16. Time exists independent of all movement, of all succession; if it is something absolute, has a determinate value of its own, is applicable to all that changes without itself changing, the measure of all succession without itself being measured, what is it? That it is something accidental cannot be reconciled with its immutability and universality. Every thing lives in it, but it lives in nothing; every thing dies in it, but death has no power over it. When the substance perishes, the accident perishes; but time continues the same although no substance exist. Before all created beings, we conceive ages and ages, that is, time; and after the destruction, the annihilation of all beings, we still conceive a successive although unending succession, which is time. The idea, then, of time, does not demand that of the universe; it existed before it, and will survive it: but without time the universe is inconceivable. 17. The idea of time seems to be independent of the idea of any being; of all duration in it; every thing may endure in it; but it does not begin or end with what endures in itself; it is applicable to all that endures, but it is not itself an endurable thing. We imagine it to be one in the multiple, uniform in the various, fixed in the movable, eternal in the perishable; and it even seems to contain some features of the attributes of Divinity; but it is, on the other hand, essentially despoiled of every property excepting that of succession in its abstractest signification. It is essentially sterile, has no power of its own, no condition of being or action, and consequently leads to the highest imaginations of what a pure idea really is, an abstraction, which, like space, we have imagined in the presence of things. 18. The points of similarity between time and space are worthy of our attention. Both are infinite, immovable; both are a general measure; both essentially composed of continuous and inseparable parts. Limit them you cannot, determine any limit you chose, and beyond it you will see an ocean extended. Your powers are impotent; beyond the highest heaven are unbounded abysses of space; before the beginning of things there was a long chain of interminable ages.