An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
anywhere a stop to a further addition or progression: and so those
ideas ALONE lead our minds towards the thought of infinity.
7. Difference between infinity of Space, and Space infinite.
Though our idea of infinity arise from the contemplation of quantity,
and the endless increase the mind is able to make in quantity, by the
repeated additions of what portions thereof it pleases; yet I guess we
cause great confusion in our thoughts, when we join infinity to any
supposed idea of quantity the mind can be thought to have, and so
discourse or reason about an infinite quantity, as an infinite space,
or an infinite duration. For, as our idea of infinity being, as I
think, AN ENDLESS GROWING IDEA, but the idea of any quantity the mind
has, being at that time TERMINATED in that idea, (for be it as great as
it will, it can be no greater than it is,)—to join infinity to it, is
to adjust a standing measure to a growing bulk; and therefore I think
it is not an insignificant subtilty, if I say, that we are carefully to
distinguish between the idea of the infinity of space, and the idea of
a space infinite. The first is nothing but a supposed endless
progression of the mind, over what repeated ideas of space it pleases;
but to have actually in the mind the idea of a space infinite, is to
suppose the mind already passed over, and actually to have a view of
ALL those repeated ideas of space which an ENDLESS repetition can never
totally represent to it; which carries in it a plain contradiction.
8. We have no Idea of infinite Space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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