SCIENCE 387 



All corporeal bodies are commonly spoken of as 

 occupying some " portion of space," but we have no 

 evidence of the existence of any such thing as " space? 

 and the conception of ether* everywhere diffused, does 

 away with all need for calling up such a phantom of the 

 imagination. Things are " extended," but there is no 

 such thing as " extension," and when we think of the 

 latter, we always vaguely imagine some extended body, 

 When we speak of " space," however, we do not mentally 

 refer to any extended body ; what we mean is the quality 

 of extension, as completely abstracted from all bodies 

 whatever and thought of purely by itself. " Extension " 

 has, of course, no existence in itself as extension ; though 

 it is real and objective as a quality of real extended 

 objects. " Space " is altogether ideal, an abstraction 

 from abstractions, and when we speak of bodies " occu- 

 pying space," we really refer to the exclusion of one 

 extended body by another. " Space," then, though 

 there is no such thing as space, is a true idea which 

 signifies the extension of all extended things taken 

 together and considered abstractedly. This truth does- 

 away with and explains the problem which has puzzled 

 so many is space endless or not? For it is not 

 evident that there must be an endless succession of 

 extended bodies in all directions, while space cannot 

 go beyond extended bodies, since it is nothing but the 

 abstract idea of their common extension and mutual 

 exclusion. That we cannot imagine a boundary to 

 space is simply due to our having had no such expe- 

 rience, for we can never imagine anything of which 

 we have had no sort of experience; and we have 



* See ante, p. 93. 



