What is space? “There is no space in void,” exclaimed Leibnitz, after having admitted a void; but when he admitted a void, he had not embroiled himself with Newton, nor disputed with him on the calculus of fluxions, of which Newton was the inventor. This dispute breaking out, there was no longer space or a void for Leibnitz.

Fortunately, whatever may be said by philosophers on these insolvable questions, whether it be for Epicurus, for Gassendi, for Newton, for Descartes, or Rohaut, the laws of motion will be always the same.

Que Rohaut vainement sèche pour concevoir

Comment tout étant plein, tout a pu se mouvoir.

— Boileau, Ep. v, 31-32.

That Rohaut exhausts himself by vainly endeavoring to understand how motion can exist in a plenum will not prevent our vessels from sailing to the Indies, and all motion proceeding with regularity. Pure space, you say, can neither be matter, nor spirit; and as there is nothing in this world but matter and spirit, there can therefore be no space.

So, gentlemen, you assert that there is only matter and spirit, to us who know so little either of the one or the other — a pleasant decision, truly! “There are only two things in nature, and these we know not.” Montezuma reasons more justly in the English tragedy of Dryden: “Why come you here to tell me of the emperor Charles the Fifth? There are but two emperors in the world; he of Peru and myself.” Montezuma spoke of two things with which he was acquainted, but we speak of two things of which we have no precise idea.

We are very pleasant atoms. We make God a spirit in a mode of our own; and because we denominate that faculty spirit, which the supreme, universal, eternal, and all-powerful Being has given us, of combining a few ideas in our little brain, of the extent of six inches more ............