23. Minutes, hours, days, and years not necessary measures of duration.
Minutes, hours, days, and years are, then,
no more necessary to time or duration, than inches, feet, yards, and miles, marked out in any matter, are to
extension. For, though we in this part of the universe, by the constant use of them, as of periods set out by the
revolutions of the sun, or as known parts of such periods, have fixed the ideas of such lengths of duration in our
minds, which we apply to all parts of time whose lengths we would consider; yet there may be other parts of the
universe, where they no more use there measures of ours, than in Japan they do our inches, feet, or miles; but yet
something analogous to them there must be. For without some regular periodical returns, we could not measure
ourselves, or signify to others, the length of any duration; though at the same time the world were as full of
motion as it is now, but no part of it disposed into regular and apparently equidistant revolutions. But the different
measures that may be made use of for the account of time, do not at all alter the notion of duration, which is the
thing to be measured; no more than the different standards of a foot and a cubit alter the notion of extension to
those who make use of those different measures.
