a relation resulting from the existence of other beings at a distance;
or whether they will think the words of the most knowing King Solomon,
"The heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee"; or those
more emphatical ones of the inspired philosopher St.

Paul, "In him
we live, move, and have our being," are to be understood in a
literal sense, I leave every one to consider: only our idea of space
is, I think, such as I have mentioned, and distinct from that of body.

For, whether we consider, in matter itself, the distance of its
coherent solid parts, and call it, in respect of those solid parts,
extension; or whether, considering it as lying between the extremities
of any body in its several dimensions, we call it length, breadth, and
thickness; or else, considering it as lying between any two bodies
or positive beings, without any consideration whether there be any
matter or not between, we call it distance;- however named or
considered, it is always the same uniform simple idea of space,
taken from objects about which our senses have been conversant;
whereof, having settled ideas in our minds, we can revive, repeat, and
add them one to another as often as we will, and consider the space or
distance so imagined, either as filled with solid parts, so that
another body cannot come there without displacing and thrusting out
the body that was there before; or else as void of solidity, so that a
body of equal dimensions to that empty or pure space may be placed
in it, without the removing or expulsion of anything that was there.

But, to avoid confusion in discourses concerning this matter, it
were possibly to be wished that the name extension were applied only
to matter, or the distance of the extremities of particular bodies;
and the term expansion to space in general, with or without solid
matter possessing it,- so as to say space is expanded and body
extended.

But in this every one has his liberty: I propose it only for
the more clear and distinct way of speaking.

28 .Men differ little in clear, simple ideas

The knowing
precisely what our words stand for, would, I imagine, in this as
well as a great many other cases, quickly end the dispute.

For I am
apt to think that men, when they come to examine them, find their
simple ideas all generally to agree, though in discourse with one
another they perhaps confound one another with different names.

I
imagine that men who abstract their thoughts, and do well examine
the ideas of their own minds, cannot much differ in thinking;
however they may perplex themselves with words, according to the way
of speaking to the several schools or sects they have been bred up in:
though amongst unthinking men, who examine not scrupulously and
carefully their own ideas, and strip them not from the marks men use
for them, but confound them with words, there must be endless dispute,
wrangling, and jargon; especially if they be learned, bookish men,
devoted to some sect, and accustomed to the language of it, and have
learned to talk after others.

But if it should happen that any two
thinking men should really have different ideas, I do not see how they
could discourse or argue with another.

Here I must not be mistaken, to
think that every floating imagination in men's brains is presently
of that sort of ideas I speak of.

It is not easy for the mind to put
off those confused notions and prejudices it has imbibed from
custom, inadvertency, and common conversation.

It requires pains and
assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those clear
and distinct simple ones, out of which they are compounded; and to see
which, amongst its simple ones, have or have not a necessary connexion
and dependence one upon another.

Till a man doth this in the primary
and original notions of things, he builds upon floating and
uncertain principles, and will often find himself at a loss.

Chapter XIV
Idea of Duration and its Simple Modes

1.Duration is fleeting extension

There is another sort of
distance, or length, the idea whereof we get not from the permanent
parts of space, but from the fleeting and perpetually perishing
parts of succession.

This we call duration; the simple modes whereof
are any different lengths of it whereof we have distinct ideas, as
hours, days, years, &c.

, time and eternity.

2 .Its idea from reflection on the train of our ideas

The answer of
a great man, to one who asked what time was: Si non rogas intelligo,
(which amounts to this; The more I set myself to think of it, the less
I understand it,) might perhaps persuade one that time, which
reveals all other things, is itself not to be discovered.

Duration,
time, and eternity, are, not without reason, thought to have something
very abstruse in their nature.

But however remote these may seem
from our comprehension, yet if we trace them right to their originals,
I doubt not but one of those sources of all our knowledge, viz.

sensation and reflection, will be able to furnish us with these ideas,
as clear and distinct as many others which are thought much less
obscure; and we shall find that the idea of eternity itself is derived
from the same common original with the rest of our ideas.

3 .Nature and origin of the idea of duration

To understand time and
eternity aright, we ought with attention to consider what idea it is
we have of duration, and how we came by it.

It is evident to any one
who will but observe what passes in his own mind, that there is a
train of ideas which constantly succeed one another in his
understanding, as long as he is awake.

Reflection on these appearances
of several ideas one after another in our minds, is that which
furnishes us with the idea of succession: and the distance between any
parts of that succession, or between the appearance of any two ideas
in our minds, is that we call duration.

For whilst we are thinking, or
whilst we receive successively several ideas in our minds, we know
that we do exist; and so we call the existence, or the continuation of
the existence of ourselves, or anything else, commensurate to the
succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or
any such other thing co-existent with our thinking.

4 .Proof that its idea is got from reflection on the train of our
ideas

That we have our notion of succession and duration from this
original, viz.

from reflection on the train of ideas, which we find to
appear one after another in our own minds, seems plain to me, in
that we have no perception of duration but by considering the train of
ideas that take their turns in our understandings.

When that
succession of ideas ceases, our perception of duration ceases with it;
which every one clearly experiments in himself, whilst he sleeps
soundly, whether an hour or a day, a month or a year; of which
duration of things, while he sleeps or thinks not, he has no
perception at all, but it is quite lost to him; and the moment wherein
he leaves off to think, till the moment he begins to think again,
seems to him to have no distance.

And so I doubt not it would be to
a waking man, if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his
mind, without variation and the succession of others.

And we see, that
one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take
but little notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his mind,
whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets slip out
of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks that time
shorter than it is.

But if sleep commonly unites the distant parts
of duration, it is because during that time we have no succession of
ideas in our minds.

For if a man, during his sleep, dreams, and
variety of ideas make themselves perceptible in his mind one after
another, he hath then, during such dreaming, a sense of duration,
and of the length of it.

By which it is to me very clear, that men
derive their ideas of duration from their reflections on the train
of the ideas they observe to succeed one another in their own
understandings; without which observation they can have no notion of
duration, whatever may happen in the world.

5 .The idea of duration applicable to things whilst we sleep

Indeed
a man having, from reflecting on the succession and number of his
own thoughts, got the notion or idea of duration, he can apply that
notion to things which exist while he does not think; as he that has
got the idea of extension from bodies by his sight or touch, can apply
it to distances, where no body is seen or felt.

And therefore,
though a man has no perception of the length of duration which
passed whilst he slept or thought not; yet, having observed the
revolution of days and nights, and found the length of their
duration to be in appearance regular and constant, he can, upon the
supposition that that revolution has proceeded after the same manner
whilst he was asleep or thought not, as it used to do at other
times, he can, I say, imagine and make allowance for the length of
duration whilst he slept.

But if Adam and Eve, (when they were alone
in the world), instead of their ordinary night's sleep, had passed the
whole twenty-four hours in one continued sleep, the duration of that
twenty-four hours had been irrecoverably lost to them, and been for
ever left out of their account of time.

6 .The idea of succession not from motion

Thus by reflecting on the
appearing of various ideas one after another in our understandings, we
get the notion of succession; which, if any one should think we did
rather get from our observation of motion by our senses, he will
perhaps be of my mind when he considers, that even motion produces
in his mind an idea of succession no otherwise than as it produces
there a continued train of distinguishable ideas.

For a man looking
upon a body really moving, perceives yet no motion at all unless