But granting Matter to be possible, yet, upon that
account merely, it can have no more claim to existence than a
golden mountain, or a centaur.
. I acknowledge it; but still you do not deny it is
possible; and that which is possible, for aught you know, may
actually exist.
. I deny it to be possible; and have, if I mistake
not, {225} evidently proved, from your own concessions, that it
is not. In the common sense of the word , is there any
more implied than an extended, solid, figured, moveable
substance, existing without the mind? And have not you
acknowledged, over and over, that you have seen evident reason
for denying the possibility of such a substance?
. True, but that is only one sense of the term
.
. But is it not the only proper genuine received
sense? And, if Matter, in such a sense, be proved impossible, may
it not be thought with good grounds absolutely impossible? Else
how could anything be proved impossible? Or, indeed, how could
there be any proof at all one way or other, to a man who takes
the liberty to unsettle and change the common signification of
words?
.
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