46. If every thing in a room be reduced to nothing, it seems impossible for the walls to remain distant from each other; for the idea of distance implies a medium between the two objects; and nothing, being nothing, cannot be the medium required. If the interval is nothing, there is no distance. To attribute properties to nothing, is to destroy all ideas,--to affirm that a thing may be and not be at the same time,--and consequently to overthrow the foundation of human knowledge. 47. To say that if the contents were annihilated, a negative space would remain, is only to play with words without touching the difficulty to be solved. This negative space is either something or nothing; if it is something, the opinion we are opposing is false; if it is nothing, the difficulty remains the same. 48. But, it may be said, although nothing remains between the surfaces, they still retain the capacity of containing something. To this I reply, that this capacity is not in the surfaces themselves, but in their distance from each other; for if it were in the surfaces, they would still preserve it, no matter how they may be placed, which is absurd. We have not therefore advanced a single step. We must explain what this capacity, or this distance, is; and this is still untouched. 49. Perhaps it may be said that annihilating all that is contained between the surfaces, does not destroy the volume which they form, and the idea of this volume implies the idea of capacity. But I reply, that the idea of volume involves that of distance, and there is no distance if this distance is a pure nothing. 50. In our efforts to surmount these difficulties, another seemingly specious solution offers, but if we examine it we shall find it as weak as the others. Distance, it might be said, is a mere negation of contact, but negation is a pure nothing; therefore this nothing is what we seek. I say this solution is as weak as the others; for, if distance is only the negation of contact, all distances must be equal, because negation cannot be greater or less. The negation of contact is the same whether the surfaces are a million leagues or only the millionth part of an inch distant from each other. This negation, therefore, explains nothing, and the difficulty still remains.