Laudatores Temporis Acti

The seventeenth-century Portuguese sea captain, Luiz da Silveira, in his De Gentibus et Moribus Asiae (Lisbon, I669) refers somewhat obliquely to an Eastern sect - whether Indian or Chinese we are not told - which he calls, using a Latin tag, LaudatoriesTemporisActi. The good captain is no metaphysician or theologian, but he none the less makes clear the nature of time past as conceived by the Worshippers. The past to us is merely a section of time, or a series of sections that were once the present and that may now be approximately recalled by memory or by history. Both memory and history make these sections, of course, part of the present. To the Worshippers, the past is absolute; it never had a present, nor can it be remembered or even guessed at. Neither unity nor plurality can be ascribed to it, since these are attributes of the present. The same may be said of its denizens - if the plural be allowed - with respect to their colour, size, weight, shape, and so on. Nothing about the beings of this Once That Never Was can be either affirmed or denied.

Silveira remarks on the utter hopelessness of the sect; the Past, as such, could have no inkling of its being worshipped and could afford no help or comfort to its votaries. Had the captain given us the native name or some other clue about this curious community, further investigation would be easier. We know they had neither temples nor sacred books. Are there still any Worshippers - or do they now, together with their dim belief, belong to the past?