916.

The Da Vinci Notebooks at sacred-texts.com

916.

Of time and its divisions (916-918).Although time is included in the class of Continuous Quantities, being indivisible and immaterial, it does not come entirely under the head of Geometry, which represents its divisions by means of figures and bodies of infinite variety, such as are seen to be continuous in their visible and material properties. But only with its first principles does it agree, that is with the Point and the Line; the point may be compared to an instant of time, and the line may be likened to the length of a certain quantity of time, and just as a line begins and terminates in a point, so such a space of time. begins and terminates in an instant. And whereas a line is infinitely divisible, the divisibility of a space of time is of the same nature; and as the divisions of the line may bear a certain proportion to each other, so may the divisions of time.

 ⁴⁹²

Footnotes

171:492 : This passage is repeated word for word on page 190b of the same manuscript and this is accounted for by the text in Vol. I, No. 4. Compare also No. 1216.