It is because there is such a system of relations that we can speak of things as of this shape or of that, as great or small, as near or far, as here or there.
Now, I ask, is there any reason to believe that, when the plain man speaks of _space_, the word means to him anything more than this system of actual and possible relations of arrangement among the touch things that constitute his real world?
He may talk sometimes as though space were some kind of a _thing_, but he does not really think of it as a thing.
This is evident from the mere fact that he is so ready to make about it affirmations that he would not venture to make about things.

It does not strike him as inconceivable that a given material object should be annihilated; it does strike him as inconceivable that a portion of space should be blotted out of existence.

Why this difference?
Is it not explained when we recognize that space is but a name for all the actual and possible relations of arrangement in which things in the touch world may stand?
We cannot drop out some of these relations and yet keep _space_, _i.e._ the system of relations which we had before.
That this is what space means, the plain man may not recognize explicitly, but he certainly seems to recognize it implicitly in what he says about space.

Men are rarely inclined to admit that space is a _thing_ of any kind, nor are they much more inclined to regard it as a quality of a thing.

Of what could it be the quality?
And if space really were a thing of any sort, would it not be the height of presumption for a man, in the absence of any direct evidence from observation, to say how much there is of it--to declare it infinite?
Men do not hesitate to say that space must be infinite.