CORRESPONDENCE, 1856-66. 319 



Here is a nice kettle of fish ! Now I try to put a sense npon it. 1863. 



1. I take aTTcipov to mean rather without boundary than 

 without end ; indefinite. But the quantitative notion of having 

 no end does intrude and confuse that of having no determinate. 1 



To Rev. Dr. Whewell. 



April 11, 1863. 



MY DEAR SIR, Many thanks for your letter. I feel helped 

 by the word SueVai, because it is a very thoroughfaresome word. 

 As the lexicon says, it is used for going through a country, or for 

 running a man through the body, which is a process very 

 definitely suggestive of in at one side and out at the other. 

 It points very distinctly to the idea of bounded on all sides, 

 being that which aTrapov denies. And this, combined with an 

 oL7Tt/oov gained by subtraction, confirm me in the notion that 

 Aristotle is treating of the indefinite not necessarily, though 

 possibly, infinite in magnitude. 



I agree with you that the adjective infinite without a sub- 

 stantive is like all other adjectives similarly situated. 



On infinity i.e., infinite quantity a concept necessarily 

 connected in our minds as an attribute or predicate, with space 

 and time, I have come to the conclusion that we must treat it 

 as a concept without image. Throwing away the word imagine, 

 as spoiled by becoming a synonym of conceive, I distinguish the 

 concepts which we can image from those which we cannot. We 

 can put before the mind's eye, or the mind's mode of remembering 

 sensible things, an image or likeness ; a man, for example, as he 

 appears when alarmed. But alarm is a concept without image ; 

 it has predicates, it is the subject of true and false propositions, 

 but not as a thing having an image. 



Now of quantity of space, and even of time for succession 

 of things is among our sensible relations we have images ; but 

 not when too small or too great. The infinitely small and the 

 infinitely great are below and above our imagining power, but 

 they are concepts with attributes. Those who reject both or 

 either because they cannot form an idea by which they mean 



an image ought equally to reject those entia rationis, the fTnTm 



1 I much regret that I have lost the rest of this letter. But I 



insert it as it stands, as the same subject is spoken of in the next. 



S. E. DE M. 



