"Bosh! You mean the earth will stop rotating, the stars blink out?"
"Not at all. Such things have nothing to do with time. You may know your short waves, but your general education has been sadly neglected." The scientist picked up a weighty volume. "Maybe this will explain what I mean. It's from Immanuel Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason.' Listen:
'Time is not something which subsists of itself, or which inheres in things as an objective determination, and therefore, remains, when abstraction is made of the subjective conditions of the intuition of things. For in the former case it would be something real, yet without presenting to any power of perception any real object. In the latter case, as an order of determination inherent in things themselves, it could not be antecedent to things, as their condition, nor discerned or intuited by means of synthetical propositions a priori. But all this is quite possible when we regard time as merely the subjective condition under which all our intuitions take place.'
"There. Does that make it clear?"
"Clear as mud," grinned Baron. "Kant is too deep for me."
"I'll give you another proof," snapped Manthis. "Look at your watch."
The other drew out his timepiece. Slowly his face sobered.
"Why, I can't see the second hand," he exclaimed. "It's just a blur!"
"Exactly! Now look at the minute hand. Can you see it move?"
"Yes, quite clearly."