Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/286

210 out. The power of enlarging his idea of space by farther additions remaining still the same, he hence takes the idea of infinite space.

§ 4. This, I think, is the way whereby the mind gets the idea of infinite space. It is a quite different consideration to examine whether the mind has the idea of such a boundless space actually existing, since our ideas are not always proofs of the existence of things; but yet, since this comes here in our way, I suppose I may say, that we are apt to think that space in itself is actually boundless; to which imagination, the idea of space or expansion of itself naturally leads us. For it being considered by us either as the extension of body, or as existing by itself, without any solid matter taking it up (for of such a void space we have not only the idea, but I have proved, as I think, from the motion of body, its necessary existence), it is impossible the mind should be ever able to find or suppose any end of it, or be stopped any where in its progress in this space, how far soever it extends its thoughts. Any bounds made with body, even adamantine walls, are so far from putting a stop to the mind in its farther progress in space and extension, that it rather facilitates and enlarges it; for so far as that body reaches, so far no one can doubt of extension: and when we are come to the utmost extremity of body, what is there that can there put a stop and satisfy the mind that it is at the end of space, when it perceives that it is not; nay, when it is satisfied that body itself can move into it? For if it be necessary for the motion of body, that there should be an empty space, though ever so little, here amongst bodies; and if it be possible for body to move in or through that empty space (nay, it is impossible for any particle of matter to move but into an empty space), the same possibility of a body's moving into a void space, beyond the utmost bounds of body, as well as into a void space interspersed amongst bodies, will always remain clear