an analysis of experience in the present is no difficulty. For the theory of the universal relativity of actual individual things leads to the distinction between the present moment of experience, which is the sole datum for conscious analysis, and perception of the contemporary world, which is the only one factor in this datum.
The contrast between the comparative emptiness of Presentational Immediacy and the deep significance disclosed by Causal Efficacy is at the root of the pathos which haunts the world.
‘Pereunt et imputantur’
is the inscription on old sundials in ‘religious’ houses:
‘The hours perish and are laid to account.’
Here ‘Pereunt’ refers to the world disclosed in immediate presentation, gay with a thousand tints, passing, and intrinsically meaningless. ‘Imputantur’ refers to the world disclosed in its causal efficacy, where each event infects the ages to come, for good or for evil, with its own individuality. Almost all pathos includes a reference to lapse of time.
The final stanza of Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes commences with the haunting lines:—
