For, when we would consider eternity, a parte
ante, what do we but, beginning from ourselves and the present time we
are in, repeat in our minds the ideas of years, or ages, or any
other assignable portion of duration past, with a prospect of
proceeding in such addition with all the infinity of number: and
when we would consider eternity, a parte post, we just after the
same rate begin from ourselves, and reckon by multiplied periods yet
to come, still extending that line of number as before. And these
two being put together, are that infinite duration we call Eternity:
which, as we turn our view either way, forwards or backwards,
appears infinite, because we still turn that way the infinite end of
number, i.e. the power still of adding more.
11. How we conceive the infinity of space. The same happens also
in space, wherein, conceiving ourselves to be, as it were, in the
centre, we do on all sides pursue those indeterminable lines of
number; and reckoning any way from ourselves, a yard, mile, diameter
of the earth, or orbis magnus,- by the infinity of number, we add
others to them, as often as we will. And having no more reason to
set bounds to those repeated ideas than we have to set bounds to
number, we have that indeterminable idea of immensity.
12. Infinite divisibility. And since in any bulk of matter our
thoughts can never arrive at the utmost divisibility, therefore
there is an apparent infinity to us also in that, which has the
infinity also of number; but with this difference,- that, in the
former considerations of the infinity of space and duration, we only
use addition of numbers; whereas this is like the division of an
unit into its fractions, wherein the mind also can proceed in
infinitum, as well as in the former additions; it being indeed but the
addition still of new numbers: though in the addition of the one, we
can have no more the positive idea of a space infinitely great,
than, in the division of the other, we can have the [positive] idea of
a body infinitely little;- our idea of infinity being, as I may say, a
growing or fugitive idea, still in a boundless progression, that can
stop nowhere.
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