Article December 20, 1947 Issue

"SOME PROPER SENSE OF THE INFINITE"

PAUL HENRY GORE-BOOTH

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Mary Baker Eddy uses many phrases and sentences the dramatic and challenging nature of which does not always strike the reader at first sight. Among these is the passage from the chapter entitled "Creation" in which she writes (p. 265), "Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual,— they must near the broader interpretations of being, and gain some proper sense of the infinite,—in order that sin and mortality may be put off."

The first reaction one may have to this challenge is to doubt whether the human imagination can ever grasp the idea of infinity. How then can a "proper sense" of it be gained? Admittedly the mathematician uses the symbol indicating the nature of mathematical infinity. But his use of the symbol does not help a person to imagine, say, an infinite number of people or an infinitely long straight line. The human mind can picture a great many people and a very long line, but the difference between these and infinity is vital. Nor can the human mind grasp as a whole the idea of infinite space or of eternity. If we try to imagine infinity, there is likely to seem to be something else or somewhere else which has been left out of account.

Does this then disprove at the very outset the existence of infinity and therefore our ability to gain a real sense of it? Not at all. What it proves is that the human mind is inadequate of itself to grasp the idea of infinity. In other words, it is not through the exercise of the human mind or the physical senses that a "proper sense of the infinite" can be gained.

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