OF LOST TIME
This oblivion prevents life being a unity of past events woven with present ones: it divides yesterday from today, as if they were distinct, and likewise treats tomorrow as different from today, and it immediately consigns every occurrence to non-existence by never making use of memory. The school of thought which eliminates growth on the assumption that being is in constant flux makes each person, in theory, different from himself, and then different again; similarly, those who don’t use memory to protect or recover what has gone before, but let it trickle away, day by day, make themselves in fact incomplete and empty and in suspense for the day to follow, as if the events of last year, the recent past and yesterday had no bearing on them or, in short, didn’t happen to them.
Plutarch
