View:
By Chapter
[60]
Further, we must not assert
up or
down of that which is unlimited, as if there were a zenith or nadir.
1
As to the space overhead, however, if it be possible to draw
2
a line to infinity from the point where we stand, we know that never will this space —or, for that matter, the space below the supposed standpoint if produced to infinity—appear to us to be at the same time
up and
down with reference to the same point; for this is inconceivable. Hence it is possible to assume one direction of motion, which we conceive as extending upwards
ad infinitum, and another downwards, even if it should happen ten thousand times that what moves from us to the spaces above our heads reaches the feet of those above us, or that which moves downwards from us the heads of those below us. None the less is it true that the whole of the motion in the respective cases is conceived as extending in opposite directions
ad infinitum.
Vitae philosophorum. Diogenes Laertius. R. D. Hicks (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1925.
Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Preservation and Access.