[127] TIME--not five thousand, but five billion years ago. I said that there is no difference between five thousand or five billions of years; the question always remains: what was before it?--if we think in temporal terms. But if we think in terms of the relation of the eternal to the temporal, then we are in a dimension which does not give the answer in any way to the periods in which the world has developed as we see it today. There is another rather interesting consideration, made by the famous physicist von Weizsäcker^a in Göttingen, who, in his book about the development of our cosmos, speaks about the historical element in physics^b. He says that not only MAN history, but that there is an historical element in the physical development of the universe itself. He gives as an example the one-directed and non-circular development of the universe as we know it, also based on the law of entropy, of the death of warmth. And he says that the direction of time is known to us only because of the law of entropy, which is unambiguous, and not returning, so that the universe, from this point of view, must also be understood as historical, although human freedom^c is involved only in an infinitely small period, which we call, ordinarily, history. Now here again I would say: insofar as this is a physical knowledge, it remains doubtful, and some physicists with whom I spoke questioned very much this theory about the historical character of the universe. In any case, it is controversial, in the scientific sense of the word, and therefore cannot be used in order to confirm the Augustinian over against the Stoic^d interpretation of time^e. The Stoic interpretation of time is the circular one: once the world has started, then it has moved through