row, and one more, namely 0; thus the number of terms in the top row is obtained by adding one to the number of the bottom row. So long, therefore, as it was supposed that a number must be increased by adding 1 to it, this state of things constituted a contradiction, and led to the denial that there are infinite numbers.
The following example is even more surprising. Write the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . in the top row, and the even numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, . . . in the bottom row, so that under each number in the top row stands its double in the bottom row. Then, as before, the number of numbers in the two rows is the same, yet the second row results from taking away all the odd numbers—an infinite collection—from the top row. This example is given by Leibniz to prove that there can be no infinite numbers. He believed in infinite collections, but, since he thought that a number must always be increased when it is added to and diminished when it is subtracted from, he maintained that infinite collections do not have numbers. “The number of all numbers,” he says, “implies a contradiction, which I show thus: To any number there is a corresponding number equal to its double. Therefore the number of all numbers is not greater than the number of even numbers, i.e. the whole is not greater than its part.”[1] In dealing with this argument, we ought to substitute “the number of all finite numbers” for “the number of all numbers”; we then obtain exactly the illustration given by our two rows, one containing all the finite numbers, the other only the even finite numbers. It will be seen that Leibniz regards it as self-contradictory to maintain that the whole is not
- ↑ Phil. Werke, Gerhardt’s edition, vol. i. p. 338.
