I thought philosophers might be allowed to speak more
accurately than the vulgar, and were not always confined to the
common acceptation of a term.
. But this now mentioned is the common received sense
among philosophers themselves. But, not to insist on that, have
you not been allowed to take Matter in what sense you pleased?
And have you not used this privilege in the utmost extent;
sometimes entirely changing, at others leaving out, or putting
into the definition of it whatever, for the present, best served
your design, contrary to all the known rules of reason and logic?
And hath not this shifting, unfair method of yours spun out our
dispute to an unnecessary length; Matter having been particularly
examined, and by your own confession refuted in each of those
senses? And can any more be required to prove the absolute
impossibility of a thing, than the proving it impossible in every
particular sense that either you or any one else understands it
in?
. But I am not so thoroughly satisfied that you have
proved the impossibility of Matter, in the last most obscure
abstracted and indefinite sense.
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