[a] Aristotle’s definition of Time was much discussed by his contemporaries and successors. Both his pupils, Theophrastus and Eudemus, accepted it: but there were many objectors, and the earliest of them notified to us is, Straton of Lampsakus, pupil and successor of Theophrastus. Straton objected on the ground that the definition combined Number and Motion—Discrete Quantity and Continual Quantity—which combination he held to be inadmissible. But this seems no valid objection. Aristotle very properly recognises the two as distinct varieties of Quanta—(see Categor. p. 4, b. 20): but that is no reason why both of them may not be combined in the same complex idea—especially when we see that each of them has its distinct root in different original presentations of our discriminative consciousness.
See Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. IV. Scholia, p. 394, b. 27—47. Brandis.
In a [note] to this chapter of the Analysis (p. 129) attention is called by Mr. James Mill to another important doctrine cited by Harris out of Aristotle—to the relative nature of Time. Can there be any time, apart from the percipient mind? asks Aristotle—since time is the numerable element in motion, and there can be no numeration without a rational mind to number.[b] He does not affirm positively, but he speaks as conceiving number and the numbering mind to be Relatum and Correlatum, so that the former cannot exist without the latter.[c] Both Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius thought so likewise after him: though Boëthius and other commentators dissented from the opinion.[d] Upon this general question of relativity, Aristotle is not always consistent with himself. Though he declares explicitly, that Relata reciprocate in predication, and are implicated each with the other—and though he says that “the Soul is in a certain sense all things” (i.e. is the implied correlate of all our beliefs and disbeliefs, affirmations and negations)—yet in other places, he limits this 141 universal principal by exceptions, which some of his commentators deprecate as inadmissible.[e]—G.
[b] Aristot. Physica. IV. 14, p. 223, a. 26.
[c] So also Hobbes’ First Philosophy, Part II. 7, 3, 5:—”Seeing all men confess a year to be time, and yet do not think a year to be the accident or affection of any body, they must needs confess it to be, not in the things without us, but only in the thought of the mind.” (Here Hobbes goes too far, divesting time of all objective character; instead of considering it as relative to the mind, which implies a subjective and an objective aspect combined. The next passage exhibits this.) “Time is the phantasm of before and after in motion: which agrees with the definition of Aristotle. Time is the number of motion according to former and latter—for that numbering is an act of the mind. To divide Space or Time, is nothing else but to consider one and another within the same—division is not made by the operation of the hands, but of the mind.”
[d] Themistius ad Aristot. Physic. IV. p. 337, in Spengel’s edition of Themistius—partly extracted by Brandis in Scholia to Aristotle, p. 393, b. 27.
[e] Aristot. Categor., c. 7, p. 6, a. 37, b. 28; p. 7, b. 23. Scholia ad Categor., p. 65, b. 10—20. Brandis.
Aristot. de Animâ, III., 8, 431, b. 21, ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστι πάντα· ἢ γὰρ αἰσθητὰ τὰ ὄντα ἢ νοητὰ, ἔστι δ’ ἡ ἐπιστήμη μὲν τὰ ἐπιστητά πως, ἡ δ’ αἴσθησις τὰ αἰσθητά.