matter, the idea in
our minds would serve for the one as well as the other. But we are so
far from being admitted into the secrets of nature, that we scarce so
much as ever approach the first entrance towards them. For we are wont
to consider the substances we meet with, each of them, as an entire
thing by itself, having all its qualities in itself, and independent of
other things; overlooking, for the most part, the operations of those
invisible fluids they are encompassed with, and upon whose motions and
operations depend the greatest part of those qualities which are taken
notice of in them, and are made by us the inherent marks of distinction
whereby we know and denominate them. Put a piece of gold anywhere by
itself, separate from the reach and influence of all other bodies,
it will immediately lose all its colour and weight, and perhaps
malleableness too; which, for aught I know, would be changed into a
perfect friability. Water, in which to us fluidity is an essential
quality, left to itself, would cease to be fluid. But if inanimate
bodies owe so much of their present state to other bodies without them,
that they would not be what they appear to us were those bodies that
environ them removed; it is yet more so in vegetables, which are
nourished, grow, and produce leaves, flowers, and seeds, in a constant
succession. And if we look a little nearer into the state of animals,
we shall find that their dependence, as to life, motion, and the
most considerable qualities to be observed in them, is so wholly on
extrinsical causes and qualities of other bodies that make no part of
them, that they cannot subsist a moment without them: though yet those
bodies on which they depend are little taken notice of, and make no part
of the complex ideas we frame of those animals. Take the air but for a
minute from the greatest part of living creatures, and they presently
lose sense, life, and motion. This the necessity of breathing has forced
into our knowledge. But how many other extrinsical and possibly very
remote bodies do the springs of these admirable machines depend on,
which are not vulgarly observed, or so much as thought on; and how many
are there which the severest inquiry can never discover? The inhabitants
of this spot of the universe, though removed so many millions of
miles from the sun, yet depend so much on the duly tempered motion of
particles coming from or agitated by it, that were this earth removed
but a small