FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS OF AGNOSTTCISM EXAMINED. 183 



in the laws of thought ? The first and most obvious ol the 

 criticisms they suggest is this : there seems to be taken for 

 granted the possibility of an infinite series ; in other words, 

 it is tacitly allowed that infinitude may be predicated of 

 Number. A predicate that may be legitimately used in 

 reference to any kind of increase to which the full latitude 

 afforded by either Time or Space is supposed to be granted, 

 namely, interminable, but commonly known as infinite, has 

 been slipped unawares into the place of one which also bears 

 this name, but for which, as will be easily understood, no 

 adequately-descriptive title can be found in human speech ; 

 and the irreconcilable contradictions and the chaos of thought 

 thence arising have been assumed to indicate the hopelessness 

 of all endeavours to arrive at a knowledge of origination, 

 elementary substance, causality, and necessary being. The 

 inevitable failure of the most masterly effort that can well be 

 conceived to discover the Non-Numeral by a method which 

 presupposes that it should be expressible in terms of Number, 

 we are thus expected to accept, and, if we demur not to the 

 method, must needs accept, as a sufficient warrant for 

 Agnosticism. 



Some suspicion, however, destined to lead to the detection 

 of the lurking fallacy, ought, one might think, to have been 

 excited whenever attention was turned towards that ancient 

 misconception of the scope of arithmetic which resulted in a 

 denial of the reality of Motion. Local motion being change 

 of place, it was assumed that no such change is possible 

 except by successive occupation of the several parts into which 

 the intervening space may be conceivably divided. But con- 

 ceivable divisibility, being without limit, presupposes a 

 number that is never completed; consequently, the assumption 

 being granted, it might seem that the moment never can 

 arrive when it may be affirmed that motion has taken place. 

 This conclusion, however, rests on the supposition that the 

 counting occupies time. But obviously, for any given space, 

 the time required for the completion of the number obtained 

 by subdivision, is not an increasing but a constant quantity, 

 seeing that just in proportion to the number of the parts to 

 be traversed is the minuteness of each part. Thus it will 

 appear that the conception of transition is relinquished in the 

 vain effort to conceive of an infinite number of infinitesimal 

 parts, in each of which rest alone is conceivable. If any 

 person should imagine that he has attained to this conception, 

 his only way of accounting for apparent motion would be 

 to suppose a sei'ies of transcendently marvellous changes, 



