23. Minutes, hours, days, and years not necessary measures of
duration. Minutes, hours, days, and years are, then, no more necessary
to time or duration, than inches, feet, yards, and miles, marked out
in any matter, are to extension. For, though we in this part of the
universe, by the constant use of them, as of periods set out by the
revolutions of the sun, or as known parts of such periods, have
fixed the ideas of such lengths of duration in our minds, which we
apply to all parts of time whose lengths we would consider; yet
there may be other parts of the universe, where they no more use there
measures of ours, than in Japan they do our inches, feet, or miles;
but yet something analogous to them there must be. For without some
regular periodical returns, we could not measure ourselves, or signify
to others, the length of any duration; though at the same time the
world were as full of motion as it is now, but no part of it
disposed into regular and apparently equidistant revolutions. But
the different measures that may be made use of for the account of
time, do not at all alter the notion of duration, which is the thing
to be measured; no more than the different standards of a foot and a
cubit alter the notion of extension to those who make use of those
different measures.
24. Our measure of time applicable to duration before time.
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