Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/271

Ch. 15. to think by the name duration, that the continuation of existence, with a kind of resistance to any destructive force, and the continuation of solidity (which is apt to be confounded with, and, if we will look into the minute anatomical parts of matter, is little different from, hardness) were thought to have some analogy, and gave occasion to words so near of kin as durare and durum esse. And that durare is applied to the idea of hardness as well as that of existence, we see in Horace, epod. xvi. "ferro duravit secula." But be that as it will, this is certain; that whoever pursues his own thoughts, will find them sometimes launch out beyond the extent of body into the infinity of space or expansion; the idea whereof is distinct and separate from body and all other things: which may (to those who please) be a subject of farther meditation.

§ 5. Time in general is to duration as place to expansion. They are so much of those boundless oceans of eternity and immensity as is set out and distinguished from the rest, as it were, by land-marks; and so are made use of to denote the position of finite real beings, in respect one to another, in those uniform infinite oceans of duration and space. These, rightly considered, are only ideas of determinate distances, from certain known points fixed in distinguishable sensible things, and supposed to keep the same distance one from another. From such points fixed in sensible beings we reckon, and from them we measure our portions of those infinite quantities; which, so considered, are that which we call time and place. For duration and space being in themselves uniform and boundless, the order and position of things, without such known settled points, would be lost in them, and all things would lie jumbled in an incurable confusion.

§ 6. Time and place, taken thus for determinate distinguishable portions of those infinite abysses of space and duration, set out or supposed to be distinguished from