He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There are no
more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. The unit of
measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes a thing of
paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of mankind. He had
thought them to be wide.
For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the states,
the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the measure which
he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. His first ten years
had given him the illusion of a most august scale and measure. It was
then that he conceived Antiquity. But now! Is it to a decade of ten
such little years as these now in his hand--ten of his mature years--that
men give the dignity of a century? They call it an age; but what if life
shows now so small that the word age has lost its gravity?
In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has a most
noble rod to measure it by--he has his own ten years. He attributes an
overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He confers distance. He, and
he alone, bestows mystery.
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