What Is Time? Julian Barbour's Answer

Tell me what time is. You cannot. The future does not exist, nor does the past. Nor the present. You cannot live in the present. Snap your fingers and it is gone. By the time you say "now" it is already past.  You cannot apprehend any part of time you talk about. All you have are words to explain something that eludes you and the words only confuse you all the more.

In 1908 John McTaggart wrote The Unreality of Time, and using his A and B series of time he argued that our perception of time is an illusion. Of the A series, he argues this: