160. That this evidence touches but one aspect of the object, is true; that there are many things in the object which we do not know, is likewise true; but this only proves that our science is incomplete, not that it is illusory or false.
161. It is difficult for us to conceive the pure intelligibility of the sensible world, both because our ideas are always accompanied by representations of the imagination, and because we try to explain it by simple addition and subtraction of parts, as though all the problems of the universe could be reduced to expressions of lines, surfaces, and solids. Geometry plays an important part in all that regards the appreciation of the phenomena of nature; but when we want to penetrate to the essence of things, we must lay aside geometry and take up metaphysics.
There is no more seductive philosophy than that which reduces the world to motions and figures, but at the same time there is none more superficial. A slight reflection on the reality of things shows the insufficiency of such a system. For, though the imagination be satisfied with it, the understanding is not, and it takes a noble revenge on its unfaithful companion, when, forcing the imagination to fix itself upon objects, the understanding sinks it in an ocean of darkness and contradiction. Those who laugh at the forms, the acts, the forces, and other such expressions used with more or less exactness in different schools, ought to reflect that even in the physical world there is something more than is perceived by the senses; and that even sensible phenomena cannot be explained by mere sensible representations. Physical science is not complete until it calls to its aid metaphysics.
The best proof of this will be found in the next chapter, where we shall see the imagination entangled in its own representations.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
INFINITE DIVISIBILITY.
162. The divisibility of matter is a question that torments philosophers. Matter is divisible because it is extended, and there is no extension without parts. These parts are extended or are not: if they are, they are again divisible; if they are not, they are simple, and in the division of matter we must come to unextended points.
This last consequence can be avoided only by recourse to the infinite divisibility of matter, and even this is a means of escaping the difficulty rather than a true solution. I intimated elsewhere[52] that infinite divisibility seems to suppose the very thing which it denies. Division does not make the parts, it supposes them; that which is simple cannot be divided; therefore, the parts which may be divided pre-exist in the infinitely divisible composition.
Let us imagine God to exert his infinite power in dividing, will he exhaust divisibility? If you say no, you seem to place limits to his omnipotence; if you say yes, we shall have arrived at simple points, as otherwise the divisibility would not be exhausted.