What then is it I measure? where is the short
syllable by which I measure? where the long which I measure? Both have
sounded, have flown, passed away, are no more; and yet I measure,
and confidently answer (so far as is presumed on a practised sense)
that as to space of time this syllable is but single, that double. And
yet I could not do this, unless they were already past and ended. It
is not then themselves, which now are not, that I measure, but
something in my memory, which there remains fixed.
It is in thee, my mind, that I measure times. Interrupt me not, that
is, interrupt not thyself with the tumults of thy impressions. In thee
I measure times; the impression, which things as they pass by cause in
thee, remains even when they are gone; this it is which still present,
I measure, not the things which pass by to make this impression.
This I measure, when I measure times. Either then this is time, or I
do not measure times. What when we measure silence, and say that
this silence hath held as long time as did that voice? do we not
stretch out our thought to the measure of a voice, as if it sounded,
that so we may be able to report of the intervals of silence in a
given space of time? For though both voice and tongue be still, yet in
thought we go over poems, and verses, and any other discourse, or
dimensions of motions, and report as to the spaces of times, how
much this is in respect of that, no otherwise than if vocally we did
pronounce them.
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