ESSAY I. 333 mode? have not this substance and mode one and the same idea ? Are they not the very same individual entity or being ? llave they not the same individual extension ? and equally self- ,existing, equally real or unreal ? If space be any thing real,' and yet a mode, it looks so much like the very substance itself by the properties attributed to it, that I think no man should ever take it for a mere mode, unless he can tell us how it differs from. the substance which supports it, and how it depends for existence on that substance. " O, (say our opponents) Space is a mere mode, but the substance that supports it is utterly unknown, as all substances are." Happy asylum for the learned to retreat to ! This shelter of darkness ! this invented idea of an unknown and unknowable thing called substance! how well does it screen and bide a mo- dern disputant from light and argument, when they pursue him so close that he has no other refuge! Yet even this dark shelter I have endeavoured to break open and demolish in the next essay. But let us proceed now in the fair enquiry, whether space be a substance or a mode. Some Philosophers, particularly Mr. Leibnitz, have fancied space to be a sort of relative mode, and call it the " Order of co- existent beings or bodies, which order is their general situation or distance : As place is the relation which one particular body has to the situation of others, so space is that order of situation which results from all places taken together." Thus, after a manner which is unintelligible to me, they go on to explain their idea of space. But how can space be a mere order or mode of bodies, when itself seems to have parts extraneous to all bodies ; both as it is interspersed among them in the world, and reaches beyond the limits of this world also? Can space be the order of bodies, when space is where the bodies are not ? And when space does not depend for its existenceon the existence of bodies, can space be a relation of bodies ; when it is and ever would he the same idea, if no body ever had been, or if all bodies ceased to be? Or let us put the argument thus : Space, if it be a mode of being, must either bean absolute or a relative mode; but it can- not be either of these. For all absolute suedes want some subject proper for them to inhere in, or to support them in being : All relative modes or relations require some other being, or some subject to which they must relate: But space neither wants any subject to inhere in, or relate to : It wants no other being that we can conceive to make it exist. Try to suppose all beings anni- hilated, yet you cannot conceive space to be annihilated: It seems to be obstinately existent and self - subsisting : You cannot nullify it, even in thought, thought you should nullify all other substances, body and mind, with all their modes. Sanely this can never be
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