TIME, THE NUMBER OF MOVEMENT 299 



to mind numbering. He therefore concluded that time is a 

 being of reason and not of nature/^ 



Averroes (1126-1198 A.D.) , following the Arabic version of 

 Aristotle referred to in the beginning of this article, considered 

 that the prior and posterior in the definition of Aristotle exist 

 only potentially if there is no soul. They are actual if there is 

 a soul. If numbered in act there is time in act but, if there is 

 no soul, time is only potential. Time has no " to be " in nature 

 except in potency. Time is in act only in the operation of the 

 mind numbering, whence there is no time formally except in 

 so far as the mind numbers according to a prior and posterior. 

 This distinction was followed by all the Averroists from the 

 thirteenth to the sixteenth century as well as by Saint Thomas 

 in his commentary on Book One and Two of the Seiitences.^^ 



In spite of the almost complete unanimity of his predecessors 

 on this question Saint Albert showed his great originality, in- 

 sisting that the nature of time was something real: ". . . et 

 ideo fluxus ille realis erit realiter tevipus." " In developing his 

 thought St. Albert said that, to number, three things were 

 required: numbered matter, formal number, and the soul effi- 

 ciently (not formally) counting. Even if there is no soul, yet 

 there is number according to formal being and according to 

 numbered number. Now that by which a thing is numbered is 

 twofold: that by which it is numbered efficiently (the soul) and 

 that by which it is numbered formally. As soon as we have 

 multiplicity, discreteness, otherness, we have formal number 

 and so "... if there is no soul number is not just potential, 

 but it exists according to the habitual form of discreteness of 

 numbered things." ^^ Without a doubt St. Albert thought time, 

 the number of motion according to a prior and posterior, existed 

 formally in nature whether or no there was a soul. 



^~ See note 8. 



" St. Thomas, I Sent., dist. 19, q. 2, a. 1; q. 5, a. 1; dist. 37, q. 4, a. 3; II Sent., 

 dist. 12, q. 5, a. 2. 



^* Albertus Magnus, Lib. IV Physicorum, tr. Ill, cap. 16, ed. Borgnet, III, 

 p. S40a. 



^^Ibid., pp. 339b-340a. 



