There are no Indivisible Atoms

19. This confirms what was said of Decompression.

The nature of corporeal substance consists only in its being an extended [metaphysical] thing.

Its extension [metaphysical space] is the same as space, however empty.

It is impossibile for any of its parts to occupy more space at one time than at another.

A vessel filled with gold has the same amount of matter when it is empty and filled with air.

This is because the quantity of particles that a body is composed of does not depend on their weight or hardness.

• It only depends on the body’s metaphysical space, which is always equal in the same vase.

20. From this, the non-existence of indivisible atoms may be demonstrated

This means that there are no such thing as indivisible atoms or indivisible matter particles.

This is because those particles are have metaphysical space.

This allows us to divide them into smaller parts in our thought. *

Anything that we can divide in thought is thereby divisible.

Therefore, if we judged it to be indivisible, then our judgment would not be in harmony with our knowledge of the thing.

We suppose that God had reduced any particle of matter to extreme smallness that it did not admit of being further divided.

• But it should not be called ‘indivisible’
• Any creature might be unable to divide it, but God can.

Thus, absolutely speaking, the smallest extended particle is always divisible, since it is such of its very nature.

21. The metaphysical space of the world is indefinite

This world or the universe of corporeal substance, is extended without limit.

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.

In this way, they contain in them corporeal substance indefinitely extended.

This is because the idea of metaphysical space which we conceive in any physical space is plainly identical with the idea of corporeal idea [substance].

22. It also follows that the aethereal susbtance of space and matter is the same, and that there cannot be a plurality of worlds*

The earth and heavens are made of the same substance.

Although there were an infinity of worlds*, they would all be composed of this substance.

It follows that a plurality of worlds, or many [causal] universes, is impossible.

This is because matter already totally occupies all the imaginable spaces where these other worlds could be.

We cannot find in ourselves the idea of any other matter.

23. All the variety of matter, or the diversity of its forms, depends on motion.

There is therefore just one kind of substance in the whole universe. This we know only by its metaphysical space.

All the properties we distinctly perceive to belong to it are reducible to its capacity of being divided and moved according to its parts.

Accordingly, it is capable of all those affections which we perceive can arise from the motion of its parts.

This is because the partition of matter in thought makes no change in it.

But all variation of it, or diversity of form, depends on motion.

The philosophers even seem universally to have observed this. They said that:

• nature was the principle of motion and rest
• ’nature’ meant how all corporeal things become such as they are found in experience.