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CHAPTER  XXXIL

ON THE NOTIONS OF DURATION AND TIME IN GENERAL,
AND ON THE CREATION OF THE WORLD AND ITS
DESTRUCTION.

According to the relation of Muhammad Ibn Zaka- Ontheno-

AAiA           1                                •               1-1                           PI       ^^'^^^ "^ time

riyya Alrazi, the most ancient philosophers of the according to
Greeks thought that the following five things existed other pMio-
from all eternity, the creator, the universal soul, the first
vX.r], space in the abstract, and time in the abstract.. On
these things Alrazi has founded that theory of his,
which is at the bottom of his whole philosophy.
Further, he distinguishes between time and duration
in so far as number applies to the former, not to the
latter ; for a thing which can be numbered is finite,
whilst duration is infinite. Similarly, philosophers
have explained time as duration with a beginning and
an end, and eternity as duration without beginning and
end.

According to Alrazi, those five things are necessary
postulates of the actually existing world. For that
which the senses perceive in it is the vA^j acquiring
shape by means of combination. Besides, the vXrj
occupies some place, and therefore we must admit the
existence of space. The changes apparent in the world
of sense compel us to assume the existence of time, for
some of them are earlier, others later, and the before
and the afterwards, the earlier and the later, and the
simultaneous can only be perceived by means of the