Page:Thoughts on art and life.djvu/220

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taste and touch alone come into direct contacft with the object which they apprehend.

105.

The smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and the proof of this is that the natural point has continuity, and everything which has continuity is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it is not a quantity. Every continuous quantity is mentally infinitely divisible. Among the magnitude tube of things which are among us, the chief of all is nothingness; and its function extends to matter that does not exist, and its essence is in time in the past or in the future, and it has nothing of the present. This nothingness has its part equal to the whole and the whole to the part, and the divisible to the indivisible, and produces the same result by addition or subtraction, or if it be divided or multiplied, — as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth character, which represents nothing. And its power does not extend to the things of nature. That which is called nothingness is found only in time and in words: in time it is found in the past and future, and not in the present; and thus in words among things which are said to be non- existent or impossible. In time nothingness dwells in the past and the future, and not at all in the present, and in nature it resides among the things

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