Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/144

 limit each other, we mean, that both have their extreme ends in common; therefore only two extended things can be conterminous, never two indivisible ones, for then they would be one—i.e. only lines, but not mere points, can be conterminous. He then transfers this from Space to Time. As there always remains a line between two points, so there always remains a time between two nows; this is the time in which a change takes place—i.e. when one state is in the first, and another in the second, now. This time, like every other, is divisible to infinity; consequently, whatever is changing passes through an infinite number of degrees within that time, through which the second state gradually grows out of that first one.—The process may perhaps be made more intelligible by the following explanation. Between two consecutive states the difference of which is perceptible to our senses, there are always several intermediate states, the difference between which is not perceptible to us; because, in order to be sensuously perceptible, the newly arising state must have reached a certain degree of intensity or of magnitude: it is therefore preceded by degrees of lesser intensity or extension, in passing through which it gradually arises. Taken collectively, these are comprised under the name of change, and the time occupied by them is called the time of change. Now, if we apply this to a body being propelled, the first effect is a certain vibration of its inner parts, which, after communicating the impulse to other parts, breaks out into external motion.—Aristotle infers quite rightly from the infinite divisibility of Time, that everything which fills it, therefore every change, i.e. every passage from one state to another, must likewise be susceptible of endless subdivision, so that all that arises, does so in fact by the concourse of an infinite multitude of parts; accordingly its genesis is always gradual, never sudden. From these principles and the consequent gradual arising of each movement, he