been satisfactorily completed.1 Augustine’s interest in time was directed by his concern to elucidate the Christian doctrine of creation ‘Some people’, he wrote, ‘agree that the world is created by God, but refuse to admit that it began in time, allowing it a beginning only in the sense that it is being perpetually created’ (DCD IX 4) He has some sympathy with these people: they want to avoid attributing to God any sudden impetuous action, and it is certainly conceivable that something could lack a beginning and yet be causally dependent He quotes them as saying ‘If a foot had been planted from all eternity in dust, the footprint would always be beneath it; but no one would doubt that it was the footprint that was caused by the foot, though there was no temporal priority of one over the other’ (DCD X 31) Those who say that the world has existed for ever are almost right, on Augustine’s view If all they mean is that there was no time when there was no created world, they are correct, for time and creation began together It is as wrong to think that there was time before the world began as it is to think that there is space beyond where the world ends So we cannot say See A N Prior, ‘Changes in Events and Changes in Things’, in his Papers on Time and Tense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968) 178