[An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. by John Locke]@TWC D-Link bookAn Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. CHAPTER XVII 10/20
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. 13.
No positive Idea of Infinity. Though it be hard, I think, to find anyone so absurd as to say he has the POSITIVE idea of an actual infinite number;--the infinity whereof lies only in a power still of adding any combination of units to any former number, and that as long and as much as one will; the like also being in the infinity of space and duration, which power leaves always to the mind room for endless additions;--yet there be those who imagine they have positive ideas of infinite duration and space.
It would, I think, be enough to destroy any such positive idea of infinite, to ask him that has it,--whether he could add to it or no; which would easily show the mistake of such a positive idea.
We can, I think, have no positive idea of any space or duration which is not made up of, and commensurate to, repeated numbers of feet or yards, or days and years; which are the common measures, whereof we have the ideas in our minds, and whereby we judge of the greatness of this sort of quantities.
And therefore, since an infinite idea of space or duration must needs be made up of infinite parts, it can have no other infinity than that of number CAPABLE still of further addition; but not an actual positive idea of a number infinite.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|