12. Infinite divisibility.
And since in any bulk of matter our thoughts can never arrive at the utmost divisibility,
therefore there is an apparent infinity to us also in that, which has the infinity also of number; but with this
difference,--that, in the former considerations of the infinity of space and duration, we only use addition of
numbers; whereas this is like the division of an unit into its fractions, wherein the mind also can proceed in
infinitum, as well as in the former additions; it being indeed but the addition still of new numbers: though in the
addition of the one, we can have no more the positive idea of a space infinitely great, than, in the division of the
other, we can have the [positive] idea of a body infinitely little;--our idea of infinity being, as I may say, a
growing or fugitive idea, still in a boundless progression, that can stop nowhere.
