For as in the history of the creation delivered by Moses, I can imagine that light existed three days before the sun was, or had motion; so I can have the idea of chaos being created before there was light, a minute, a day, or 1000 years. For if I can con

sider duration equal to one minute before the being or motion of any body, I can add minutes, hours, or years ad infinitum, and suppose a duration exceeding as many such periods as I can reckon, which I think is the notion we have of eternity.

And thus I think it plain that, from reflection and sensation, we get the ideas of duration, and the measures of it. 1. By observing the train of ideas in our minds, we come by the idea of succession. 2. By observing a distance in the parts of this succession, we get the idea of duration. 3. By observing certain appearances at certain periods, we get the ideas of certain measures of duration, as minutes, hours, days, &c. 4. By repeating those measures in our minds, we can imagine duration where nothing exists, and thus we imagine to-morrow, next year, or seven years hence. 5. By being able to repeat ideas of any length of time, as of a minute or year, as often as we will in our own thoughts, we come by the idea of eternity. 6. By considering any part of duration as set out by periodical measures, we come by the idea of time in general.

CHAPTER XV.

Of Duration and Expansion, considered together.

Though we have dwelt long on the consideration of space and duration, yet as they have something very abstruse and peculiar in their nature, we may have a more distinct conception of them by taking a view of them together. Space I call expansion, to distinguish it from extension, which by some is used to express distance in the solid parts of matter, and so intimates

the idea of body. I also prefer the word expansion to space, because space is often applied to the distance of fleeting successive parts. In both these, viz. expansion and duration, the mind has the common idea of continued lengths capable of greater or less quantities.

The mind having got the idea of the length of any part of expansion, can repeat that idea, and enlarge its idea of length, till it amounts to the distance of the remotest star; and by such progression it can pass beyond all those lengths, and find nothing to stop its going on. We can easily in our thoughts come to the end of solid extension; but when the mind is there, it finds nothing to hinder its progress into endless expansion. Nor let any one say that beyond body there is nothing at all, unless he will confine God within the limits of matter. Solomon hath said, The heaven of heavens cannot contain thee;' and he, I think, much magnifies the capacity of his understanding, who persuades himself that he can extend his thoughts farther than God exists.

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Just so it is in duration. The mind, having got the idea of any length of duration, may enlarge it beyond the existence of all corporeal beings; but though we may make duration boundless, we cannot extend it beyond all being. God fills eternity; and why should any one doubt that he likewise fills immensity? It is ascribing too much to matter, to say, where there is no body, there is nothing.

Hence we may learn why every one without hesitation ascribes infinity to duration, but many admit with more reserve the infinity of space. The reason

seems to be, that duration and extension being names of affections of other beings, we conceive in God infinite duration; but not attributing to him extension, we are apter to doubt of the existence of expansion without matter, of which alone we suppose it an attribute. And therefore when men pursue their thoughts

of space, they stop at the confines of body; or if they carry them farther, they regard space as if it were nothing, because there is no body existing in it: but duration is never supposed void of some other real existence. And if names may direct our thoughts to the original of ideas, one may think, by the name duration, that the continuation of existence, with a kind of resistance to destructive force, and the continuation of solidity, were thought to have some analogy, and gave occasion to words so near of kin as durare and durum esse. Be that as it will, whoever pursues his own thoughts, will sometimes find them launch out beyond the extent of body into the infinity of space.

Time is to duration as place to expansion: they are so much of eternity and immensity as is distinguished from the rest, as it were, by land-marks. Rightly considered, they are nothing but ideas of determinate distances from certain known points: for duration and space being in themselves boundless and uniform, the order and position of things, without such settled points, would be lost in them.

Time and place, taken for determinate portions of infinite space and duration, have each of them a twofold acceptation.

1. Time is so much of infinite duration as is coexistent with the motions of the great bodies of the universe, and in this sense time begins and ends with the sensible world. Place likewise is that portion of infinite space which is possessed by the material world. Within these are measured and determined the time or duration, and the extension and place, of all corporeal beings.

2. Sometimes the word time' is applied to such other portions of infinite duration which we suppose equal to certain lengths of measured time. For if we should suppose the creation of angels was at the beginning of the Julian period, we should be understood, if we said, It is a longer time since the creation of

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angels than the creation of the world by 764 years.' We should thus mark out so much of that infinite duration as we supposed equal to 764 revolutions of the sun. And thus we sometimes speak of place beyond the confines of the world, when we consider so much of that space as is capable of receiving a body of any assigned dimensions.

Where and when' are questions belonging to all finite beings, and are measured from some known parts, or certain epochs. Without some such fixed periods or parts, the order of things would be lost to our understandings in the boundless ocean of duration and expansion, which in their full extent belong only to the Deity. And therefore we find our thoughts at a loss when we would consider them abstractedly, or as attributed to the Creator. But when applied to finite beings, the extension of any body is so much of space as that body takes up; and place is the position of any body considered at a certain distance from another. As the idea of the duration of any thing is the idea of that portion of infinite duration which passes during its existence, so the time when the thing existed is the idea of that space of duration, which passed between some known period, and the being of that thing.

Space and duration have a great conformity in this, viz. that though they are reckoned among our simple ideas, yet it is the nature of both of them to consist of parts; but their parts being all of the same kind, hinder them not from having a place among our simple ideas. The mind cannot, as in number, come to an indivisible unit or idea, and conceive space without parts; it uses therefore the common measures of inches, feet, hours, days, as simple ideas of which larger ones are compounded. Every part of duration is duration, and every part of extension is extension, both capable of addition or division in infinitum. But the least portions of either of them, of which we have clear

and distinct ideas, may, perhaps, be fittest to be considered by us as the simple ideas of that kind out of which our complex modes of space, extension, and duration are made up.

Expansion and duration also agree, in that their parts are not separable, no, not even in thought. But there is this difference between them, that the ideas of length which we have of expansion are turned every way, but duration is but as it were the length of one straight line, and is the common measure of all existence. What spirits have to do with space we know not; but it is as hard to have an idea of any real being, with a perfect negation of all manner of expansion, as it is to have the idea of any real existence with a perfect negation of all manner of duration.

Duration is the idea we have of perishing distance, of which no two parts exist together; as expansion is the idea of distance, all whose parts exist together. And though we cannot conceive that any being possesses at once more than the present moment of duration, yet we can conceive the duration of the Almighty far different from that of man; because man comprehends not in his knowlege and power all past and future things; but God's infinite duration being accompanied with infinite knowlege, the past and the future are no more distant from his sight than the present. To conclude, expansion and duration do mutually embrace and comprehend each other, every part of space being in every part of duration, and every part of duration in every part of expansion.

CHAPTER XVI.

Of Number.

Amongst all the ideas we have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so there is none