The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

time is
by the longer), and if the ‘now’ which is not, but formerly was,
must have ceased-to-be at some time, the ‘nows’ too cannot be
simultaneous with one another, but the prior ‘now’ must always have
ceased-to-be. But the prior ‘now’ cannot have ceased-to-be in
itself (since it then existed); yet it cannot have ceased-to-be in
another ‘now’. For we may lay it down that one ‘now’ cannot be next
to another, any more than point to point. If then it did not
cease-to-be in the next ‘now’ but in another, it would exist
simultaneously with the innumerable ‘nows’ between the two-which is
impossible.
    Yes, but (2) neither is it possible for the ‘now’ to remain
always the same. No determinate divisible thing has a single
termination, whether it is continuously extended in one or in more
than one dimension: but the ‘now’ is a termination, and it is
possible to cut off a determinate time. Further, if coincidence in
time (i.e. being neither prior nor posterior) means to be ‘in one
and the same “now”’, then, if both what is before and what is after
are in this same ‘now’, things which happened ten thousand years
ago would be simultaneous with what has happened to-day, and
nothing would be before or after anything else.
    This may serve as a statement of the difficulties about the
attributes of time.
    As to what time is or what is its nature, the traditional
accounts give us as little light as the preliminary problems which
we have worked through.
    Some assert that it is (1) the movement of the whole, others
that it is (2) the sphere itself.
    (1) Yet part, too, of the revolution is a time, but it certainly
is not a revolution: for what is taken is part of a revolution, not
a revolution. Besides, if there were more heavens than one, the
movement of any of them equally would be time, so that there would
be many times at the same time.
    (2) Those who said that time is the sphere of the whole thought
so, no doubt, on the ground that all things are in time and all
things are in the sphere of the whole. The view is too naive for it
to be worth while to consider the impossibilities implied in
it.
    But as time is most usually supposed to be (3) motion and a kind
of change, we must consider this view.
    Now (a) the change or movement of each thing is only in the
thing which changes or where the thing itself which moves or
changes may chance to be. But time is present equally everywhere
and with all things.
    Again, (b) change is always faster or slower, whereas time is
not: for ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ are defined by time-’fast’ is what moves
much in a short time, ‘slow’ what moves little in a long time; but
time is not defined by time, by being either a certain amount or a
certain kind of it.
    Clearly then it is not movement. (We need not distinguish at
present between ‘movement’ and ‘change’.)
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11
    But neither does time exist without change; for when the state
of our own minds does not change at all, or we have not noticed its
changing, we do not realize that time has elapsed, any more than
those who are fabled to sleep among the heroes in Sardinia do when
they are awakened; for they connect the earlier ‘now’ with the
later and make them one, cutting out the interval because of their
failure to notice it. So, just as, if the ‘now’ were not different
but one and the same, there would not have been time, so too when
its difference escapes our notice the interval does not seem to be
time. If, then, the non-realization of the existence of time
happens to us when we do not distinguish any change, but the soul
seems to stay in one indivisible state, and when we perceive and
distinguish we say time has elapsed, evidently time is not
independent of movement and change. It is evident, then, that time
is neither movement nor independent of movement.
    We must take this as our starting-point and try to
discover-since we wish to know what time is-what exactly it has to
do with movement.
    Now we perceive movement and time together: for even when it is
dark and we are not being affected through the body, if any
movement takes place in the mind we at once suppose that some time
also has elapsed; and not only that but also, when some time is
thought to have passed, some movement also along with it seems to
have taken place. Hence time is either movement or something that
belongs to movement. Since then it is not movement, it must