"If matter has existed from eternity, it must have existed as we have seen in the same form which it at present sustains, for this is the consequence of its necessary existence. The earth on which we dwell and the heavens above us are eternal; and the same motions have been incessantly going on in the immense regions of space. The earth has been revolving on its own axis, and, as well as the other planets, has been performing its circuit around the sun. Its revolutions upon its axis have been infinite, and so have been its revolutions in its orbit, and so have been the revolutions of Saturn. Mark the consequence! We have here three infinites which are made up of unequal parts, an infinite made up of the revolutions of Saturn, the time of which is twenty-nine times less than the infinite made up of the annual revolutions of the earth, and many thousand times less than the infinite made up of the diurnal revolutions of the latter. Thus we are landed in a palpable absurdity, from which we can only escape by renouncing the untenable hypothesis of the eternity of the universe, and admitting the scriptural doctrine of its creation." The reductio ad absurdum consists in the conclusion that infinites may be unequal. Now, if this conclusion necessarily follows from the assumption that the revolutions of the planets have been infinite, or, in other words, from the conception of an infinite number of finites, we must admit that the argument is good. But the
