5. On solidity depend impulse, resistance, and protrusion. By this
idea of solidity is the extension of body distinguished from the
extension of space:- the extension of body being nothing but the
cohesion or continuity of solid, separable, movable parts; and the
extension of space, the continuity of unsolid, inseparable, and
immovable parts. Upon the solidity of bodies also depend their
mutual impulse, resistance, and protrusion. Of pure space then, and
solidity, there are several (amongst which I confess myself one) who
persuade themselves they have clear and distinct ideas; and that
they can think on space, without anything in it that resists or is
protruded by body. This is the idea of pure space, which they think
they have as clear as any idea they can have of the extension of body:
the idea of the distance between the opposite parts of a concave
superficies being equally as clear without as with the idea of any
solid parts between: and on the other side, they persuade themselves
that they have, distinct from that of pure space, the idea of
something that fills space, that can be protruded by the impulse of
other bodies, or resist their motion. If there be others that have not
these two ideas distinct, but confound them, and make but one of them,
I know not how men, who have the same idea under different names, or
different ideas under the same name, can in that case talk with one
another; any more than a man who, not being blind or deaf, has
distinct ideas of the colour of scarlet and the sound of a trumpet,
could discourse concerning scarlet colour with the blind man I
mentioned in another place, who fancied that the idea of scarlet was
like the sound of a trumpet.
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