Note 516 — Chapter XV · [512]

Locke, in his dim way, derived the sense of duration from reflection on the succession of our ideas (Essay, book ii, chap. xiv, § 3; chap. xv, § 12). Reid justly remarks that if ten successive elements are to make duration, "then one must make duration, otherwise duration must be made up of parts that have no duration, which is impossible.... I conclude, therefore, that there must be duration in every single interval or element of which the whole duration is made up. Nothing, indeed, is more certain than that every elementary part of extension must have extension. Now, it must be observed that in these elements of duration, or single intervals of successive ideas, there is no succession of ideas, yet we must conceive them to have duration; whence we may conclude with certainty that there is a conception of duration where there is no succession of ideas in the mind." (Intellectual Powers, essay iii, chap. v.) "Qu'on ne cherche point," says Royer-Collard in the Fragments added to Jouffroy's Translation of Reid, "la durée dans la succession; on ne l'y trouvera jamais; la durée a précédé la succession; la notion de la durée a précédé la notion de la succession. Elle en est donc tout-à-fait indépendante, dira-t-on? Oui, elle en est tout-à-fait indépendante."