Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/295

Ch. 17. the number of the sands on the sea-shore, who knows not how many there be, but only that they are more than twenty. For just such a perfect and positive idea has he of an infinite space or duration, who says it is larger than the extent or duration of ten, one hundred, one thousand, or any other number of miles, or years, whereof he has, or can have a positive idea; which is all the idea, I think, we have of infinite. So that what lies beyond our positive idea towards infinity, lies in obscurity; and has the indeterminate confusion of a negative idea, wherein I know I neither do nor can comprehend all I would, it being too large for a finite and narrow capacity: and that cannot but be very far from a positive complete idea, wherein the greatest part of what I would comprehend is left out, under the undeterminate intimation of being still greater: for to say, that having in any quantity measured so much, or gone so far, you are not yet at the end, is only to say, that that quantity is greater. So that the negation of an end in any quantity is, in other words, only to say, that it is bigger: and a total negation of an end is but carrying this bigger still with you, in all the progressions your thoughts shall make in quantity, and adding this idea of still greater to all the ideas you have, or can be supposed to have, of quantity. Now whether such an idea as that be positive, I leave any one to consider.

§ 16. I ask those who say they have a positive idea of eternity, whether their idea of duration includes in it succession, or not? If it does not, they ought to show the difference of their notion of duration, when applied to an eternal being and to a finite; since, perhaps, there may be others, as well as I, who will own to them their weakness of understanding in this point; and acknowledge, that the notion they have of duration forces them to conceive, that whatever has duration, is of a longer continuance to-day than it was yesterday. If, to avoid succession in external