He that shall fill a yielding soft body well with air or
water, will quickly find its resistance. And he that thinks that nothing
but bodies that are hard can keep his hands from approaching one
another, may be pleased to make a trial, with the air inclosed in a
football. The experiment, I have been told, was made at Florence, with
a hollow globe of gold filled with water, and exactly closed; which
further shows the solidity of so soft a body as water. For the golden
globe thus filled, being put into a press, which was driven by the
extreme force of screws, the water made itself way through the pores of
that very close metal, and finding no room for a nearer approach of its
particles within, got to the outside, where it rose like a dew, and so
fell in drops, before the sides of the globe could be made to yield to
the violent compression of the engine that squeezed it.
5. On Solidity depend Impulse, Resistance and Protrusion.
By this idea of solidity is the extension of body distinguished from
the extension of space:--the extension of body being nothing but the
cohesion or continuity of solid, separable, movable parts; and the
extension of space, the continuity of unsolid, inseparable, and
immovable parts.
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