INFINITY NEED NOT BE PERMANENT. 257 



For it could never wholly get to A, and hence 



lould never wholly be becoming B. 

 And the converse supposition of a world finite in 

 pace and infinite in Time, which from the point 



^f view of a whole has been already shown to be 

 absurd, is equally impossible from that of the con- 

 ception of a process. Its absurdity may be illus- 

 trated by the fact that if it were engaged in a 

 process, it would require an infinite Time to reach 

 any given point in the process, and an infinite 

 number of infinities to reach the present, i.e., would 



lever reach the present at all. 



10. And to set against the cumulative force of 

 all these metaphysical and scientific contradictions, 

 nothing can be urged in favour of the infinity of 

 Space and Time, except a disability of our imper- 

 fect thought, a disability, moreover, which does not 

 even profess to warrant the assertion of a positive 

 infinity of real Space and Time. We cannot think 

 Space and Time as limited, we cannot conceive 

 how the world is limited in Space and Time. But 

 can we assert this ideal infinity of the real world 1 

 Assuredly we can not: nothing compels us to go 

 behind the contradiction. At the utmost all it 

 proves is that there is a lack of correspondence 

 between the constitution of our minds and that of 

 the world, and there is no need to regard this con- 

 flict as likely to be permanent. If, therefore, we are 

 not satisfied with saying that the world must be 

 finite, though we cannot, while our intuition of 

 Space remains what it is, see how, a solution is yet 

 possible through a change in that intuition/ 



1 The word " intuition " here is used merely as a translation of 

 the preciser German term " Anschauung," and has no reference to 

 any contrast with " experience." 



R. of s. ^ 



