ABSTRACT
Pierre Bayle suggests that a person who wishes to revive Zeno’s paradoxes showing the impossibility of motion could begin by showing that extension itself is a paradoxical idea. Few modern writers will have much patience with this line of argument. For what vanished or seemed to vanish was the spot and the spot was divisible both before and after it vanished or seemed to vanish. David Hume, however, speaks of the impression or image itself vanishing and being indivisible just before it vanished. Over against Hume’s arguments are certain geometric demonstrations that are intended to prove a priori that a finite extension is infinitely divisible. An important shift takes place. Earlier it seemed natural to assume that Hume had introduced a theory of minimal perceptions as parts of the whole that make up an extension.
