V

THE PRESTIGE OF THE INFINITE


"The more complex the world becomes and the more it rises above the
indeterminate, so much the farther removed it is from God; that is to say,
so much the more impious it is." M. Julien Benda[12] is not led to this
startling utterance by any political or sentimental grudge. It is not the
late war, nor the peace of Versailles, nor the parlous state of the arts,
nor the decay of morality and prosperity that disgusts him with our
confused world. It is simply overmastering respect for the infinite. _La
Trahison des Clercs_, or Treason of the Levites, with which he had
previously upbraided the intellectuals of his time, now appears to consist
precisely in coveting a part in this world's inheritance, and forgetting
that the inheritance of the Levites is the Lord: which, being interpreted
philosophically, means that a philosopher is bound to measure all things
by the infinite.

This infinite is not rhetorical, as if we spoke of infinite thought or
infinite love: it is physico-mathematical. Nothing but number, M. Benda
tells us, seems to him intelligible. Time, space, volume, and complexity
(which appears to the senses as quality) stretch in a series of units,
positions, or degrees, to infinity, as number does: and in such
homogeneous series, infinite in both directions, there will be no fixed
point of origin for counting or surveying the whole and no particular