21. Supposed positive ideas of infinity, cause of mistakes.
But yet if after all this, there be men who persuade
themselves that they have clear positive comprehensive ideas of infinity, it is fit they enjoy their privilege: and I
should be very glad (with some others that I know, who acknowledge they have none such) to be better informed
by their communication. For I have been hitherto apt to think that the great and inextricable difficulties which
perpetually involve all discourses concerning infinity,--whether of space, duration, or divisibility, have been the
certain marks of a defect in our ideas of infinity, and the disproportion the nature thereof has to the
comprehension of our narrow capacities. For, whilst men talk and dispute of infinite space or duration, as if they
had as complete and positive ideas of them as they have of the names they use for them, or as they have of a yard,
or an hour, or any other determinate quantity; it is no wonder if the incomprehensible nature of the thing they
discourse of, or reason about, leads them into perplexities and contradictions, and their minds be overlaid by an
object too large and mighty to be surveyed and managed by them.
