Short Fragments and Testimonia from Uncertain Works 89
and yielding of the other. Those which are not inseparable from that of
which they are the accidents are, for example, motion and rest. 223. For
compound bodies are neither in perpetual motion without opportunity
for rest, nor are they perpetually in a state of not moving; rather, they
sometimes have motion as an accident and sometimes rest. By contrast,
the atom, when it is on its own, is in perpetual motion. For [while
moving] it must either meet up with void or with a body; but if it meets
with void, it moves through it because of its yielding, and if it meets
with a body, its motion is a rebound away from it as a result of its
resistance. 224. These, then, are the properties which time accompanies,
I mean day and night and hours and feelings and absences of feeling and
motion and rest. For day and night are properties of the surrounding
air, day occurring when the sun illuminates it and night coming along
when it is deprived of the sun's light. 225. An hour is a part of either a
day or a night, and so again is a property of the air, just as day and night
are. And time is co-extensive with every day and every night and hour,
which is why night and day are said to be long or short, our reference
being to the time which is an accident of [each of] these. And the feelings
and absences of feeling are either [states of] pleasure or pain, which is
why they are not substances but rather properties of those who have a
pleasant or painful experience; but properties are not without [reference
to] time. 226. In addition, motion too and rest as well are, as we have
already established, properties of bodies and are not separable from time.
For we measure by time the speed or slowness of motion, and again the
greater or lesser extent of a period of rest. 227. But from all this it is
evident that Epicurus thinks that time is an incorporeal, though not in
the same sense as the Stoics do. For they, as we have said, posited that
time is an incorporeal which is conceived of all by itself, while Epicurus
thinks that it is an accident of certain things.
Simplicius Commentary on Aristotle's Physics
203b15 CIAG 9.466, 31-467.4 (297 U)[1-90]There is a fourth point which is hard to stare down: the fact that
everything which is limited seems to be limited by something. For if
everything which is limited is limited by something which is external to
itself, then that external thing by which it is limited is itself either
unlimited or limited. And if it is unlimited, then we immediately have
[the conclusion] that the unlimited exists. And if it is limited, for example,
the earth, then this too is limited by something else, and so on without
limit. And if it goes on without limit, the unlimited exists. For one will
never get one's hands on the final limit, if indeed this too is limited by