ies come to meet;
whereby, I think, we have the clear idea of space without solidity. For
(not to go so far as annihilation of any particular body) I ask, whether
a man cannot have the idea of the motion of one single body alone,
without any other succeeding immediately into its place? I think it is
evident he can: the idea of motion in one body no more including the
idea of motion in another, than the idea of a square figure in one body
includes the idea of a square figure in another. I do not ask, whether
bodies do so EXIST, that the motion of one body cannot really be without
the motion of another. To determine this either way, is to beg the
question for or against a VACUUM. But my question is,--whether one
cannot have the IDEA of one body moved, whilst others are at rest? And I
think this no one will deny. If so, then the place it deserted gives us
the idea of pure space without solidity; whereinto any other body may
enter, without either resistance or protrusion of anything. When the
sucker in a pump is drawn, the space it filled in the tube is certainly
the same whether any other body follows the motion of the sucker or not:
nor does it imply a contradiction that, upon the motion of one body,
another that is only contiguous to it should not follow it. The
necessity of such a motion is built only on the supposition that the
world is full; but not on the distinct IDEAS of space and solidity,
which are as different as resistance and not resistance, protrusion and
not protrusion. And that men have ideas of space without a body, their
very disputes about a vacuum plainly demonstrate, as is shown in another
place.
4. From Hardness.
Solidity is hereby also differenced from hardness, in that solidity
consists in repletion, and so an utter exclusion of other bodies out of
the space it possesses: but hardness, in a firm cohesion of the parts of
matter, making up masses of a sensible bulk, so that the whole does not
easily change its figure. And indeed, hard and soft are names that we
give to things only in relation to the constitutions of our own bodies;
that being generally called hard by us, which will put us to pain sooner
than change figure by the pressure of any part of our bodies; and that,
on the contrary, soft, which changes the situation of its parts upon an
easy and unpainful touch.
But this difficulty of changing the situation of the sensible parts
amongst themselves, or of the figure of the whole, gives
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