ering it as lying between any two bodies or positive beings,
without any consideration whether there be any matter or not between, we
call it distance;--however named or considered, it is always the same
uniform simple idea of space, taken from objects about which our senses
have been conversant; whereof, having settled ideas in our minds, we can
revive, repeat, and add them one to another as often as we will, and
consider the space or distance so imagined, either as filled with solid
parts, so that another body cannot come there without displacing and
thrusting out the body that was there before; or else as void of
solidity, so that a body of equal dimensions to that empty or pure space
may be placed in it, without the removing or expulsion of anything that
was, there.

28. Men differ little in clear, simple ideas.

The knowing precisely what our words stand for, would, I imagine, in
this as well as a great many other cases, quickly end the dispute. 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. 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 of
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;
especially if they be learned, bookish men, devoted to some sect, and
accustomed to the language of it, and have learned to talk after others.
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 one
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 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 NECESSA