62 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
does, and that which does not exist, there must be an infinite 
difference — that the chain, therefore, cannot lay hold on 
nothing. He showed, further, that between the greatest of 
finite existences and the adorable Infinite there must exist 
another illimitable void — that the boundless and the bounded 
are as widely separated in their natures and qualities as the 
existent and the non-existent — that the chain, in short, can- 
not lay hold on Deity. He asserted, however, that not only 
is it thus incomplete at both ends, but that we must regard it 
as well nigh as incomplete in many of its intermediate links 
as at its terminal ones; that it is already a broken chain, 
seeing that between its various classes of existence myriads 
of intermediate existences might be introduced, by graduat- 
ing more minutely what must necessarily be capable of in- 
finite gradation; and that, to base an infidel theory on the 
supposed completeness of what is demonstrably incomplete, 
and on the impossibility of a gap existing in what is already 
filled with gaps, is just to base one absurdity on another.* 
* The following are the well-stated reasonings of Dr. Johnson, a 
writer who never did injustice to an argument for want of words to 
express it in: — 
“The scale of existence from Infinity to nothing cannot possibly 
have being. The highest being not infinite must be at an infinite dis- 
tance from Infinity. Cheyne, who, with the desire inherent in math- 
ematicians to reduce every thing to mathematical images, considers 
all existence as a cone, allows that the basis is at an infinite distance 
from the body, and in this distance between finite and infinite there 
will be room forever for an infinite series of indefinable existence. 
‘‘Between the lowest positive existence and nothing, whenever 
we suppose positive existence to cease, is another chasm infinitely 
deep, where there is room again for endless orders of subordinate na- 
ture, continued forever and ever, and yet infinitely superior to non- 
existence. 
