HYL.  I acknowledge it; but still you do not deny it is possible; and that which is possible, for aught you know, may actually exist.

Phil.  I deny it to be possible; and have, if I mistake not, evidently proved, from your own concessions, that it is not.  In the common sense of the word matter, 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?

HYL.  True, but that is only one sense of the term matter.

Phil.  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?

HYL.  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.

Phil.  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?

HYL.  But I am not so thoroughly satisfied that you have proved the impossibility of Matter, in the last most obscure abstracted and indefinite sense.

Phil. .  When is a thing shewn to be impossible?

HYL.  When a repugnancy is demonstrated between the ideas comprehended in its definition.

Phil.  But where there are no ideas, there no repugnancy can be demonstrated between ideas?

HYL.  I agree with you.

Phil.  Now, in that which you call the obscure indefinite sense of the word matter, it is plain, by your own confession, there was included no idea at all, no sense except an unknown sense; which is the same thing as none.  You are not, therefore, to expect I should prove a repugnancy between ideas, where there are no ideas; or the impossibility of Matter taken in an unknown sense, that is, no sense at all.  My business was only to shew you meant nothing; and this you were brought to own.  So that, in all your various senses, you have been shewed either to mean nothing at all, or, if anything, an absurdity.  And if this be not sufficient to prove the impossibility of a thing, I desire you will let me know what is.