Abstract

The day is one of the fundamental experiences of our natural existence. The obvious cycle of the sun, the alternation of sleep and being awake provide a link between the life of the body and the great regularity that assigns their successive moments to light and to darkness. Only a simplified abstraction allows us to consider time lived as an homogeneous flow. Our existence, in its proper substance and in its larger environment, is dominated by the rhythm of days and nights. Our very experience of the reality of objects is subject to it: the universe of things depends on the light of day that reveals it. It shrivels and becomes uncertain when night falls, with terror and dreams taking its place. The evidence that appears with the clarity of day is not of the same order as apparitions that arise from the depth of darkness.