Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/245

Ch. 13. of space existing without matter, must not only make body infinite, but must also deny a power in God to annihilate any part of matter. No one, I suppose, will deny that God can put an end to all motion that is in matter, and fix all the bodies of the universe in a perfect quiet and rest, and continue them so long as he pleases. Whoever then will allow that God can, during such a general rest, annihilate either this book, or the body of him that reads it, must necessarily admit the possibility of a vacuum; for it is evident that the space that was filled by the parts of the annihilated body will still remain, and be a space without body: for the circumambient bodies being in perfect rest, are a wall of adamant, and in that state make it a perfect impossibility for any other body to get into that space. And indeed the necessary motion of one particle of matter into the place from whence another particle of matter is removed, is but a consequence from the supposition of plenitude; which will therefore need some better proof than a supposed matter of fact, which experiment can never make out: our own clear and distinct ideas plainly satisfying us that there is no necessary connexion between space and solidity, since we can conceive the one without the other. And those who dispute for or against a vacuum, do thereby confess they have distinct ideas of vacuum and plenum, i. e. that they have an idea of extension void of solidity, though they deny its existence, or else they dispute about nothing at all. For they who so much alter the signification of words as to call extension body, and consequently make the whole essence of body to be nothing but pure extension without solidity, must talk absurdly whenever they speak of vacuum, since it is impossible for extension to be without extension: for vacuum, whether we affirm or deny its existence, signifies space without body, whose very existence no one can deny to be possible, who will not make matter infinite, and