The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 01 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
6. Space, or place, that is possessed by a body, is called _full_, and
that which is not so possessed, is called _empty_.
[Sidenote: Here, there, somewhere, what they signify.]
7. _Here_, _there_, _in the country_, _in the city_, and other the like
names, by which answer is made to the question _where is it?_ are not
properly names of place, nor do they of themselves bring into the mind
the place that is sought; for _here_ and _there_ signify nothing, unless
the thing be shewn at the same time with the finger or something else;
but when the eye of him that seeks, is, by pointing or some other sign,
directed to the thing sought, the place of it is not hereby defined by
him that answers, but found out by him that asks the question. Now such
shewings as are made by words only, as when we say, _in the country_, or
_in the city_, are some of greater latitude than others, as when we say,
_in the country_, _in the city_, _in such a street_, _in a house_, _in
the chamber_, _in bed_, &c. For these do, by little and little, direct
the seeker nearer to the proper place; and yet they do not determine the
same, but only restrain it to a lesser space, and signify no more, than
that the place of the thing is within a certain space designed by those
words, as a part is in the whole. And all such names, by which answer is
made to the question _where?_ have, for their highest _genus_, the name
_somewhere_. From whence it may be understood, that whatsoever is
somewhere, is in some place properly so called, which place is part of
that greater space that is signified by some of these names, _in the
country_, _in the city_, or the like.
[Sidenote: Many bodies cannot be in one place, nor one body in many
places.]
8. A body, and the magnitude, and the place thereof, are divided by one
and the same act of the mind; for, to divide an extended body, and the
extension thereof, and the idea of that extension, which is place, is
the same with dividing any one of them; because they are coincident, and
it cannot be done but by the mind, that is by the division of space.
From whence it is manifest, that neither two bodies can be together in
the same place, nor one body be in two places at the same time. Not two
bodies in the same place; because when a body that fills its whole place
is divided into two, the place itself is divided into two also, so that
there will be two places. Not one body in two places; for the place that
a body fills being divided into two, the placed body will be also
divided into two; for, as I said, a place and the body that fills that
place, are divided both together; and so there will be two bodies.
[Sidenote: Contiguous and continual, what they are.]