TIME, THE NUMBER OF MOVEMENT 301 



without someone numbering we must look to the Aristotelian 

 concept of number: 



All plurality is a consequence of division. Now division is twofold: 

 one is material, and is division of the continuous; from this results 

 number, which is a species of quantity .-'^ 



Number is quantity resulting from division in matter; plur- 

 ality, discreteness. The plurality in movement, which is time, is 

 produced by the present instant actually dividing the move- 

 ment according to a before and after — into the past and future 

 which are its parts. This instant in dividing is always " other " 

 according to the succession of time and movement. 



Time is not number with which we count, but the number of things 

 which are counted, and this according as it occurs before or after 

 is always different, for the ' nows ' are different.-^ 



From this otherness there results plurality which is time and 

 this plurality is present whether or not there is soul to count it. 



The nunc, the instant which divides, is something other than 

 the factum esse of movement, — that successive actualization of 

 potency which is movement; yet to each factum esse there is a 

 corresponding nunc. Plato's error was to identify the two. 



One might ask how, if time is continuous quantity it can be 

 defined as number, which is discrete quantity."" In its formality 

 it is discrete, it is the " now " dividing and in so far as it is 

 dividing the " now " is always different. Yet the " now " is 

 also a boundary — the termination of the past and the principle 

 of the future and thus realizes the definition of a continuum. 

 According to Aristotle: "... the now also is in one way a 

 potential dividing of time, in another the termination of both 

 parts, and their unity." ^^ 



Like movement, time has a fluid existence; only the instant, 

 the division of time, actually exists. Thus Aristotle says of it 



^°St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., I, q. 30, a. 3. 

 ^^ Aristotle, op. cit., IV, c. 12, 220b8-10. 

 ^^ Ibid. 

 ^^Ihid., IV, c. 12, 222al7-19. 



