NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

bound longer or shorter, are fac-similes of every other, and therefore contain the solution of the problem as perfectly as if it had been raced after with the most wearisome efforts. The mind does not then distress itself in search of a limit, and fail; it discovers that there can be no limit; it penetrates the conditions of the problem, and brings forward the notion of a true infinite, which it sets over against the finite, and is at rest, as it knows that nothing other or more is to be found elsewhere.

Thus the mind hits upon the true infinite, not by experience, not by exhaustive effort, but by its own penetration of relations; and through this idea it understands another of the conditions of its experience, and declines exertion which it sees to be necessarily futile. Standing, not moving; by insight, not by baffled effort, it grasps and henceforth uses this notion, so super-sensual in character, so necessary for the exposition of the being w r e possess, the universe we inhabit. Space, as infinite, admits of no division. No plane can cleave it, no line pierce it. In strict language, it is without parts, at least so far as these imply remainders. The true infinite is subject to no addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. These are processes which find play in the finite alone.

A second point at which this notion arises early is in the contemplation of time. Here, too, the mind discovers that the conditions of conception are not in the least varied by movement, and that the years which beheld the laying of the foundations of the world were no less central than those "which now are, or those which shall behold its overthrow. Geologic aeons lie lapped in eternity, with no more power of measurement than the point which defines pure position on the board before me. Here again there is no opportunity to take aught from, or add aught to the infinite, to eternity. Indeed we may not strike it into two infinite halves by this