Edmund Burke on Infinity

“[A]s the great extreme of dimension is sublime, so the last extreme of littleness is in the same measure sublime... when we attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when we pursue animal life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings... when we push our discoveries yet downward... in tracing which the imagination is lost as well as the sense; we become amazed and confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can we distinguish in its effects this extreme of littleness from the vast itself. For division must be infinite as well as addition; because the idea of a perfect unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole, to which nothing can be added.”

“Another source of the sublime is infinity... Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime. There are scarce any things which can become the objects of our senses, that are really... infinite. But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds... they seem... infinite, and they produce the same effects... We are deceived in the like manner, if the parts of some large object are so continued to any indefinite number, that the imagination meets no check... Whenever we repeat an idea frequently, the mind... repeats it long after the first cause has ceased... multiplied without end. ...This is the reason of an appearance very frequent in madmen; that they remain... in the constant repetition of some remark... complaint, or song... every repetition reinforces it with new strength... unrestrained by the curb of reason, continues... to the end of their lives.”