8. 203-207:—­

Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing
Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal
Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
With self-enshrined eternity, etc.

Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas in our mind.  Vivid sensation, of either pain or pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the common phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our ideas.  If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute, by the clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of these spaces would actually occupy so much greater extent in the mind as two exceed one in quantity.  If, therefore, the human mind, by any future improvement of its sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite number of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity.  I do not hence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man will ever be prolonged; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and that the number of ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is indefinite.  One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours; another sleeps soundly in his bed:  the difference of time perceived by these two persons is immense; one hardly will believe that half an hour has elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his agony.  Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dulness.  The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business;—­the other can slumber over the brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest hour of his life.  Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise.

Dark flood of time! 
Roll as it listeth thee—­I measure not
By months or moments thy ambiguous course. 
Another may stand by me on the brink
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken
That pauses at my feet.  The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being:  if I wake no more,
My life more actual living will contain
Than some gray veteran’s of the world’s cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll,
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed.—­

See Godwin’s “Pol.  Jus.” volume 1, page 411; and Condorcet, “Esquisse d’un Tableau Historique des Progres de l’Esprit Humain”, epoque 9.

8. 211, 212:—­

No longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face.