for that which remains either great or little, not being comprehended in that positive idea which Ave 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 our 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 ½, ¼, ⅛ 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.
What is positive, what negative, in our idea of infinite.§ 19. Every one that looks towards infinity does, as I have said, at first glance make some very large idea of that which he applies it to, let it be space or duration; and possibly he wearies his thoughts, by multiplying in his mind that first large idea: but yet by that he comes no nearer to the having a positive clear idea of what remains to make up a positive infinite, than the country-fellow had of the water, which was yet to come and pass the channel of the river where he stood:
Rusticus expectat dum transeat amnis, at ille
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.
Some think they have a positive idea of eternity, and not of infinite space.§ 20. There are some I have met with, that put so much difference between infinite duration and infinite space, that they persuade themselves that they have a positive idea of eternity; but that they
