The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World

We most humbly beg your Majesties pardon, replied they; for we could not chuse but laugh, when we heard of a colourless Body. Why, said the Empress, Colour is onely an accident, which is an immaterial thing, and has no being of it self, but in another body. Those, replied they, that informed your Majesty thus, surely their rational motions were very irregular; For how is it possible, that a Natural nothing can have a being in Nature? If it be no substance, it cannot have a being, and if no being, it is nothing; Wherefore the distinction between subsisting of it self, and subsisting in another body, is a meer nicety, and non-sense, for there is nothing in Nature that can subsist of, or by it self, (I mean singly) by reason all parts of Nature are composed in one body, and though they may be infinitely divided, commixed, and changed in their particular, yet in general, parts cannot be separated from parts as long as Nature lasts; nay, we might as probably affirm, that Infinite Nature would be as soon destroyed, as that one Atom could perish; and therefore your Majesty may firmly believe, that there is no Body without colour, nor no Colour without body; for colour, figure, place, magnitude, and body, are all but one thing, without any separation or abstraction from each other.