Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.
Infinity
The infinite distance between the Creator and the noblest of all creatures can never he measured, nor exhausted by endless addition of finite degrees.
Richard Bentley.
It is as impossible for an aggregation of finites to comprehend or exhaust one infinite as it is for the greater number of mathematic points to amount to or constitute a body.Robert Boyle.
He that thinks he has a positive idea of infinite space will find that he can no more have a positive idea of the greatest than he has of the least space; for in this latter we are capable only of a comparative idea of smallness, which will always be less than any one whereof we have the positive idea.
When the mind pursues the idea of infinity, it uses the ideas and repetition of numbers, which are so many distinct ideas, kept beset by number from running into a confused heap, wherein the mind loses itself.
Collect into one sum as great a number as you please, this multitude, how great soever, lessens not one jot of the power of adding to it, or brings him any nearer the end of the inexhaustible stock of number.
What lies beyond our positive idea towards infinity lies in obscurity, and has the undeterminate confusion of a negative idea.
These men are of the mind that they have clearer ideas of infinite duration than of infinite space, because God has existed from all eternity; but there is no real matter co-extended with infinite space.
