Wherefore,
absolutely speaking, the smallest extended particle is always
divisible, since it is such of its very nature.
XXI. It is thus also demonstrated that the extension of the world
is indefinite.
We further discover that this world or the whole (universitas) of
corporeal substance, is extended without limit, for wherever we fix
a limit, we still not only imagine beyond it spaces indefinitely
extended, but perceive these to be truly imaginable, in other words,
to be in reality such as we imagine them; so that they contain in
them corporeal substance indefinitely extended, for, as has been
already shown at length, the idea of extension which we conceive in
any space whatever is plainly identical with the idea of corporeal
substance.
XXII. It also follows that the matter of the heavens and earth is
the same, and that there cannot be a plurality of worlds.
And it may also be easily inferred from all this that the earth and
heavens are made of the same matter; and that even although there
were an infinity of worlds, they would all be composed of this
matter; from which it follows that a plurality of worlds is
impossible, because we clearly conceive that the matter whose nature
consists only in its being an extended substance, already wholly
occupies all the imaginable spaces where these other worlds could
alone be, and we cannot find in ourselves the idea of any other
matter.
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