Page:Thoughts on art and life.djvu/179

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

in nature or in the human mind from which thepoint can issue. Because if you say that the contion of tact between a surface and the extreme point - of an iron instrument is the creation of the point, it is not true; but let us say that this point of contact is a superficies which surrounds its centre, and in the centre the point dwells.

And such a point is not a part of the substance of the superficies, neither it nor all the points of the universe can, even if combined, — it being granted that they could be combined,- compose any part of a superficies.
And granted, as you imagined, a whole composed of a thousand points, if we divide any part of this quantity of a thousand, we can very well say that this part shall equal its whole; and this we can prove by zero, or naught, that is, the tenth figure of arithmetic, which is represented by a cipher as being nothing, and placed after unity it will signify 10, and if two ciphers are placed after unity it will signify10, and thus the number will go on increasing by ten to infinity whenever a cipher is added, and the cipher in itself is worth nothing more 

than naught, and all the naughts in the universe are equal to one naught alone, in regard to their substance and value.

9.

Knowledge which is the issue of experience is termed mechanical ;that which is born and ends

143