fix identities, however minutely the analysis might be attempted, 

 It is plain, from this exhibition, that if we cannot be content with 

 the looser or more general information, we are likely to remain 

 dissatisfied for a very long time. 



41. This part of the subject naturally leads to another topic: 

 the connection is this, we have talked about a single drop of oil 

 of vitriol producing such diffused and mighty effects, and we see 

 on other occasions how agents, apparently of inconsiderable 

 bulk, operate upon a wide field, and still preserve some title to 

 the appellation of causes. This then naturally brings us to a 

 more detailed view of the relation of quantities. 



42. It is scarcely necessary to say that by the word " quan- 

 tity" is to be understood, the repetition of parts possessing the 

 nature of the whole. 



43. It has been admitted by those who have written speci- 

 fically upon matter, that the smallest quantities are infinitely 

 divisible. This notion has been said to be come at only by a 

 process of the imagination: but the proposition is further sup- 

 ported by the application of those laws which determine the 

 properties, to the quantities, of things; for, as every property has 

 a certain sum of its nature which is inseparable from its existence, 

 and as every property is constituted by other properties, and these 

 likewise being of certain sums, so it follows that quantity is in all 

 instances, infinitely compounded, the larger, or the more con- 

 siderable, of the lesser or fewer parts. 



44. But this theory seems to carry with it its own refutation: 

 for if the quantities composing the smallest particles are infinite, 

 what shall we say of those which belong to the largest masses? 

 The direct reply is, that they are infinite too. Thus then we have 

 two specimens of infinity, of which one is the greater and the 

 other the less. Now if an infinite divisibility is true in all in- 

 stances, the difference between our specimens is this, that sup- 

 posing the division of the parts of the two specimens to proceed 

 together, ad infinitum, the parts of each will continue to preserve 

 the same relation as their whole respectively. 



45. If we take, for example, so immense a bulk as the half of 

 our globe, from our actual experience of the divisibility of matter, 

 the visible minuteness of its particles, &c. it will almost be allowed 

 without the aid of inference, that the contents of this bulk in 

 minute particles are infinite; especially when we consider that 

 those of a single grain of sand, reduced to powder, are too nume- 

 rous for our calculation. Yet it is obvious that the particles com- 

 posing one half of the globe, though they are allowed to be in- 

 finite, are not so numerous as those which compose the whole. 



46. My business is not with verbal inconsistencies, nor shall 

 I trouble myself to examine whether they exist; it is sufficient for 

 the purposes of correct information to accept the truths which are 

 proved by experience ; the only commentary therefore which I shall 

 offer upon the facts respecting this apparent difficulty is as follows : 



