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What would become of this assertion, if, assuming in my turn the
offensive, I should demonstrate that belief in the existence of
bodies, or, in other words, in the reality of a purely corporeal
nature, is untenable? Matter, they say, is
impenetrable.--Impenetrable by what? I ask. Itself, undoubtedly;
for they would not dare to say spirit, since they would therein
admit what they wish to set aside. Whereupon I raise this double
question: What do you know about it, and what does it signify?
1. Impenetrability, which is pretended to be the definition of
matter, is only an hypothesis of careless naturalists, a gross
conclusion deduced from a superficial judgment. Experience shows
that matter possesses infinite divisibility, infinite
expansibility, porosity without assignable limits, and
permeability by heat, electricity, and magnetism, together
with a power of retaining them indefinitely; affinities,
reciprocal influences, and transformations without number:
qualities, all of them, hardly compatible with the assumption of
an impenetrable aliquid.
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