Internal Vs External Space: Numbers are Imaginary

8. The mental size and quantity of something is different from its physical size and quantity.

For example, we can imagine a 10 feet long thing in our minds, even if it does not measure 10 feet in reality.

We can think of the number 10 by itself.

• This 10 will always be then regardless on what we apply it to.

But removing something from 10, or a body’s length, width, or height, will also remove a part of the thing that it is assigned to.

9. The physical substance cannot be clearly conceived without its aetherspace [extension]

Some people distinguish a thing’s substance [idea-body] from its aetherspace [extension] and its physical size.

Such people either:

• mean nothing by the word “substance” or
• they have a confused idea of immaterial substance, which they attribute to material substance

In so doing, they:

• equate physical size to the aetherspace [extension] which they improperly call an “accident.”

This is done so improperly that their words do not match their meanings.

10. What is space or internal place?

Space, or internal place, and the body contained within that space differ only in our thinking.

In fact, the same aetherspace [extension] in length, width, and height that constitutes a body’s [atomic] space also constitutes the body.

Their only difference is that:

• The body has its own space, as aetherspce [extension], that goes with it whenever it changes location.
• But we attribute to space a vague and general extension.

After we remove a body from a location, we do not realize that space goes in to fill that location left by that body.

Instead, we think that the same empty space has always been there and has not come from outside the location to fill that vacated location.

This is because we see that same aetherspace [extension] always there as long as it has the same size, shape, and has not changed location with respect to the external bodies by which we define it.

11. Space is general, aetherspace [extension] is specific

The same aetherspace [extension] which constitutes the nature of a body also constitutes the nature of space.

• The aetherspace is specific.
• Space is general.

Get a stone and remove everything that does not pertain to the nature of body:

• Remove hardness because the stone can be ground into soft powder, yet it will still be a body.
• Remove color since some stones are transparent and have no color.
• Remove weight because we see that fire, though very light, remains a body.
• Remove cold, heat, and other such qualities because we believe that these do not exist intrinsically in the stone

The stone’s nature does not change just because it is hot at one time and cold at another.

Our true idea of the stone is seeing it as a substance extended in length, width, and height.

Length, width, and height is in our idea of space whether:

• space that is filled with bodies [aetherspace]
• but even what we call empty space [spacetime]