VII. That rarefaction cannot be intelligibly explained unless in
the way here proposed.
And indeed I am unable to discover the force of the reasons which
have induced some to say that rarefaction is the result of the
augmentation of the quantity of body, rather than to explain it on
the principle exemplified in the case of a sponge. For although when
air or water is rarefied we do not see any of the pores that are
rendered large, or the new body that is added to occupy them, it is
yet less agreeable to reason to suppose something that is
unintelligible for the purpose of giving a verbal and merely
apparent explanation of the rarefaction of bodies, than to conclude,
because of their rarefaction, that there are pores or distances
between the parts which are increased in size, and filled with some
new body. Nor ought we to refrain from assenting to this
explanation, because we perceive this new body by none of our
senses, for there is no reason which obliges us to believe that we
should perceive by our senses all the bodies in existence. And we
see that it is very easy to explain rarefaction in this manner, but
impossible in any other; for, in fine, there would be, as appears to
me, a manifest contradiction in supposing that any body was
increased by a quantity or extension which it had not before,
without the addition to it of a new extended substance, in other
words, of another body, because it is impossible to conceive any
addition of extension or quantity to a thing without supposing the
addition of a substance having quantity or extension, as will more
clearly appear from what follows.
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