from what has been said it is evident that the maximum consists in the minimum and the minimum in the maximum, as in the many is the one, in the one the many. Yet reason and nature may more readily separate the minimum from the maximum than the maximum from the minimum. Therefore the immeasurable universe is nothing but centre everywhere; eternity nothing but a moment always; immeasurable body an atom; immeasurable plane a point; immeasurable space the receptacle of a point or atom."[415] The chief source of error on the part of the Peripatetics was their failure to distinguish between the minimum as a part, and the minimum a _terminus_ or limit. Hence their idea that no combination of physical minima would give a magnitude, since two or more would touch one another with their whole surface, _i.e._ would coincide:--otherwise the minimum would have parts, a part of each touching the other, and a part not touching. On their theory it would follow that magnitudes do not consist of parts, or at least not of elementary parts. This is inconsistent with nature, for existing magnitudes must have been built up out of nature's elements, and with art, for art can measure only on the assumption of first parts. It is true that what is posited as first part in one operation may be the last result in another, for the _minimum_, as we have seen, is a relative conception, but _some_ first part is always assumed in any operation. And as the operation of art is not infinite, so neither is there infinite subordination of parts.[416] When two minima touch one another, they do not do so with their whole body, _or any part of it_, but one with its terminus or limit may touch several others; no body touches another with the whole of itself or a part, but with either the whole or the part of its _limiting_ surface. The _terminus_ of a thing is therefore no part of it, and by implication not a minimal part. Hence there are two kinds of _minima_ concerned--that of the touching body, or part, and the minimum of that by which the contact is effected, the _terminus_.[417] The atom, which is the minimal sphere, touches in the absolutely minimal point, the smallest _terminus_. Other spheres do not touch in a point simply, but in more than one, or in a plane circle.[418] By adding limit to limit we never obtain a magnitude; the _terminus_ is no part, and therefore if in contact it would touch with its whole self, so that magnitude is not made up of _termini_, whether points, atoms, lines, or surfaces which are termini; and this was the false ground on which the Aristotelians denied the possibility of the atom. It remained to ask if the _termini_ were infinite, since the atoms were not; but it was clear that their number was determined by that of the atoms. For two limits do not touch one another:--"They do not cohere or make a _quantum_, but through them others in contact with one another make a _contiguum_ or _continuum_."[419] It may be added that if the parts of a divisible