ABSTRACT

Body and space being distinguished as resistant extension and non-resistant extension, it is impossible to treat of extension in any of its modes, without virtually treating of them both. Though, in any subjective examination of our mental processes, we may fail in finding any anterior elements of thought out of which to construct the idea; yet, by examining mental processes objectively, we may gain the means of conceiving how our own consciousness of space was originally constructed. Not only is it that the idea of space involves the idea of coexistence; but it is that the idea of coexistence involves the idea of space. Fundamentally, space and coexistence are two sides of the same cognition. A relation of coexistence implies two somethings that coexist. Two somethings cannot occupy absolutely the same point in space. And hence coexistence implies space.