Time naturally challenges the sovereignty and originality of ideas, as lines of antecedence reveal themselves to be circular, even field-like patterns of influence.

Prē′viousness, antecedence: priority in time.—Previous question, a motion made during a debate, 'that the main question be now put.'

We might wish, perhaps, to consider as characteristic of this absolute antecedence the establishment of the authority without which teaching, properly so called, cannot begin.