in the Renaissance when he felt that he existed in all the 
reaches of space and duration. He is now given no more than a 
moment at a time, but each moment can be one of illumination 
and fullness. . . .” (96)

     Inseparably, however, from visual awareness and order, is 
the sense of discontinuity and a feeling of self-alienation: 
“Every hour we are swept away from ourselves,” says Boileau, 
and a hectic urgency invades the time sense: “Aware that the 
instant in which he thinks and wishes is slipping from under 
him, man hurls himself into a new instant, an instant of a new 
thought and a new wish: ‘But man without rest in his mad 
course / Flutters incessantly from thought to thought.’ ” (97)

     From the isolated present moment, Poulet writes (p. 19), 
“God the creator and preserver is absent. The principal actor is