ESSAY 11. 363 matter itself be destroyed or annihilated ; nor can this be dimin- ished or encreased, but by diminishing or increasing the matter. In the same manner when wé think of a man that has a power of remembering, of inventing, or of composing well, or of moving his limbs, we call these powers modes, properties, or qualities; we observe that in sickness and disorders of animal nature, a man may in a great measure lose these powers, and yet his soul or spirit continue the same in substance still; and therefore we suppose the powers of a soul universally to be all qualities; whereas in truth the power of thinking, i. e. of per- ceiving and willing, is never loseable ; it remains as long as the soul continues a soul ; and therefore this power of thinking may be the very subject or substance of the soul, in which all other powers of the soul inhere. There is yet a third reason why we are so ready to make solid extension to be two mere qualities of body or matter, ra- ther than the substance of it; and that is, that we fancy them to be two very different things in the essence of body ; and that solidity maybe destroyed, and yet the extensionremain, and be- come empty space. So that solidity looks like a sort of quality, which maybe, or may not be added to the same individual por- tion of extension : Whereas in truth solidity and extension con- sidered in body, are but as one thing ; for if you take away the extension, I am sure solidity is entirely lost; and if you destroy the solidity that very extension and dimension of that body is also destroyed and lost, and there remains nothing but emptiness and void space; which according tomy best opinion is a mere nothing or an abstract idea. When therefore you speak of superadding solidity or extension, or making body of it instead of space, you do really in your ideas only introduce the substance of body, where before there was mere emptiness, or nothing at all. So- lidity in its own nature, howsoever the name of it may sound, is really a thing too solid and substantial to be superadded as a mere quality to the extension of space; for the solid itself has an individual extension or dimensions of its own, very.dif-, ferent from the supposed extension of space. Nor can this superadded quality of solidity turn space into body in any other sense, than by bringing in a real substancein the room of a mere nothing. Thus I have pointed out some of the causes and springs of our mistake in this matter. Now let it be observed, that having been wont to conceive these ideas of thinkingpower and of solid extension, in our common and familiar way of discourse, under theform of qualities, when we grow learned, we range them under the head of qualities, modes or properties in logic: which want substances to support them; and thereby we are more confirmed in supposing there must be some other substratum or
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