DEFINITION OF TIME.
22. Time is duration; but duration without something which endures, is an absurdity. There can then be no time without something existing. The duration which we conceive, after reducing every thing to nihility, is a vain imagination; it is not an idea, but is rather in contradiction with ideas.
An important consequence flows from this; it is, that time in itself, cannot be defined with absolute elimination of every thing to which it refers. Time, then, has no proper existence; and separated from beings is annihilated.
23. Hence, also, it follows that that infinity which we attribute to time, has no rational foundation. We have no other reason to affirm this infinity than a vague conception, which presents it as such; but we cannot fail to perceive that this conception also exists, even if we suppose all to be reduced to nothing. If, then, there is in this supposition a vain diversion of the imagination, it is not an idea, but a contradiction with ideas; and what has once deceived us, no longer deserves any credit. Those infinite ages of time which we conceive prior to the creation, are not nothing; they are an imaginary time, similar to an imaginary space.
24. Time has no necessary relation with movement, since if nothing were to move, or even no bodies to exist, we should nevertheless conceive time in the succession of operations of our soul. This last is indispensable; we must have some succession of things in order to conceive time. If we suppose nothing to change or to be altered, a being subject to no external or internal change, having one single thoughtalways the same, one single will always the same, having no succession of ideas or acts of any kind whatever, we conceive nothing to which the idea of time is applicable.
Time is a measure; but what is it to measure in a being of this kind? Succession? But there is no succession. Duration? But what is there to measure in a duration always the same, which is only the same being? Duration must have parts given to it before it can be measured; but what parts has it? Those of time? But this would be a begging of the question, since time is applied to it when we are inquiring whether time is applicable to it. When theologians say that the existence of God cannot be measured by time, that there is no succession in eternity, but that all is united in a single point, they utter a profound truth; and Clarke, before ridiculing it, should have studied to understand it.
25. Time commences with mutable things; if they perish, it perishes with them. There is no succession without mutation; and consequently, no time.
26. What, then, is time? The succession of things considered in the abstract.
What is succession? Being and not-being. A thing exists; it ceases to exist; here we have succession. Whenever time can be calculated, there is succession; and whenever succession can be calculated a being and a not-being are considered. The perception of this relation, of this being and not-being, is the idea of time.
27. Time cannot exist without being and not-being; because in this, succession consists; wherever there is succession, there is some mutation; and there is no mutation without something being in another manner, and this other manner is not possible unless the prior manner ceases to be.
Substances, modifications, and appearances have no succession without this being and not-being. What is motion? The succession of the positions of a body with respect to various points; and this succession is verified by occupying some of these positions and destroying others. What is the succession of thoughts or affections of our mind? The not-being of some which were, and the being of others which were not.
28. Time, then, in things, is their succession, their being and not-being. Time in the understanding, is the perception of this mutation, this being and not-being.