th both extension and solidity together; he will
as easily demonstrate, that there may be a vacuum or space without a
body, as Descartes demonstrated the contrary. Because the idea to which
he gives the name space being barely the simple one of extension, and
the idea to which he gives the name body being the complex idea of
extension and resistibility or solidity, together in the same
subject, these two ideas are not exactly one and the same, but in the
understanding as distinct as the ideas of one and two, white and black,
or as of CORPOREITY and HUMANITY, if I may use those barbarous terms:
and therefore the predication of them in our minds, or in words standing
for them, is not identical, but the negation of them one of another;
[viz. this proposition: 'Extension or space is not body,' is] as true
and evidently certain as this maxim, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE SAME THING
TO BE AND NOT TO BE, [can make any proposition.]

14. But they prove not the Existance of things without us.

But yet, though both these propositions (as you see) may be equally
demonstrated, viz. that there may be a vacuum, and that there cannot be
a vacuum, by these two certain principles, viz. WHAT IS, IS, and THE
SAME THING CANNOT BE AND NOT BE: yet neither of these principles will
serve to prove to us, that any, or what bodies do exist: for that we are
left to our senses to discover to us as far as they can. Those universal
and self-evident principles being only our constant, clear, and distinct
knowledge of our own ideas, more general or comprehensive, can assure us
of nothing that passes without the mind: their certainty is founded
only upon the knowledge we have of each idea by itself, and of its
distinction from others, about which we cannot be mistaken whilst they
are in our minds; though we may be and often are mistaken when we retain
the names without the ideas; or use them confusedly, sometimes for
one and sometimes for another idea. In which cases the force of these
axioms, reaching only to the sound, and not the signification of the
words, serves only to lead us into confusion, mistake, and error. [It is
to show men that these maxims, however cried up for the great guards of
truth, will not secure them from error in a careless loose use of their
words, that I have made this remark. In all that is here suggested
concerning their little use for the improvement of knowledge, or
dangerous use in undetermined ideas, I have been far enough