For two bodies must touch each other when
there is nothing between them, and it is manifestly contradictory
for two bodies to be apart, in other words, that there should be a
distance between them, and this distance yet be nothing; for all
distance is a mode of extension, and cannot therefore exist without
an extended substance.
XIX. That this confirms what was said of rarefaction.
After we have thus remarked that the nature of corporeal substance
consists only in its being an extended thing, and that its extension
is not different from that which we attribute to space, however
empty, it is easy to discover the impossibility of any one of its
parts in any way whatsoever occupying more space at one time than at
another, and thus of being otherwise rarefied than in the way
explained above; and it is easy to perceive also that there cannot
be more matter or body in a vessel when it is filled with lead or
gold, or any other body however heavy and hard, than when it but
contains air and is supposed to be empty: for the quantity of the
parts of which a body is composed does not depend on their weight or
hardness, but only on the extension, which is always equal in the
same vase.
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