More than sixteen hundred years ago, Saint Augustine explored the experience of time through a simple exercise. You can still try it today. Choose a song that you love and learn it by heart. Keep practicing until you remember every part of the song and every shift in the melody. As you sing it, you will know how much of the song has passed since the beginning and how much of it remains until the end. Yet—in holding the song together— you will find that it is already slipping away. There is never a moment in which the song is present to you. You can sing it only by retaining the notes that have passed away, while anticipating the notes still to come. Even each individual tone is never present: it begins to recede as soon as it sounds, and you have to hold on to it to hear anything at all.

中文翻译：

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克瑙斯加德的世俗忏悔

一千六百多年前，圣奥古斯丁通过一个简单的练习探索了时间的体验。你今天仍然可以试试。选择一首您喜欢的歌曲，并用心学习。继续练习，直到你记住歌曲的每个部分和旋律的每个转变。当你唱的时候，你会知道这首歌从开始到现在已经过去了多少，还有多少直到结束。然而——把这首歌放在一起——你会发现它已经消失了。从来没有一刻，这首歌出现在你面前。只有保留已逝的音符，同时期待即将到来的音符，您才能唱出它。甚至每个单独的音调都不会出现：它一响起就开始减弱，你必须抓住它才能听到任何声音。