ESSAY I. 351 istence but in our ideas ?? The arguments used in the beginning of this Essay to disapprove space to be a mere idea, may be re- peated and answered thus. It issaid, We cannot have an idea of what is truly infinite ; but our reason assures us space is infinite, or without bounds, and therefore it is not a mere idea. I answer, Though we do not form an idea of space actually and positively infinite yet we can form an idea of infinite space of the ever-growing kind, and it may be a mere idea still. Our idea indeed is not actually in- finite, we cannot grasp the infinity of space beyond the world, for that would be to bound or limit emptiness : And so we may have an ever - growing idea of infinite number as well as infinite space or emptiness, yet it is a mere idea, and 'lath no real exist- ence without us. Again, It is said, space cannot be a mere idea, because it seems to have a necessary and obstinate existence, whether there were any mind or no to form an idea of it. I answer, Such are the eternal truths, viz. Three and three makes six, the whole is bigger than apart, ey.c. and yet what are these besides ideas ? Have they any real existence extraneous to the minds that con- ceive them ? And yet perhaps space has hardly so much exist- ence as these. And it is certain, if space or emptiness be no- thing but the mere absence of being, then the idea of it is only a conception of nothing after the manner of something, and that must be a mere idea. To conclde, After the laborious searches of thought, rea- soning and reading in several stages of my life past, these are the best conceptions and sentiments that I can frame ofspace. I grant there may be some difficulties yet remaining, and some darknesses which yet may hang over this subject. Learned men have laboured hard to scatter them in former ages, and in the present too without full success ; yet perhaps in future time there may be a way found out for adjusting all these difficulties to the more complete satisfaction of some following age. But in every age of this mortal and imperfect state there will be some unknowables and insolvables : Many of the themes and enquiries relating to infinites and incommensurables, both in magnitude and number, and eternals in duration and abstracted truths, are of this kind : And if we should agree to throw in space, and atoms or indivi- sibles into this heap, we should but enlarge the number of those perplexing arguments, whereby perhaps the great God our maker designs to maintain a perpetual check upon our proudest powers of reasoning, to plunge us now and then into darkness and endless confusion, to humble us under a sense of the narrow limits of human knowledge, and teach us to pay all due venera- tion to his understanding, which is uusearchable.
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