dots-menu
×

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Duration

All the notion we have of duration is partly by the successiveness of its own operations, and partly by those external measures that it finds in motion.

Sir Matthew Hale.

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

One who fixes his thoughts intently on one thing, so as to take but little notice of the succession of ideas in his mind, lets slip out of his account a good part of that duration.

When the succession of ideas cease, our perception of duration ceases with it, which every one experiments whilst he sleeps soundly.