since some have had their minds, by their eyes and touch, (the busiest of all our senses,) so filled with the idea of extension, and, as it were, wholly possessed with it, that they allowed no existence to anything that had not extension.  I shall not now argue with those men, who take the measure and possibility of all being only from their narrow and gross imaginations:  but having here to do only with those who conclude the essence of body to be extension, because they say they cannot imagine any sensible quality of any body without extension,—­I shall desire them to consider, that, had they reflected on their ideas of tastes and smells as much as on those of sight and touch; nay, had they examined their ideas of hunger and thirst, and several other pains, they would have found that they included in them no idea of extension at all, which is but an affection of body, as well as the rest, discoverable by our senses, which are scarce acute enough to look into the pure essences of things.

26.  Essences of Things.

If those ideas which are constantly joined to all others, must therefore be concluded to be the essence of those things which have constantly those ideas joined to them, and are inseparable from them; then unity is without doubt the essence of everything.  For there is not any object of sensation or reflection which does not carry with it the idea of one:  but the weakness of this kind of argument we have already shown sufficiently.

27.  Ideas of Space and Solidity distinct.

To conclude:  whatever men shall think concerning the existence of a vacuum, this is plain to me—­that we have as clear an idea of space distinct from solidity, as we have of solidity distinct from motion, or motion from space.  We have not any two more distinct ideas; and we can as easily conceive space without solidity, as we can conceive body or space without motion, though it be never so certain that neither body nor motion can exist without space.  But whether any one will take space to be only a relation resulting from the existence of other beings at a distance; or whether they will think the words of the most knowing King Solomon, ‘The heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee;’ or those more emphatical ones of the inspired philosopher St. Paul, ‘In him we live, move, and have our being,’ are to be understood in a literal sense, I leave every one to consider:  only our idea of space is, I think, such as I have mentioned, and distinct from that of body.  For, whether we consider, in matter itself, the distance of its coherent solid parts, and call it, in respect of those solid parts, extension; or whether, considering it as lying between the extremities of any body in its several dimensions, we call it length, breadth, and thickness; or else, considering it as lying between any two bodies or positive beings, without any consideration whether there be any matter or not between, we call it distance;—­however