Page:Our knowledge of the external world.djvu/177

Rh successively adding ones. This includes all the numbers that can be expressed by means of our ordinary numerals, and since such numbers can be made greater and greater, without ever reaching an unsurpassable maximum, it is easy to suppose that there are no other numbers. But this supposition, natural as it is, is mistaken.

Whether the Pythagoreans themselves believed space and time to be composed of indivisible points and instants is a debatable question. It would seem that the distinction between space and matter had not yet been clearly made, and that therefore, when an atomistic view is expressed, it is difficult to decide whether particles of matter or points of space are intended. There is an interesting passage in Aristotle's Physics, where he says:

"The Pythagoreans all maintained the existence of the void, and said that it enters into the heaven itself from the boundless breath, inasmuch as the heaven breathes in the void also; and the void differentiates natures, as