1. Both capable of greater and less.
Though we have in the precedent chapters dwelt pretty long on the
considerations of space and duration, yet, they being ideas of general concernment, that have something very
abstruse and peculiar in their nature, the comparing them one with another may perhaps be of use for their
illustration; and we may have the more clear and distinct conception of them by taking a view of them together.
Distance or space, in its simple abstract conception, to avoid confusion, I call expansion, to distinguish it from
extension, which by some is used to express this distance only as it is in the solid parts of matter, and so includes,
or at least intimates, the idea of body: whereas the idea of pure distance includes no such thing. I prefer also the
word expansion to space, because space is often applied to distance of fleeting successive parts, which never exist
together, as well as to those which are permanent. In both these (viz., expansion and duration) the mind has this
common idea of continued lengths, capable of greater or less quantities. For a man has as clear an idea of the
difference of the length of an hour and a day, as of an inch and a foot.
