in seemingly equidistant spaces of duration, if
constant and universally observable, would have as well distinguished
the intervals of time, as those that have been made use of. For,
supposing the sun, which some have taken to be a fire, had been lighted
up at the same distance of time that it now every day comes about to the
same meridian, and then gone out again about twelve hours after, and
that in the space of an annual revolution it had sensibly increased in
brightness and heat, and so decreased again,--would not such regular
appearances serve to measure out the distances of duration to all that
could observe it, as well without as with motion? For if the appearances
were constant, universally observable, in equidistant periods, they
would serve mankind for measure of time as well were the motion away.

20. But not by their Motion, but periodical Appearances.

For the freezing of water, or the blowing of a plant, returning at
equidistant periods in all parts of the earth, would as well serve men
to reckon their years by, as the motions of the sun: and in effect we
see, that some people in America counted their years by the coming of
certain birds amongst them at their certain seasons, and leaving them at
others. For a fit of an ague; the sense of hunger or thirst; a smell or
a taste; or any other idea returning constantly at equidistant periods,
and making itself universally be taken notice of, would not fail to
measure out the course of succession, and distinguish the distances of
time. Thus we see that men born blind count time well enough by years,
whose revolutions yet they cannot distinguish by motions that they
perceive not. And I ask whether a blind man, who distinguished his years
either by the heat of summer, or cold of winter; by the smell of any
flower of the spring, or taste of any fruit of the autumn, would not
have a better measure of time than the Romans had before the reformation
of their calendar by Julius Caesar, or many other people, whose years,
notwithstanding the motion of the sun, which they pretended to make use
of, are very irregular? And it adds no small difficulty to chronology,
that the exact lengths of the years that several nations counted by, are
hard to be known, they differing very much one from another, and I think
I may say all of them from the precise motion of the sun. And if the sun
moved from the creation to the flood constantly in the equator, and so
equally dispersed its l