PErceiving, upon a review, of the foregoing Paper, that the difficulty and importance of the Subject, has seduc’d me to spend many more words about it that I at first design’d· twill not now be amiss to give you this short Summary of what came into my mind to recommend to you the Mechanical Phelosophy, and obviate your fears of seeing it supplanted; having first premis’d once for all, that presupposing the Creation and general Providence of God, I pretend to treat but of things Corporeal, and do abstract in this Paper from Immaterial Beings, (which otherwise I very willingly admit,) and all Agents and Operations Miraculous or Supernatural.
I. Of the Principles of things Corporeal, none can be more few, without being insufficient, or more primary than Matter and Motion.
II. The natural and genuine effect of variously determin’d Motion in portions of Matter, is, to divide it into parts of differing sizes, and shapes, and to put them into different Motions, and the Consequences, that flow from these, in a World fram’d as ours is, are, as to the separate fragments, posture, order, and situation, and, as to the Conventions of many of them, peculiar Compositions and Contextures.
III. The parts of Matter endow’d with these Catholick affections are by various associations reduc’d to Natural Bodies of several kinds, according to the plenty of the Matter, and the various Compositions and Decompositions of the Principles; which all suppose the common matter they diversifie: And these several kinds of Bodies, by vertue of their Motion, Rest, and other Mechanical Affections, which fit them to act on, and suffer from, one another, become indow’d with several kinds of Qualities, (whereof some are call’d Manifest, and some Occult,) and those that act upon the peculiarly fram’d Organs of Sense, whose Perceptions by the Animadversive faculty of the Soul are Sensations.
IV. These Principles, Matter, Motion, (to which Rest is related) Bigness, Shape, Posture, Order, Texture, being so simple, clear, and comprehensive, are applicable to all the real Phaenomena of Nature, which seem not explicable by any other not consistent with ours. For, if recourse be had to an Immaterial Principle or Agent, it may be such an one, as is not intelligible; and however it will not enable us to explain the Phaenomena, because its way of working upon things Material would probably be more difficult to be Physically made out, than a Mechanical account of the Phaenomena. And, notwithstanding the Immateriality of a created Agent, we cannot conceive, how it should produce changes in a Body, without the help of Mechanical Principles, especially Local Motion; and accordingly we find not, that the Reasonable Soul in Man is able to produce what changes it pleases in the Body, but is confin’d to such, as it may produce by determining or guiding the Motions of the Spirits, and other parts of the Body, subservient to voluntary Motion.
V. And if the Agents or active Principles resorted to, be not Immaterial, but of a Corporeal Nature, they must either in effect be the same with the Corporeal Principles above-nam’d; or, because of the great Universality & Simplicity of ours, the new ones propos’d must be less general than they, and consequently capable of being subordinated or reduc’d to ours, which by various Compositions may afford matter to several Hypotheses, and by several Coalitions afford minute Concretions exceedingly numerous and durable, and consequently fit to become the Elementary Ingredients of more compounded Bodies, being in most Trials Similar, and as it were the Radical parts, which may, after several manners, be diversified; as in Latin, the Themes are by Prepositions, Terminations, &c. and in Hebrew, the Roots by the Haeemantic Letters· So that the fear, that so much of a New Physical Hypothesis, as is true, will overthrow or make useless the Mechanical Principles, is, as if one should fear, that there will be a Language propos’d, that is discordant from, or not reducible to, the Letters of the Alphabet.
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