24. Our measure of time applicable to duration before time.
The mind having once got such a measure of time as
the annual revolution of the sun, can apply that measure to duration wherein that measure itself did not exist, and
with which, in the reality of its being, it had nothing to do. For should one say, that Abraham was born in the two
thousand seven hundred and twelfth year of the Julian period, it is altogether as intelligible as reckoning from the
beginning of the world, though there were so far back no motion of the sun, nor any motion at all. For, though the
Julian period be supposed to begin several hundred years before there were really either days, nights, or years,
marked out by any revolutions of the sun,--yet we reckon as right, and thereby measure durations as well, as if
really at that time the sun had existed, and kept the same ordinary motion it doth now. The idea of duration equal
to an annual revolution of the sun, is as easily applicable in our thoughts to duration, where no sun or motion was,
as the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our thoughts to duration, where no sun or
motion was, as the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our thoughts to distances
beyond the confines of the world, where are no bodies at all.
