30 A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. Book I. 



deni metaphyfics, thai nothing exifted ? for, if any thing has a real 

 exiftcnce by itfcif, it would exifl; if nothing elfe in the uuivcrfe ex- 

 ifted. 



I know it may be faid, that there would be, in the cafe I fuppofe, 

 a capacity of containing Body, and that this may be confidered as 

 fomething : But I deny that this capacity merely will make Space a 

 Being ; for there is no Being exifting, nor, indeed, can we con- 

 ceive fuch a Being, which is only Capacity ^ and nothing elfe ; for, 

 though Beings have mar./ properties in Capacity only, or Svm[i», not 

 mfy««, as Ariftotle exprefles it, they are always fomething befidcs 

 mere Capacity : And I deny that we have any conception of a 

 being that exifts only Svv»^n. and not at all m^yax. 



It is, however, true, that nothing could have exifted without 

 Space ; and it was for that reafon that Democritus, and, after him, 

 Epicurus, made Space, or a ■vacuum^ one of the principles of Na- 

 ture: For the fame reafon, Ariftotle has ma.de Friv at ioji one of his 

 three principles of Natural things; Matter and Form being the other 

 trvo. But, though privation of one form be, no doubt, neceflary, 

 before Matter can receive another, as a piece of wax or clay cannot 

 receive the form of a globe before it lofes the form of a fquare, or 

 any other form it might have had before ; yet Ariftotle never dreamed 

 that the privation of the fquare was any property of the globe, or 

 ih&t privation was to be reckoned a Being : On the contrary, both 

 he, and his commentator Simplicius, tell us that it is a no Beifig, or 

 a TO /A»i o'v, and is not the prefcnce oi any thing, but the nbfence, though 

 that ahftnce be abfolutely neceflary for the exiftence of any particu- 

 cular thing *. In this way, we may, if we pleafe, confider Space, 

 and fay it is the privation of fiillnefs, or of Body, which it certainly 



• See Aridotle's Phyfics, cap. u!t. 



