e mind to take in, as if
from afar and at one glance, a distinct conception of the _individual_
Universe--it is clear that a descent to small from great--to the outskirts
from the centre (if we could establish a centre)--to the end from the
beginning (if we could fancy a beginning) would be the preferable
course, but for the difficulty, if not impossibility, of presenting, in
this course, to the unastronomical, a picture at all comprehensible in
regard to such considerations as are involved in _quantity_--that is to
say, in number, magnitude and distance.

Now, distinctness--intelligibility, at all points, is a primary feature
in my general design. On important topics it is better to be a good deal
prolix than even a very little obscure. But abstruseness is a quality
appertaining to no subject _per se_. All are alike, in facility of
comprehension, to him who approaches them by properly graduated steps.
It is merely because a stepping-stone, here and there, is heedlessly
left unsupplied in our road to the Differential Calculus, that this
latter is not altogether as simple a thing as a sonnet by Mr. Solomon
Seesaw.

By way of admitting, then, no _chance_ for misapprehension, I think it
advisable to proceed as if even the more obvious facts of Astronomy were
unknown to the reader. In combining the two modes of discussion to which
I have referred, I propose to avail myself of the advantages peculiar to
each--and very especially of the _iteration in detail_ which will be
unavoidable as a consequence of the plan. Commencing with a descent, I
shall reserve for the return upwards those indispensable considerations
of _quantity_ to which allusion has already been made.

Let us begin, then, at once, with that merest of words, "Infinity."
This, like "God," "spirit," and some other expressions of which the
equivalents exist in all languages, is by no means the expression of an
idea--but of an effort at one. It stands for the possible attempt at an
impossible conception. Man needed a term by which to point out the
_direction_ of this effort--the cloud behind which lay, forever
invisible, the _object_ of this attempt. A word, in fine, was demanded,
by means of which one human being might put himself in relation at once
with another human being and with a certain _tendency_ of the human
intellect. Out of this demand arose the word, "Infinity;" which is thus
the representative but of the _thought of a thought_.

As regards _that_ i