Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/357

 ON THE BELATIONS OF NUMBER AND QUANTITY. 341 applies to contents only when they are regarded as im- mediate data, and applies then only because such data are not fully understood. In this it differs from number, for number can, by abstraction, be applied to a material per- fectly understood. While things which can be numbered together must have some conception in common, things which can be measured against each other must have no conception not in common, and yet must differ. This is only possible in a material not wholly mastered by con- ception. This material, which is the intensive continuum, may therefore be thus defined : An intensive continuum is a collection of data all belonging to one and the same infima species of conception, and all therefore conceptually alike, but yet differing in some property which conception has not mastered. The relation of difference is a relation of measure, of more or less, and constitutes the conception of quantity. The necessity of such a conception is a standing reminder of the inadequacy of thought to sense, or, if we prefer it, of the fundamental irrationality of sense.