17 Feb. 1815

Didacologia

Art & Science Division

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The attention which it applies to its subjects somatology may either apply indiscriminately to all the properties observable in them, or confine itself to any one or more of them to the exclusion of the rest; in the first case, ageledodiascopic, or, for shortness, ageledoscopic - in the other case, choristodiascopic, or, for shortness, choristoscopic, are the names by which it may respectively be distinguished.

Vacuity, rest, time, figure, quantity - all these form so many distinguishable subjects of choristoscopic somatics.

Of vacuity it may seem that it belongs not to the properties of body, But, be the body what it may, and be the place which, at the time in question, it occupies what it may, it may as easily be conceived to be absent from as present at, and in that place. To be either in or out of any given place is, therefore, among the properties of body; for, if there were no such being as a body, there would be no such distinction as that between place and place.

It is only by abstraction that the idea of rest can be formed any more than that of body: it has for its ground the idea of place. It is the absence of motion, and of motion itself no idea can be formed but what has for its ground the idea of place.

Take at any time into consideration any body, considering it with reference to the place which, at that same time, it occupies; but, from that same place conceive it removed, and into that same place suppose no other body or portion of matter introduced. In this way, and no other, is formed the idea of a vacuum or portion of unoccupied space.

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