f infinity being, as I may say,
a growing or fugitive idea, still in a boundless progression, that can
stop nowhere.

13. No positive Idea of Infinity.

Though it be hard, I think, to find anyone so absurd as to say he has
the POSITIVE idea of an actual infinite number;--the infinity whereof
lies only in a power still of adding any combination of units to any
former number, and that as long and as much as one will; the like also
being in the infinity of space and duration, which power leaves always
to the mind room for endless additions;--yet there be those who imagine
they have positive ideas of infinite duration and space. It would, I
think, be enough to destroy any such positive idea of infinite, to ask
him that has it,--whether he could add to it or no; which would easily
show the mistake of such a positive idea. We can, I think, have no
positive idea of any space or duration which is not made up of, and
commensurate to, repeated numbers of feet or yards, or days and years;
which are the common measures, whereof we have the ideas in our minds,
and whereby we judge of the greatness of this sort of quantities. And
therefore, since an infinite idea of space or duration must needs be
made up of infinite parts, it can have no other infinity than that of
number CAPABLE still of further addition; but not an actual positive
idea of a number infinite. For, I think it is evident, that the addition
of finite things together (as are all lengths whereof we have the
positive ideas) can never otherwise produce the idea of infinite than
as number does; which consisting of additions of finite units one to
another, suggests the idea of infinite, only by a power we find we have
of still increasing the sum, and adding more of the same kind; without
coming one jot nearer the end of such progression.

14. How we cannot have a positive idea of infinity in Quantity.

They who would prove their idea of infinite to be positive, seem to me
to do it by a pleasant argument, taken from the negation of an end;
which being negative, the negation on it is positive. He that considers
that the end is, in body, but the extremity or superficies of that body,
will not perhaps be forward to grant that the end is a bare negative:
and he that perceives the end of his pen is black or white, will be apt
to think that the end is something more than a pure negation. Nor is
it, when applied to duration, the bare negation of existence, but more
properly