John Locke

“ That our idea of place is nothing else but such a relative position of anything as I have before mentioned, I think is plain, and will be easily admitted, when we consider that we can have no idea of the place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it ; because beyond that we have not the idea of any fixed, distinct, particular beings, in reference to which we can imagine it to have any relation of distance ; but all beyond it is one uniform space or expansion, wherein the mind finds no variety, no marks. For to say that the world is somewhere, means no more than that it does exist ”

“ For they who so much alter the signification of words, as to call extension body, and consequently make the whole essence of body to be nothing but pure extension without solidity, must talk absurdly whenever they speak of vacuum ; since it is impossible for extension to be without extension. For vacuum, whether we affirm or deny its existence, signifies space without body ; whose very existence no one can deny to be possible, who will not make matter infinite, and take from God a power to annihilate any particle of it. ”

“ Men, for the use and by the custom of measuring, settle in their minds the ideas of certain stated lengths, – such as are an inch, foot, yard, fathom, mile, diameter of the earth, &c., which are so many distinct ideas made up only of space. When any such stated lengths or measures of space are made familiar to men’s thoughts, they can, in their minds, repeat them as often as they will, without mixing or joining to them the idea of body, or anything else ”

“ Motion can neither be, nor be conceived, without space ; and yet motion is not space, nor space motion ; space can exist without it, and they are very distinct ideas ; and so, I think, are those of space and solidity. Solidity is so inseparable an idea from body, that upon that depends its filling of space, its contact, impulse, and communication of motion upon impulse. And if it be a reason to prove that spirit is different from body, because thinking includes not the idea of extension in it ”

“ Division of beings into bodies and spirits proves not space and body the same. Those who contend that space and body are the same, bring this dilemma : – either this space is something or nothing ; if nothing be between two bodies, they must necessarily touch ; if it be allowed to be something, they ask, Whether it be body or spirit ? ”

“ It is not easy for the mind to put off those confused notions and prejudices it has imbibed from custom, inadvertency, and common conversation. It requires pains and assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those clear and distinct simple ones, out of which they are compounded ; and to see which, amongst its simple ones, have or have not a necessary connexion and dependence one upon another. Till a man doth this in the primary and original notions of things, he builds upon floating and uncertain principles, and will often find himself at a loss. ”

“ For if there can be a space void of body equal to the smallest separate particle of matter now existing in nature, it is still space without body ; and makes as great a difference between space and body as if it were mega chasma, a distance as wide as any in nature. And therefore, if we suppose not the void space necessary to motion equal to the least parcel of the divided solid matter, but to 1/10 or 1/1000 of it, the same consequence will always follow of space without matter. ”

“ For, besides the vast number of different figures that do really exist, in the coherent masses of matter, the stock that the mind has in its power, by varying the idea of space, and thereby making still new compositions, by repeating its own ideas, and joining them as it pleases, is perfectly inexhaustible. ”

“ For I am apt to think that men, when they come to examine them, find their simple ideas all generally to agree, though in discourse with one another they perhaps confound one another with different names. ”

“ But if it should happen that any two thinking men should really have different ideas, I do not see how they could discourse or argue with another. Here I must not be mistaken, to think that every floating imagination in men’s brains is presently of that sort of ideas I speak of. ”

“ It is true, a man may consider so much of such a space as is answerable or commensurate to a foot, without considering the rest, which is, indeed, a partial consideration, but not so much as mental separation or division ; since a man can no more mentally divide, without considering two superficies separate one from the other, than he can actually divide, without making two superficies disjoined one from the other : but a partial consideration is not separating. ”

“ To divide and separate actually is, as I think, by removing the parts one from another, to make two superficies, where before there was a continuity : and to divide mentally is, to make in the mind two superficies, where before there was a continuity, and consider them as removed one from the other ; which can only be done in things considered by the mind as capable of being separated ; and by separation, of acquiring new distinct superficies, which they then have not, but are capable of But neither of these ways of separation, whether real or mental, is, as I think, compatible to pure space. ”

“ And therefore, if his idea of eternity be infinite, so is his idea of immensity ; they are both finite or infinite alike.
22. The power of annihilation proves a vacuum. Farther, those who assert the impossibility of space existing without matter, must not only make body infinite, but must also deny a power in God to annihilate any part of matter. No one, I suppose, will deny that God can put an end to all motion that is in matter, and fix all the bodies of the universe in a perfect quiet and rest, and continue them so long as he pleases. ”

“ There are some that would persuade us, that body and extension are the same thing, who either change the signification of words, which I would not suspect them of, – they having so severely condemned the philosophy of others, because it hath been too much placed in the uncertain meaning, or deceitful obscurity of doubtful or insignificant terms. ”

“ I imagine that men who abstract their thoughts, and do well examine the ideas of their own minds, cannot much differ in thinking ; however they may perplex themselves with words, according to the way of speaking to the several schools or sects they have been bred up in : though amongst unthinking men, who examine not scrupulously and carefully their own ideas, and strip them not from the marks men use for them, but confound them with words, there must be endless dispute, wrangling, and jargon ”

“ The truth is, these men must either own that they think body infinite, though they are loth to speak it out, or else affirm that space is not body. For I would fain meet with that thinking man that can in his thoughts set any bounds to space, more than he can to duration ”

“ And indeed the necessary motion of one particle of matter into the place from whence another particle of matter is removed, is but a consequence from the supposition of plenitude ; which will therefore need some better proof than a supposed matter of fact, which experiment can never make out ; – our own clear and distinct ideas plainly satisfying us, that there is no necessary connexion between space and solidity, since we can conceive the one without the other. And those who dispute for or against a vacuum, do thereby confess they have distinct ideas of vacuum and plenum, i.e. ”

“ If so, whether it will thence follow – that God, spirits, and body, agreeing in the same common nature of substance, differ not any otherwise than in a bare different modification of that substance ; as a tree and a pebble, being in the same sense body, and agreeing in the common nature of body, differ only in a bare modification of that common matter, which will be a very harsh doctrine. If they say, that they apply it to God, finite spirit, and matter, in three different significations and that it stands for one idea when God is said to be a substance ”

“ Whatever a learned man may do here, an intelligent American, who inquired into the nature of things, would scarce take it for a satisfactory account, if, desiring to learn our architecture, he should be told that a pillar is a thing supported by a basis, and a basis something that supported a pillar. ”

“ It is true, solidity cannot exist without extension, neither can scarlet colour exist without extension, but this hinders not, but that they are distinct ideas. Many ideas require others, as necessary to their existence or conception, which yet are very distinct ideas. ”

“ But this modification of distance we call place, being made by men for their common use, that by it they might be able to design the particular position of things, where they had occasion for such designation ; men consider and determine of this place by reference to those adjacent things which best served to their present purpose, without considering other things which, to another purpose, would better determine the place of the same thing. ”