s,
where the particles of matter are 100,000,000 less than a mustard-seed,
there must also be a space void of solid matter as big as 100,000,000
part of a mustard-seed; for if it hold in the one it will hold in the
other, and so on IN INFINITUM. And let this void space be as little as
it will, it destroys the hypothesis of plenitude. 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.

24. The Ideas of Space and Body distinct.

But the question being here,--Whether the idea of space or extension be
the same with the idea of body? it is not necessary to prove the real
existence of a VACUUM, but the idea of it; which it is plain men have
when they inquire and dispute whether there be a VACUUM or no. For if
they had not the idea of space without body, they could not make a
question about its existence: and if their idea of body did not include
in it something more than the bare idea of space, they could have no
doubt about the plenitude of the world; and it would be as absurd to
demand, whether there were space without body, as whether there were
space without space, or body without body, since these were but
different names of the same idea.

25. Extension being inseparable from Body, proves it not the same.

It is true, the idea of extension joins itself so inseparably with all
visible, and most tangible qualities, that it suffers us to SEE no one,
or FEEL very few external objects, without taking in impressions of
extension too. This readiness of extension to make itself be taken
notice of so constantly with other ideas, has been the occasion, I
guess, that some have made the whole essence of body to consist in
extension; which is not much to be wondered at, since some have had
their minds, by their eyes and touch, (the busiest of all our senses,)
so filled with the idea of extension, and, as it were, wholly possessed
with it, that they allowed no existence to anything that had not
extension. I shall not now argue with those men, who take the measure
and possibility of all being only from