[The Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza]@TWC D-Link bookThe Ethics PART I 36/90
Moreover, anyone who reflects will see that all these absurdities (if absurdities they be, which I am not now discussing), from which it is sought to extract the conclusion that extended substance is finite, do not at all follow from the notion of an infinite quantity, but merely from the notion that an infinite quantity is measurable, and composed of finite parts therefore, the only fair conclusion to be drawn is that: infinite quantity is not measurable, and cannot be composed of finite parts.
This is exactly what we have already proved (in Prop.
xii.).
Wherefore the weapon which they aimed at us has in reality recoiled upon themselves.
If, from this absurdity of theirs, they persist in drawing the conclusion that extended substance must be finite, they will in good sooth be acting like a man who asserts that circles have the properties of squares, and, finding himself thereby landed in absurdities, proceeds to deny that circles have any center, from which all lines drawn to the circumference are equal.
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