265. The essence of his doctrine is contained in the following passages: ‘’Tis certain that the imagination reaches a _minimum_, and may raise up to itself an idea, of which it cannot conceive any subdivision, and which cannot be diminished without a total annihilation. When you tell me of the thousandth and ten thousandth part of a grain of sand, I have a distinct idea of these numbers and of their several proportions, but the images which I form in my mind to represent the things themselves are nothing different from each other nor inferior to that image by which I represent the grain of sand itself, which is supposed so vastly to exceed them. What consists of parts is distinguishable into them, and what is distinguishable is separable. But whatever we may imagine of the thing, the idea of a grain of sand is not distinguishable nor separable into twenty, much less into a thousand, ten thousand, or an infinite number of different ideas. ’Tis the same case with the impressions of the senses as with the ideas of the imagination. Put a spot of ink upon paper, fix your eye upon that spot, and retire to such a distance that at last you lose sight of it; ’tis plain that the moment before it vanished the image or impression was perfectly indivisible. ’Tis not for want of rays of light striking on our eyes that the minute parts of distant bodies convey not any sensible impression; but because they are removed beyond that distance at which their impressions were reduced to a _minimum_, and were incapable of any further diminution. A microscope or telescope, which renders them visible, produces not any new rays of light, but only spreads those which always flowed from them; and by that means both gives parts to impressions, which to the naked eye appear simple and uncompounded, and advances to a minimum what was formerly imperceptible.’ [1] [1] P. 335, Part II. § 1. Yet it is admitted that there is an idea of number not made up of impressions. A finite division into impressions no more possible than an infinite one.