without a meaning, you may put them together as you please without danger
of running into a contradiction. You may say, for example, that twice two
is equal to seven, so long as you declare you do not take the words of
that proposition in their usual acceptation but for marks of you know not
what. And, by the same reason, you may say there is an inert thoughtless
substance without accidents which is the occasion of our ideas. And we
shall understand just as much by one proposition as the other.

80. In the last place, you will say, what if we give up the cause of
material Substance, and stand to it that Matter is an unknown
somewhat--neither substance nor accident, spirit nor idea, inert,
thoughtless, indivisible, immovable, unextended, existing in no place.
For, say you, whatever may be urged against substance or occasion, or any
other positive or relative notion of Matter, has no place at all, so
long as this negative definition of Matter is adhered to. I answer, you
may, if so it shall seem good, use the word "Matter" in the same sense as
other men use "nothing," and so make those terms convertible in your
style. For, after all, this is what appears to me to be the result of
that definition, the parts whereof when I consider with attention, either
collectively or separate from each other, I do not find that there is any
kind of effect or impression made on my mind different from what is
excited by the term nothing.

81. You will reply, perhaps, that in the fore-said definition is included
what doth sufficiently distinguish it from nothing--the positive abstract
idea of quiddity, entity, or existence. I own, indeed, that those who
pretend to the faculty of framing abstract general ideas do talk as if
they had such an idea, which is, say they, the most abstract and general
notion of all; that is, to me, the most incomprehensible of all others.
That there are a great variety of spirits of different orders and