320 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1863. of an inch and the length of 10 100 miles. But these are subjects 

 of which we can predicate ; and so, I hold, is infinity. 



I have made all manner of efforts to repudiate infinity of 

 quantity for forty years, in obedience to the dicta of people who 

 assured me I did not possess any idea of it, and I have failed. 

 And I have observed that no people seem so clearly to have the 

 idea as those who argue against it, while engaged in their task. 

 And I begin to lean towards the notion that the difficulties of 

 infinity of quantity arise from our having more knowledge of it 

 than of things, for which we depend on attributes as mind or 

 matter. 



The absolute, as you say, really has no predicates ; arid it is a 

 very circular idea. Is not the being unconditioned, if per se 

 and necessarily, a condition ? Cannot is a word of limitation and 

 condition. Can the Creator commit suicide ? if not, he is, to 

 our thoughts, conditioned. I should like to know what Hamilton 

 would have said to this. Seeing that the Germans shine as 

 smokers and also as metaphysicians, and also that in the former 

 capacity they blow a cloud which was the word for taking a 

 cigar in my day it is worth while to think about transferring 

 the phrase, in a transcendental sense, to their other pursuit. 



Yours truly, 



A. DE MOKGAN. 



To Sir J. Herschel. 



91 Adelaide Road, May 10, 1863. 



MY DEAK BARONET, There's change for your 'Professor.' 

 Everybody attaches some ideas to a word derived from early 

 associations. The first * learned Professor ' I read of under that 

 name was Olearius Schinderhausen, of Leyden, who disparted 

 with his cast-off suit biennially. I did not think I should live 

 to match him ; but as I never go out, and always work at home 

 in a dressing-gown, I also have but one coat in two years. 



Seventy- one, eh ? Go on to eighty, and then apply to me 

 for further directions, if I should be in a condition to give them. 

 Addition of the same to a ratio of greater inequality diminishes 

 it. So says Jemmy Wood ; and the life of man confirms it. 

 When you were preparing sin ~ l x, I was learning numeration 

 from my father on a zalilenbreitstein a pebble, of diameter and 

 flatness, picked up in the road. And I remember that when it 

 was lost I refused all arithmetic till another was found ; which, 



