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.
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