An Essay on the Improvement of Time Author:John Foster Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. THE VALUE OF TIME. § 1. THE VALUE OF TIME ESTIMATED BY WHAT IS ACCOMPLISHED WITHIN A GIVEN PORTION OF IT.?AN IMAGIN- AKY SURVEY OF THE UNIVERSE,... more » AND OF THE CONTESI- PORANEOUS EVENTS OCCURRING THROUGHOUT IT AT A GIVEN HOUR.?THE RIGHT MORAL IMPRESSION OF SUCH A SURVEY IN RELATION TO OUR OWN CONDUCT. § 2. HOW TO ESTIMATE THE VALUE OF A DAY. ILLUSTRATED IN THE CASE OF A PHILANTHROPIST, A MAN OF SCIENCE, A WICKED MAN. § 3.?THE VALUE OF SHORT PORTIONS OF TIME IN GREAT EMERGENCIES. ILLUSTRATIONS, EPAMINONDAS AND PELOPIDAS. ? A VIRTUOUS GOVERNOR.?DAMON AND PYTHIAS.?DANIEL AND HIS FRIENDS. § 4.?OBJECTION TO THIS MODE OF ESTIMATING THE VALUE OF TIME.?ANSWERED BY SEVERAL OBSERVATIONS.? OUR TIME, TAKEN THROUGHOUT, IS A SEASON OF EMER- GENCY. A LARGE PROPORTION OF PAST TIME MIS- SPENT OR NOT IMPROVED.?PRESENT HOURS, REPRE- SENTATIVES OF THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN LOST. § 5.?THE CASE. OF PERSONS APPROACHING THE END OF LIFE. § 1. Both a character of dignity and the interest of surprise would accompany our considerations on the value of Time, if imagination could have an expanded, though momentary, view of what is done throughout the universe in the space of each day and each hour. The importance of this moral space is in some sense commensurate to all that is effected within it by the whole series of created agents from the meanest to sublimest, and even to all that is performed by the operation of the Supreme Being himself. The confinement, therefore, of our faculty of observing, to an indefinitely small portion of this immense agency (excepting, indeed, what we dimly discern in the system of the heavens), contracts proportionally our comprehension of the worth of those portions of duration with which we may be allowed to say that all the operations in the univ...« less