19. What is positive, what negative, in our idea of infinite.
Every one that looks towards infinity does, as I have
said, at first glance make some very large idea of that which he applies it to, let it be space or duration; and
possibly he wearies his thoughts, by multiplying in his mind that first large idea: but yet by that he comes no
nearer to the having a positive clear idea of what remains to make up a positive infinite, than the country fellow
had of the water which was yet to come, and pass the channel of the river where he stood:
Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum.
