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 these 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.

The mind having once got such a measure of time as the annual revolution
of the sun, can apply that measure to duration wherein that measure
itself did not exist, and with which, in the reality of its being, it
had nothing to do. For should one say, that Abraham was born in the two
thousand seven hundred and twelfth year of the Julian period, it is
altogether as intelligible as reckoning from the beginning of the world,
though there were so far back no motion of the sun, nor any motion at
all. For, though the Julian period be supposed to begin several hundred
years before there were really either days, nights, or years, marked
out by any revolutions of the sun,--yet we reckon as right, and thereby
measure durations as well, as if really at that time the sun had
existed, and kept the same ordinary motion it doth now. The idea
of duration equal to an annual revolution of the sun, is as easily
APPLICABLE in our thoughts to duration, where no sun or motion was, as
the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in
our thoughts to duration, where no sun or motion was, as the idea of a
foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our thoughts to
distances beyond the confines of the world, where are no bodies at all.

25. As we can measure space in our thoughts where there is no body.

For supposing it were 5639 miles, or millions of miles, from this place
to the remotest body of the universe, (for, being finite, it must be at
a certain distance,) as we suppose i