The Essential Augustine (continued)
If both, then it could be called a day either if the sun went through its complete circuit in the space of an hour or if, the sun having stopped its movement, just enough time were to go by for the sun to have completed its customary circuit from morning to morning.
So I shall not ask what this thing is which is called a day, but what is time, by means of which we, measuring the course of the sun, might say that it took only half its customary time to go through it, if the amount of time it took were equivalent to the passage of twelve hours and, comparing both, we should say that the one was to the other as one to two—even though sometimes the sun might complete its circuit from east to east in the single period and sometimes in the double of this period.
Therefore let no one tell me that periods of time are equivalent to the movements of the heavenly bodies. For when the sun stood still at the wish of a certain person, in order that he might complete a victorious battle, the sun was standing still but time was going on. Indeed, the fight was. waged and finished in its own space of time which was enough for it.
I see then that time is some sort of extension. But do I see it? Do I just seem to myself to see it? Thou wilt point it out, O Light, O Truth!
Dost Thou command me to assent when someone 31. says that time is the movement of a body? Thou dost not. I hear that no body can be moved unless in time; Thou sayest it. But I do not hear that the very motion of a body is time; Thou dost not say it. For when a body is moved in time, I can measure it as long as it is moved, from the instant that it began to be moved until it ceases. And if I did not see the point at which it began, and it continued to move so that I cannot see when it stops, I cannot measure it, except perhaps from the point when I begin to see it until I stop. And if I see it for a long time, I can express the fact that it is a long time but not exactly how long; for when we say how much, we say it by means of a comparison—for instance: "This is just as much as that," or "This is twice that," or anything else in the same way. But if we could note the places in space whence and whither the body comes as it is moving, or its parts if it is turning, as though on a lathe, we could say how great the time is in which the movement of a body or its part from one place to another is accomplished.