them, either abstractly in themselves, or as any way attributed to the first incomprehensible Being.  But when applied to any particular finite beings, the extension of any body is so much of that infinite space as the bulk of the body takes up.  And place is the position of any body, when considered at a certain distance from some other.  As the idea of the particular duration of anything is, an idea of that portion of infinite duration which passes during the existence of that thing; so the time when the thing existed is, the idea of that space of duration which passed between some known and fixed period of duration, and the being of that thing.  One shows the distance of the extremities of the bulk or existence of the same thing, as that it is a foot square, or lasted two years; the other shows the distance of it in place, or existence from other fixed points of space or duration, as that it was in the middle of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, or the first degree of Taurus, and in the year of our Lord 1671, or the 1000th year of the Julian period.  All which distances we measure by preconceived ideas of certain lengths of space and duration,—­as inches, feet, miles, and degrees, and in the other, minutes, days, and years, &c.

9.  All the Parts of Extension are Extension, and all the Parts of Duration are Duration.

There is one thing more wherein space and duration have a great conformity, and that is, though they are justly reckoned amongst our simple ideas, yet none of the distinct ideas we have of either is without all manner of composition:  it is the very nature of both of them to consist of parts:  but their parts being all of the same kind, and without the mixture of any other idea, hinder them not from having a place amongst simple ideas.  Could the mind, as in number, come to so small a part of extension or duration as excluded divisibility, that would be, as it were, the indivisible unit or idea; by repetition of which, it would make its more enlarged ideas of extension and duration.  But, since the mind is not able to frame an idea of any space without parts, instead thereof it makes use of the common measures, which, by familiar use in each country, have imprinted themselves on the memory (as inches and feet; or cubits and parasangs; and so seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years in duration);—­the mind makes use, I say, of such ideas as these, as simple ones:  and these are the component parts of larger ideas, which the mind upon occasion makes by the addition of such known lengths which it is acquainted with.  On the other side, the ordinary smallest measure we have of either is looked on as an unit in number, when the mind by division would reduce them into less fractions.  Though on both sides, both in addition and division, either of space or duration, when the idea under consideration becomes very big or very small, its precise bulk becomes very obscure and confused; and it is the number of its repeated additions