An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
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 anywhere 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
further 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 and evident: the idea of empty pure
space, whether within or beyond the confines of all bodies, being
exactly the same, differing not in nature, though in bulk; and there
being nothing to hinder body from moving into it. So that wherever the
mind places itself by any thought, either amongst, or remote from all
bodies, it can, in this uniform idea of space, nowhere find any bounds,
any end; and so must necessarily conclude it, by the very nature and
idea of each part of it, to be actually infinite.
5. And so of Duration.
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