And hence it is that in disputes and reasonings concerning eternity,
or any other infinite, we are very apt to blunder, and involve
ourselves in manifest absurdities.
16. Infinite divisibility of matter. In matter, we have no clear
ideas of the smallness of parts much beyond the smallest that occur to
any of our senses: and therefore, when we talk of the divisibility
of matter in infinitum, though we have clear ideas of division and
divisibility, and have also clear ideas of parts made out of a whole
by division; yet we have but very obscure and confused ideas of
corpuscles, or minute bodies, so to be divided, when, by former
divisions, they are reduced to a smallness much exceeding the
perception of any of our senses; and so all that we have clear and
distinct ideas of is of what division in general or abstractedly is,
and the relation of totum and pars: but of the bulk of the body, to be
thus infinitely divided after certain progressions, I think, we have
no clear nor distinct idea at all. For I ask any one, whether,
taking the smallest atom of dust he ever saw, he has any distinct idea
(bating still the number, which concerns not extension) betwixt the
1,000,000th and the 1,000,000,000th part of it. Or if he think he
can refine his ideas to that degree, without losing sight of them, let
him add ten cyphers to each of those numbers.
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