I answer...

I answer, one may as easily suppose a body as a point, if the point be quid reale; if not, it being nothing, one cannot say the extremity or superficies of the world is a foot from nothing; so that be it a point, or body, or what other being one pleases, that is supposed there, it is evidence there is always required some real existence to be the other term of the relation.

And after all the suppositions that can be made, it can never truly be said that the utmost superficies of the world is a foot distant from anything, if there be nothing really existing beyond it, but only that imaginary space.

That which makes us so apt to mistake in this point, I think, is this, that having been all our lifetime accustomed to speak ourselves, and hear all others speak of space, in phrases that import it to be a real thing, as to occupy or take up so much space, we come to be possessed with this prejudice, that it is a real thing, and not a bare relation.

And that which helps to it is, that by constant conversing with real sensible things, which have this relation of distance one to another, which we, by the reason just now mentioned, mistake for a real positive thing, we are apt to think that it as really exists beyond the utmost extent of all bodies, or finite beings, though there be no such beings there to sustain it, as it does here amongst bodies, which is not true.

For though it be true that the black lines drawn on a rule have the relation one to another of an inch distance, they being real sensible things; and though it be also true…