All our positive ideas of any
quantity, whether great or little, have always bounds, though our
comparative idea, whereby we can always add to the one, and take
from the other, hath no bounds. For that which remains, either great
or little, not being comprehended in that positive idea which we have,
lies in obscurity; and we have no other idea of it, but of the power
of enlarging the one and diminishing the other, without ceasing. A
pestle and mortar will as soon bring any particle of matter to
indivisibility, as the acutest thought of a mathematician; and a
surveyor may as soon with his chain measure out infinite space, as a
philosopher by the quickest flight of mind reach it, or by thinking
comprehend it; which is to have a positive idea of it. He that
thinks on a cube of an inch diameter, has a clear and positive idea of
it in his mind, and so can frame one of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and so on, till
he has the idea in his thoughts of something very little; but yet
reaches not the idea of that incomprehensible littleness which
division can produce. What remains of smallness is as far from his
thoughts as when he first began; and therefore he never comes at all
to have a clear and positive idea of that smallness which is
consequent to infinite divisibility.
19. What is positive, what negative, in our idea of infinite.
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