But in other ideas it is not so. For to the
largest idea of extension or duration that I at present have, the
addition of any the least part makes an increase; but to the
perfectest idea I have of the whitest whiteness, if I add another of a
less or equal whiteness, (and of a whiter than I have, I cannot add
the idea), it makes no increase, and enlarges not my idea at all;
and therefore the different ideas of whiteness, &c. are called
degrees. For those ideas that consist of parts are capable of being
augmented by every addition of the least part; but if you take the
idea of white, which one parcel of snow yielded yesterday to our
sight, and another idea of white from another parcel of snow you see
to-day, and put them together in your mind, they embody, as it were,
and run into one, and the idea of whiteness is not at all increased;
and if we add a less degree of whiteness to a greater, we are so far
from increasing, that we diminish it. Those ideas that consist not
of parts cannot be augmented to what proportion men please, or be
stretched beyond what they have received by their senses; but space,
duration, and number, being capable of increase by repetition, leave
in the mind an idea of endless room for more; nor can we conceive
anywhere a stop to a further addition or progression: and so those
ideas alone lead our minds towards the thought of infinity.
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