At the beginning of a new year we are confronted with the mystery of time. The familiar old year has passed away, and an unknown segment of the future, which we call the new year, has taken its place. "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away." Where did this stream originate and where does it finally end? What is this invisible something that we call time? What is this mysterious series of hours and days and years and centuries that moves steadily on and carries us to the end of our journey whether we wish it or not?

The great philosophers have all grappled with the mystery of time and given various answers. Plato called time the moving image of eternity, something unreal, a shadow that reality casts as it moves along. Immanuel Kant thought that time is nothing objectiv…