On the other side, the
ordinary smallest measure we have of either is looked on as an unit in
number, when the mind by division would reduce them into less
fractions. Though on both sides, both in addition and division, either
of space or duration, when the idea under consideration becomes very
big or very small its precise bulk becomes very obscure and
confused; and it is the number of its repeated additions or
divisions that alone remains clear and distinct; as will easily appear
to any one who will let his thoughts loose in the vast expansion of
space, or divisibility of matter. Every part of duration is duration
too; and every part of extension is extension, both of them capable of
addition or division in infinitum. But the least portions of either of
them, whereof we have clear and distinct ideas, may perhaps be fittest
to be considered by us, as the simple ideas of that kind out of
which our complex modes of space, extension, and duration are made up,
and into which they can again be distinctly resolved. Such a small
part in duration may be called a moment, and is the time of one idea
in our minds, in the train of their ordinary succession there. The
other, wanting a proper name, I know not whether I may be allowed to
call a sensible point, meaning thereby the least particle of matter or
space we can discern, which is ordinarily about a minute, and to the
sharpest eyes seldom less than thirty seconds of a circle, whereof the
eye is the centre.
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