inity itself_--are plainly engaged in
demonstrating one impossible thing to be possible by showing how it is
that some one other thing--is impossible too. This, it will be said, is
nonsense; and perhaps it is:--indeed I think it very capital
nonsense--but forego all claim to it as nonsense of mine.

The readiest mode, however, of displaying the fallacy of the
philosophical argument on this question, is by simply adverting to a
_fact_ respecting it which has been hitherto quite overlooked--the fact
that the argument alluded to both proves and disproves its own
proposition. "The mind is impelled," say the theologians and others, "to
admit a _First Cause_, by the superior difficulty it experiences in
conceiving cause beyond cause without end." The quibble, as before, lies
in the word "difficulty"--but _here_ what is it employed to sustain? A
First Cause. And what is a First Cause? An ultimate termination of
causes. And what is an ultimate termination of causes? Finity--the
Finite. Thus the one quibble, in two processes, by God knows how many
philosophers, is made to support now Finity and now Infinity--could it
not be brought to support something besides? As for the
quibblers--_they_, at least, are insupportable. But--to dismiss them:--what
they prove in the one case is the identical nothing which they
demonstrate in the other.

Of course, no one will suppose that I here contend for the absolute
impossibility of _that_ which we attempt to convey in the word
"Infinity." My purpose is but to show the folly of endeavoring to prove
Infinity itself or even our conception of it, by any such blundering
ratiocination as that which is ordinarily employed.

Nevertheless, as an individual, I may be permitted to say that _I
cannot_ conceive Infinity, and am convinced that no human being can. A
mind not thoroughly self-conscious--not accustomed to the introspective
analysis of its own operations--will, it is true, often deceive itself by
supposing that it _has_ entertained the conception of which we speak. In
the effort to entertain it, we proceed step beyond step--we fancy point
still beyond point; and so long as we _continue_ the effort, it may be
said, in fact, that we are _tending_ to the formation of the idea
designed; while the strength of the impression that we actually form or
have formed it, is in the ratio of the period during which we keep up
the mental endeavor. But it is in the act of discontinuing the
endeavor--of fulf