Capitolo 91
that one that very intensely mends his/her thoughts on a thing, as to
takes but the small notice of the succession of ideas that you/they pass in his
mind while he is picked above up with that contemplation of deposit impediments,
you slip out of his/her account a good part of that duration, and he/she thinks
that duration shorter than him."
It is probable that we bring this subsequently thought, and it consider a man as one
you side, while shortening his/her time thinking on nothing, or but some
things; then, on the other, as lengthening him/it assuming his,
thoughts on many subjects, or entertaining an express and continuous
succession of the ideas. Accordingly, Monsieur Malebranche, in his
"Investigation after Truth" in front of which was published many years Mr.
The Composition of Locke on "Human Understanding", it tells us, "that it is
possible some creatures can think half a hour until us we do a
thousand years; or it reputes that space of duration that we call a
minute as a hour, a week, one month or a whole age."
This notion of Monsieur Malebranche is able of some small
explanation from what I have quoted out of the Mr. Locke; for if ours
notion of time is produced ours reflecting on the succession of
the ideas in our mind, and this succession can infinitely be accelerated
or delayed, it will follow that different beings can have different
notions of the same parts of the duration, granting as their ideas,
what we suppose it is equally separate in each of them, follows one
another in a greater or less degree of the rapidity.
There is a famous passage in the Alcoran as which it looks if Mohammed
you/he/she had been possessed some notion of which we am now speaking. It is
there it said that the angel Gabriel took Mohammed of his/her bed one
morning to give him a sight of all the things in the seven skies, in
heaven, and in hell of which the prophet took a separate sight;
and, after having held ninety thousand lectures with God, it was
brought again again to his/her bed. All this, say the Alcoran, it was
done in so small a space of time, that Mohammed to his/her return