INFINITY AND CONTINUITY, IN GENERAL
Most of the mathematicians who during the last two generations have treated the differential calculus have been of the opinion that an infinitesimal quantity is an absurdity; although, with their habitual caution, they have often added "or, at any rate, the conception of an infinitesimal is so difficult, that we practically cannot reason about it with confidence and security." Accordingly, the doctrine of limits has been invented to evade the difficulty, or, as some say, to explain the signification of the word "infinitesimal." This doctrine, in one form or another, is taught in all the text-books, though in some of them only as an alternative view of the matter; it answers well enough the purposes of calculation, though even in that application it has its difficulties.
The illumination of the subject by a strict notation for the logic of relatives had shown me clearly and evidently that the idea of an infinitesimal involves no contradiction, before I became acquainted with the writings of Dr. Georg Cantor (though many of these had already appeared in the Mathematische Annalen and in Borchardt's Journal, if not yet in the Acta Mathematica, all mathematical journals of the first distinction), in which the same view is defended with extraordinary genius and penetrating logic.
The prevalent opinion is that finite numbers are the only ones that we can reason about, at least, in any ordinary mode of reasoning, or, as some authors express it, they are the only numbers that can be reasoned about mathematically. But this is an irrational prejudice. I long ago
