ve used his very words, that you may perceive how he
maintains the common notions, forbidding us to think of what or how many
parts every body is compacted, and whether of infinite or finite. For if
there were any medium between finite and infinite, as the indifferent
is between good and evil, he should, by telling us what that is, have
solved the difficulty. But if--as that which is not equal is
presently understood to be unequal, and that which is not mortal to be
immortal--we also understand that which is not finite to be immediately
infinite, to say that a body consists of parts neither finite nor
infinite is, in my opinion, the same thing as to affirm that an argument
is compacted of positions neither true nor false....

To this he with a certain youthful rashness adds, that in a pyramid
consisting of triangles, the sides inclining to the juncture are
unequal, and yet do not exceed one another in that they are greater.
Thus does he keep the common notions. For if there is anything greater
and not exceeding, there will be also something less and not deficient,
and so also something unequal which neither exceeds nor is deficient;
that is, there will be an unequal thing equal, a greater not greater,
and a less not less. See it yet farther, in what manner he answered
Democritus, inquiring philosophically and to the point, if a cone is
divided by a plane parallel with its base, what is to be thought of the
superficies of its segments, whether they are equal or unequal; for
if they are unequal, they will render the cone uneven, receiving many
steplike incisions and roughnesses; but if they are equal, the sections
will be equal, and the cone will seem to have the same qualities as the
cylinder, to wit, to be composed not of unequal but of equal circles;
which is most absurd. Here, that he may convince Democritus of
ignorance, he says, that the superficies are neither equal or unequal,
but that the bodies are unequal, because the superficies are neither
equal nor unequal. Indeed to assert this for a law, that bodies are
unequal while the superficies are not unequal, is the part of a man who
takes to himself a wonderful liberty of writing whatever comes into
his head. For reason and manifest evidence, on the contrary, give us to
understand, that the superficies of unequal bodies are unequal, and that
the bigger the body is, the greater also is the superficies, unless the
excess, by which it is the greater, is void of a super