Where does time come from?

The idea of time arises altogether from how impressions appear to the mind, without time being one of those impressions.

Five notes played on a flute give us the impression and idea of time.

But time is not a sixth impression.

Time:

• does not present itself to the hearing
• is not found by the mind in itself, by reflection

The idea of duration cannot be applicable to perfectly unchangeable objects.

Ideas always represent the objects or impressions, from which they are derived.

Ideas can never represent or be applied to any other impressions without a fiction.

Section 5 will explain why we:

• apply the idea of time to unchangeable objects
• suppose that duration is a measure of rest and motion.

‘Impressions of Atoms’ as Quantum of Space and Time which Have a Quality

Our ideas of time are compounded of indivisible parts.

The compound idea of space is based on an indivisible idea of simple space [quantum of space] as an indivisible point.

The idea of space is conveyed by sight and touch.

• Anything invisible or intangible never appears extended.

That compound impression of space consists of lesser indivisible impressions which I call ‘impressions of atoms’ or corpuscles endowed with colour and solidity.

These atoms must be coloured or tangible for our senses to discover them.

The ideas of their colours and tangibility should be preserved to comprehend them by our imagination.

Without the ideas of these sensible qualities, they are utterly annihilated to the imagination.

[The black point would be the same as black space]

Consequently, the idea of space which is composed of the ideas of these points, can never possibly exist.

But if the idea of space really can exist, its parts must:

• also exist, and
• be considered as coloured or tangible.

We therefore only have an idea of space when we regard it as an object of our sight or feeling.

The same reasoning will prove that the indivisible moments of time must be filled with some real object or existence, whose succession:

• forms the duration, and
• makes it be conceivable by the mind.