ut end, our own ideas, it may be
demanded,--Why we do not attribute infinity to other ideas, as well as
those of space and duration; since they may be as easily, and as often,
repeated in our minds as the other: and yet nobody ever thinks of
infinite sweetness or infinite whiteness, though he can repeat the idea
of sweet or white, as frequently as those of a yard or a day? To which
I answer,--All the ideas that are considered as having parts, and are
capable of increase by the addition of an equal or less parts, afford
us, by their repetition, the idea of infinity; because, with this
endless repetition, there is continued an enlargement of which there CAN
be no end. But for other ideas it is not so. For to the largest idea of
extension or duration that I at present have, the addition of any the
least part makes an increase; but to the perfectest idea I have of the
whitest whiteness, if I add another of a less equal whiteness, (and of
a whiter than I have, I cannot add the idea,) it makes no increase,
and enlarges not my idea at all; and therefore the different ideas of
whiteness, &c. are called degrees. For those ideas that consist of part
are capable of being augmented by every addition of the least part;
but if you take the idea of white, which one parcel of snow yielded
yesterday to our sight, and another idea of white from another parcel of
snow you see to-day, and put them together in your mind, they embody,
as it were, all run into one, and the idea of whiteness is not at all
increased and if we add a less degree of whiteness to a greater, we are
so far from increasing, that we diminish it. Those ideas that consist
not of parts cannot be augmented to what proportion men please, or be
stretched beyond what they have received by their senses; but space,
duration, and number, being capable of increase by repetition, leave in
the mind an idea of endless room for more; nor can we conceive anywhere
a stop to a further addition or progression: and so those ideas ALONE
lead our minds towards the thought of infinity.

7. Difference between infinity of Space, and Space infinite.

Though our idea of infinity arise from the contemplation of quantity,
and the endless increase the mind is able to make in quantity, by the
repeated additions of what portions thereof it pleases; yet I guess we
cause great confusion in our thoughts, when we join infinity to any
supposed idea of quantity the mind can be thought to have, and so
di