d have not you acknowledged, over and over, that you have seen evident
reason for denying the possibility of such a substance?

HYL. True, but that is only one sense of the term MATTER.

PHIL. But is it not the only proper genuine received sense? And, if
Matter, in such a sense, be proved impossible, may it not be thought with
good grounds absolutely impossible? Else how could anything be proved
impossible? Or, indeed, how could there be any proof at all one way or
other, to a man who takes the liberty to unsettle and change the common
signification of words?

HYL. I thought philosophers might be allowed to speak more accurately
than the vulgar, and were not always confined to the common acceptation
of a term.

PHIL. But this now mentioned is the common received sense among
philosophers themselves. But, not to insist on that, have you not been
allowed to take Matter in what sense you pleased? And have you not used
this privilege in the utmost extent; sometimes entirely changing, at
others leaving out, or putting into the definition of it whatever, for
the present, best served your design, contrary to all the known rules of
reason and logic? And hath not this shifting, unfair method of yours spun
out our dispute to an unnecessary length; Matter having been particularly
examined, and by your own confession refuted in each of those senses? And
can any more be required to prove the absolute impossibility of a thing,
than the proving it impossible in every particular sense that either you
or any one else understands it in?

HYL. But I am not so thoroughly satisfied that you have proved the
impossibility of Matter, in the last most obscure abstracted and
indefinite sense.

PHIL. . When is a thing shewn to be impossible?

HYL. When a repugnancy is demonstrated between the ideas comprehended
in its definition.

PHIL. But where there are no ideas, there no repugnancy can be
demonstrated between ideas?

HYL. I agree with you.

PHIL. Now, in that which you call the obscure indefinite sense of the
word MATTER, it is plain, by your own confession, there was
included no idea at all, no sense except an unknown sense; which is the
same thing as none. You are not, therefore, to expect I should prove a
repugnancy between ideas, where there are no ideas; or the impossibility
of Matter taken in an UNKNOWN sense, that is, no sense at all. My
business was only to shew you meant NOTHING; and this you were brought
to own.