A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and EssaysBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought
Regarding extension as quality of mode of substance, and
not as substance itself, it appears absurd to argue that the quality
exists otherwise than as quality of mode.
The whole of the propositions following the first are so built upon
it, that if it fails they are baseless. The second proposition is, that
infinity of extension is necessarily indivisible. In dealing with
this proposition, Mr. Gillespie talks of the _parts_ of infinity of
extension, and winds up by saying that he means parts in the sense of
partial consideration only. Now not only is it denied that you can have
any idea of infinity of extension, but it is also denied that infinity
can be the subject of partial consideration. Mr. Gillespie's whole proof
of this proposition is intended to affirm that the parts of infinity of
extension are necessarily indivisible from each other.
I have already denied the possibility of conceiving infinity in parts;
and, indeed, if it were possible to conceive infinity in parts, then
that infinity could not be indivisible, for Mr. Gillespie says that, by
indivisible, he means indivisible, either really or mentally. Now
each part of anything conceived is, in the act of conceiving, mentally
separated from, either other parts of, or from the remainder of, the
whole of which it is part. It is clearly impossible to have a partial
consideration of infinity, because the part considered must be mentally
distinguished from the unconsidered remainder, and, in that case, you
have, in thought, the part considered finite, and the residue certainly
limited, at least, by the extent of the part under consideration.
If any of the foregoing objections are well-founded, they are fatal to
Mr. Gillespie's argument.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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