«The sum of Human wisdom which springs from the whole past (which is the product of those now dead and always tied to them) we exchange for ‘freedom’ of complete ignorance, of seeing the world anew each instant. This is the freedom of consciousness without memory. Sacrificing this freedom — or ‘innocence’ we acquire care and give the dead life.

»The Knowledge of Time: Memory (that house of the Dead) — is knowledge of inevitable personal destruction and at the same time immortality of a kind in human memory; for no word uttered, nor stone turned, no act, can never be undone.

»These things are not simply ‘left’ in the past; they are the very matter of Time itself. Cumulatively, they are time: — the ineradicable and necessary precursors of the elusive present. Each act, each existence is the sine qua non of all that follows, and is itself informed and constrained by all which precedes ti. Thus it is a kind of arrogance to imagine that one ‘stands on one’s own two feet’. Indeed, one stands on the uncountable bones of the dead; breathes their air, speaks their words, thinks their thoughts. Any contributions that we make personally to this sum are those we precipitate from it — those combined, transformed and made new by our volitional agency.»

Chris Cutler