4. Some ideas of time supposed positive and found to be relative.
There are yet, besides those, other words of
time, that ordinarily are thought to stand for positive ideas, which yet will, when considered, be found to be
relative; such as are, young, old, etc., which include and intimate the relation anything has to a certain length of
duration, whereof we have the idea in our minds. Thus, having settled in our thoughts the idea of the ordinary
duration of a man to be seventy years, when we say a man is young, we mean that his age is yet but a small part of
that which usually men attain to; and when we denominate him old, we mean that his duration is run out almost to
the end of that which men do not usually exceed. And so it is but comparing the particular age or duration of this
or that man, to the idea of that duration which we have in our minds, as ordinarily belonging to that sort of
animals: which is plain in the application of these names to other things; for a man is called young at twenty
years, and very young at seven years old: but yet a horse we call old at twenty, and a dog at seven years, because
in each of these we compare their age to different ideas of duration, which are settled in our minds as belonging to
these several sorts of animals, in the ordinary course of nature. But the sun and stars, though they have outlasted
several generations of men, we call not old, because we do not know what period God hath set to that sort of
beings. This term belonging properly to those things which we can observe in the ordinary course of things, by a
natural decay, to come to an end in a certain period of time; and so have in our minds, as it were, a standard to
which we can compare the several parts of their duration; and, by the relation they bear thereunto, call them
young or old; which we cannot, therefore, do to a ruby or a diamond, things whose usual periods we know not.
