an produce
after the supposed annihilation; and it has already been remarked, that
impressions can give rise to no ideas, but to such as resemble them.

Since a body interposed betwixt two others may be supposed to be
annihilated, without producing any change upon such as lie on each
hand of it, it is easily conceived, how it may be created anew, and yet
produce as little alteration. Now the motion of a body has much the same
effect as its creation. The distant bodies are no more affected in the
one case, than in the other. This suffices to satisfy the imagination,
and proves there is no repugnance in such a motion. Afterwards
experience comes in play to persuade us that two bodies, situated in the
manner above-described, have really such a capacity of receiving body
betwixt them, and that there is no obstacle to the conversion of the
invisible and intangible distance into one that is visible and tangible.
However natural that conversion may seem, we cannot be sure it is
practicable, before we have had experience of it.

Thus I seem to have answered the three objections above-mentioned;
though at the same time I am sensible, that few will be satisfyed
with these answers, but will immediately propose new objections and
difficulties. It will probably be said, that my reasoning makes nothing
to the matter in hands and that I explain only the manner in which
objects affect the senses, without endeavouring to account for their
real nature and operations. Though there be nothing visible or tangible
interposed betwixt two bodies, yet we find BY EXPERIENCE, that the
bodies may be placed in the same manner, with regard to the eye, and
require the same motion of the hand in passing from one to the other,
as if divided by something visible and tangible. This invisible and
intangible distance is also found by experience to contain a capacity of
receiving body, or of becoming visible and tangible. Here is the whole
of my system; and in no part of it have I endeavoured to explain the
cause, which separates bodies after this manner, and gives them a
capacity of receiving others betwixt them, without any impulse or
penetration.

I answer this objection, by pleading guilty, and by confessing that my
intention never was to penetrate into the nature of bodies, or explain
the secret causes of their operations. For besides that this belongs not
to my present purpose, I am afraid, that such an enterprise is beyond
the reach of human under