Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/212

CONCEIVABILITY AND THE INFINITE. 201 To the objection which may be made to my classing the notion of this or that particular infinite line with the con- cept or general notion, on the ground that the individual or the intuition is something quite different and distinct from the concept, I answer that the notion of any particular infinite line is not a complete intuition, in that one of the elements of the intuition is eliminated by abstraction ; and that when, in the formation of any concept, we fix the attention upon certain elements of an intuition to the ex- clusion of others, we have in mind, so to speak, a constituent part of an intuition : the fact that we recognise its similarity or sameness with parts of other intuitions does not alter the individual character of the elements which we actually have in mind. The operation of forming a concept and the operation of conceiving an infinite line are in nature identical. It seems impossible that any one, having reflected upon the fact of his constantly grasping in concepts elements which can yet not be separately imagined, and having, after an analysis of what is in his mind when he calls up the notion of an infinite, discerned the identity of the latter operation with the former, it seems impossible that such an one should hold infinite space or infinite time to be incon- ceivable. If, however, he should still object that, even if it be true that we can grasp in thought the notion of pro- gression, and the notion of a line in general, this will give us no knowledge of an infinite line, but will give us only the elements of an incomplete image, which cannot be called distinctly before consciousness, and, therefore, cannot be known as an object at all ; we may answer that, if he feel himself aggrieved because he cannot represent to himself, endowed with all the qualities necessary to an object of the imagination, that which he has already defined as wanting some of those qualities, he must also be unreasonable enough to think it ground for complaint that he cannot in thought make parallel lines meet, or imagine a triangle with four sides. The word ' infinite ' means devoid of limits, and it necessarily follows that an infinite line cannot be known as. a quantity, consequently not as a whole. Every object which is seen or imagined has necessarily limits, definite or inde- finite : an infinite line, as infinite, cannot become an object of the imagination. But from this it by no means follows what Hume was pleased to call a " distinction of reason," and at least the former be held in the attention abstracted from the latter. Whether the latter were wholly eliminated or only subordinated, the complex mental state would still be quite different from that in which the elements have the relative prominence usual in our ordinary experience of objects. 14