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The survival of initial material means that the sign continues to exist over time, but permits alterations in meaning. Language exists because of the “speaking masses”. It is intimately linked to the social mass, which is “naturally inert”, and thus acts as a powerful conservatory factor (de Saussure 1995a, p. 112). The idea of permanence is thus linked to the notion of inertia, one of the fundamental principles of 19th-century mechanics, in which it was used to denote “a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line […]” (Concise OED, 2008, p. 727).

Using the notion of continuity, time is seen as duration – durée – that is, as something which runs between two defined limits. The French verb durer, to last, also implies continuation with the same qualities (Larousse 1922, p. 695). A form of analogy seems to have appeared between the terms dur, dureté (hard, hardness) and durée, duration, from an early date; after all, the words share the same Latin rootssss1. The Latin verb durare, initially meaning “to harden, to fortify”, also took on a temporal sense in ancient times. Lucretius used the word to suggest that the body could not survive for longer than the soul after death. Tacitus used it to report facts that he had been unable to verify personally, but which had been established by authors who themselves were still alive at the time of the historian’s youth (Gaffiot 1981, pp. 565–566).