 Cantor has advanced beyond his predecessors in formulating what is in essence a topological definition of continuum, one that, while still dependent on metric notions, does not involve an order  relation.[35] It is interesting to compare Cantor’s definition with the definition of continuum in modern general topology. In a well-known textbook (Hocking &amp; Young 1961: 43) on the subject we find a continuum defined as a compact connected subset of a topological space. Now within any bounded region of Euclidean space it can be shown that Cantor’s continua coincide with continua in the sense of the modern definition. While Cantor lacked the definition of compactness, his requirement that continua be “complete” (which led to his rejecting as continua such noncompact sets as open intervals or discs) is not far away from the idea.