Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/125

 DURATIONS, MOMENTS AND TIME-SYSTEMS in Only events of a certain type can be members of an absolute antiprime, namely events which in Part II have been called durations. Only durations can extend over durations, and accordingly all the members of a moment are durations. -3 We may conceive of a duration as a sort of temporal thickness (or, slab) of nature*. In an absolute dimension and unlimited in its spatial dimensions. Thus it repre sents a finite time and infinite space. For example let the horizontal
 * The slab of nature forming a duration is limited in its temporal
 * G| E| C| A
 * __|__|__|_____time
 * H| F| D| B

Fig. 7. line represent the time; and assume nature to be spatially one-di mensional, so that an unlimited vertical line in the diagram represents Time system β Time system α

Fig. 8.