BOOK I PART II
without a total annihilation. When you tell me
of the thousandth and ten thousandth part of
a grain of sand, I have a distinct idea of these
numbers and of their different proportions; but
the images, which I form in my mind to repre-
sent the things themselves, are nothing differ-
ent from each other, nor inferior to that image,
by which I represent the grain of sand itself,
which is supposed so vastly to exceed them.
What consists of parts is distinguishable into
them, and what is distinguishable is separa-
ble. But whatever we may imagine of the thing,
the idea of a grain of sand is not distinguish-
able, nor separable into twenty, much less into
a thousand, ten thousand, or an infinite num-
ber of different ideas.
It is the same case with the impressions of
the senses as with the ideas of the imagination.