Among the modern authors, Balmes, with whom a number of other philosophers agree on this subject, gives us his theory of space in the following propositions:
“1st. Space is nothing but the extension of bodies themselves.
“2d. Space and extension are identical notions.
“3d. The parts which we conceive in space are particular extensions, considered as existing under their own limits.
“4th. The notion of infinite space is the notion of extension in all its generality—that is, as conceived by the abstraction of all limits.
“5th. Indefinite space is a figment of our imagination, which strives to follow the intellectual process of generalization by destroying all limits.
“6th. Where no body exists, there is no space.
“7th. Distance is the interposition of a body, and nothing more.
“8th. If the body interposed vanishes, all distance vanishes, and contiguity, or absolute contact, will be the result.
“9th. If there were two bodies only, they would not be distant; at least, we could not intellectually conceive them as distant.