that is more uncommon, and may therefore perhaps be more entertaining.

I have before shown how the unemployed parts of life appear long and tedious, and shall here endeavour to show how those parts of life which are exercised in study, reading, and the pursuits of knowledge, are long but not tedious; and by that means discover a method of lengthening our lives, and at the same time of turning all the parts of them to our advantage.

Mr. Locke observes that 'we get the idea of time, or duration, by reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one another in our minds: that for this reason, when we sleep soundly without dreaming, we have no perception of time, or the length of it, whilst we sleep; and that the moment wherein we leave off to think, till the moment we begin to think again, seem to have no distance.' To which the author adds: 'And so, I doubt not, but it would be to a waking man, if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his mind, without variation, and the succession of others: and we see, that one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take but little notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his mind whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets slip out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks that time shorter than it is.'

We might carry this thought further, and consider a man as, on one side, shortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a few things; so, on the other, as lengthening it by employing his thoughts on many subjects, or by entertaining a quick and constant succession of ideas. Accordingly Monsieur 1 Essay on the Human Understanding,' Book ii. chap. 14.

Mallebranche, in his 'Enquiry after Truth" (which was published several years before Mr. Locke's 'Essay on Human Understanding '), tells us that it is possible some creatures may think half-an-hour as long as we do a thousand years; or look upon that space of duration which we call a minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or an whole age.

This notion of Monsieur Mallebranche is capable of some little explanation from what I have quoted out of Mr. Locke; for if our notion of time is produced by our reflecting on the succession of ideas in our mind, and this succession may be infinitely accelerated or retarded, it will follow that different beings may have different notions of the same parts of duration, according as their ideas, which we suppose are equally distinct in each of them, follow one another in a greater or less degree of rapidity.

There is a famous passage in the Alcoran,2 which looks as if Mahomet had been possessed of the notion we are now speaking of. It is there said that the angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a distinct view of; and after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. 'All this,' says the Alcoran, was transacted in so small a space of time that Mahomet, at his return, found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher (which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel carried him away) before the water was all spilt.'

1 Two translations of Mallebranche's Search after Truth' appeared in 1694.

2 Koran,' sura 17. Addison, however, is here borrowing, not from the Koran,' but from the Turkish Tales' (1708).

There is a very pretty story in the Turkish Tales' which relates to this passage of that famous impostor, and bears some affinity to the subject we are now upon. A Sultan of Egypt, who was an infidel, used to laugh at this circumstance in Mahomet's life, as what was altogether impossible and absurd : but conversing one day with a great doctor in the law, who had the gift of working miracles, the doctor told him he would quickly convince him of the truth of this passage in the history of Mahomet, if he would consent to do what he should desire of him. Upon this the Sultan was directed to place himself by an huge tub of water, which he did accordingly; and as he stood by the tub amidst a circle of his great men, the holy man bade him plunge his head into the water, and draw it up again. The king accordingly thrust his head into the water, and at the same time found himself at the foot of a mountain on a sea-shore. The king immediately began to rage against his doctor for this piece of treachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to be angry, he set himself to think on proper methods for getting a livelihood in this strange country: accordingly he applied himself to some people whom he saw at work in a neighbouring wood; these people conducted him to a town that stood at a little distance from the wood, where after some adventures he married a woman of great beauty and fortune. He lived with this woman so long till he had by her seven sons and seven daughters. He was afterwards reduced to great want, and forced to think of plying in the streets as a porter for his livelihood. One day as he was walking alone by the sea-side, being seized with many melancholy reflections upon his former

with the third method, which I shall propose in another paper, for the employment of our dead inactive hours, and which I shall only mention in general to be the pursuit of knowledge.

No. 94. Monday, June 18, 1711

-Hoc est

Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.

L.

[ADDISON.

-MART., Epig. xxiii. 10.

HE last method which I proposed in Satur

my

T day's paper, for filling up those empty spaces TH

of life which are so tedious and burdensome to idle people, is the employing ourselves in the pursuit of knowledge. I remember Mr. Boyle,' speaking of a certain mineral, tells us that a man may consume his whole life in the study of it, without arriving at the knowledge of all its qualities. The truth of it is, there is not a single science, or any branch of it, that might not furnish a man with business for life, though it were much longer than it is.

I shall not here engage on those beaten subjects of the usefulness of knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it gives the mind, nor on the methods of attaining it, nor recommend any particular branch of it, all which have been the topics of many other writers; but shall indulge myself in a speculation

1 Not of himself, but in The Usefulness of Natural Philosophy,' (Works, ed. 1772, vol. ii. p. 11), Boyle quotes from the old alchemist, Basil Valentine, who said in his Currus Triumphalis Antimonii that the shortness of life makes it impossible for one man thoroughly to learn Antimony, in which every day something of new is discovered' (Morley).

that is more uncommon, and may therefore perhaps be more entertaining.

I have before shown how the unemployed parts of life appear long and tedious, and shall here endeavour to show how those parts of life which are exercised in study, reading, and the pursuits of knowledge, are long but not tedious; and by that means discover a method of lengthening our lives, and at the same time of turning all the parts of them to our advantage.

Mr. Locke observes1 that 'we get the idea of time, or duration, by reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one another in our minds: that for this reason, when we sleep soundly without dreaming, we have no perception of time, or the length of it, whilst we sleep; and that the moment wherein we leave off to think, till the moment we begin to think again, seem to have no distance.' To which the author adds: 'And so, I doubt not, but it would be to a waking man, if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his mind, without variation, and the succession of others: and we see, that one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take but little notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his mind whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets slip out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks that time shorter than it is.'

We might carry this thought further, and consider a man as, on one side, shortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a few things; so, on the other, as lengthening it by employing his thoughts on many subjects, or by entertaining a quick and constant succession of ideas. Accordingly Monsieur 1 Essay on the Human Understanding,' Book ii. chap. 14.