180. As with vacuum, so with infinite divisibility. Once let it be understood that extension is constituted by the relation of externality between homogeneous parts, and it follows that there can be no _least_ part of extension, none that does not itself consist of parts; in other words, that it is infinitely divisible: just as conversely it follows that there can be no _last_ part of it, not having another outside it; in other words, that (to use Locke’s phrase) it is infinitely addible. Doubtless, as Berkeley held, there is a ‘minimum visibile’; but this means that there are conditions under which any seen colour disappears, and disappearing, ceases to be known under the relation of extension; but it is only through a confusion of the relation with the colour that the disappearance of the latter is thought to be a disappearance of so much extension. [1] It was, in short, the same failure to recognise the true ideality of space, as a relation constituted by thought, that on the one hand made its ‘purity’ and infinity unmeaning to Berkeley, and on the other made him think that, if pure (_sc_. irreducible to feelings) and infinite, it must limit the Divine perfection, either as being itself God or as ‘something beside God which is eternal, uncreated, and infinite’ (‘Principles of Human Knowledge,’ sec. 117). Fear of this result set him upon that method of resolving space, and with it the world of nature, into sequent feelings, which, if it had been really susceptible of logical expression, would at best have given him nothing but a μέγα ζῶον [2] for God. If he had been in less of a hurry with his philosophy, he might have found that the current tendency to ‘bind God in nature or diffuse in space’ required to be met by a sounder than his boyish idealism--by an idealism which gives space its due, but reflects that to make space God, or a limitation on God, is to subject thought itself to the most superficial of the relations by which it forms the world that it knows. [1] The same remark of course applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to the ‘minimum tangibile.’ See below, paragraphs 265 and 260. [2] [Greek μέγα ζῶον (mega zoon) = great being. Tr.] How he deals with possibility of general knowledge.