truth nor falsehood; though the same relations still between the same ideas, is a foundation of the immutability of truth* in the same propositions, whenever made. 23. What wonder is it that the same ideat should always be the same idea? For if the word triangle be supposed to have the same signification always, that is all this amounts to, 24. I "desire to know what things they are that God has prepared for them that love him?" Therefore I have some knowledge of them already, though they be such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man to conceive." 25. If I have all things actually present to my mind," why do I not know all things distinctly? 26. He that considers the force of such ways of speaking as these: "I desire it—pray give it me-She was afraid of the snake, and ran away trembling"-will easily conceive how the meaning of the words desire and fear, and so all those which stand for intellectual notions, may be taught by words of sensible significations. 27. This, however otherwise in experience, should be so on this hypothesis: v. g., the uniformity of the ideas that different men have when they use such words as these, glory, worship, religion, are clear proofs that "God exhibited to their minds that part of the ideal world as is signified by that sign." 28. Strange! that truth, being in any question but one, the more we discover of it the more uniform our judgments should be about it! ¶ 29. This argues that the ground of it is the always immutable relations of the same ideas. Several ideas that we have once got acquainted with, we can revive, and so they are present to us when we please; but the knowledge of their relations, so as to know what we may affirm or deny of them, is not always present to our minds; but we often miss truth, even after study. But in many, and possibly not the fewest, we have neither the ideas nor the truth constantly, or so much as at all present to our minds. And I think, I may, without any disparagement to the author, doubt whether he ever had, or with all his applica * See Reason and Religion, &c. Part II. Contemp. II. § 32, p. 207. + Ibid. 33 p. 208, 209. Ibid. 35, p. 211-213. Ibid. § 34, p. 210. tion ever would have, the ideas or truths present to the mind, that Mr. Newton had in writing his book. 30. This section* supposes we are better acquainted with God's understanding than our own. But this pretty argument would perhaps look as smilingly thus: We are like God in our understandings; he sees what he sees by ideas in his own mind: therefore we see what we see by ideas that are in our own minds. 31. These texts† do not prove that we shall "hereafter see all things in God." There will be objects in a future state, and we shall have bodies and senses. 32. Is he, whilst we see through the veil of our mortal flesh here, intimately present to our minds? 33. To think of anything, is to contemplate that precise idea. The idea of being in general, is the idea of being abstracted from whatever may limit or determine it to any inferior species; so that he that thinks always of being in general, thinks never of any particular species of being; unless he can think of it with and without precision at the same time. But if he means that he thinks of being in general, whenever he thinks of this or that particular being, or sort of being; then it is certain he may always think of being in general, till he can find out a way of thinking on nothing. 34. Being in general, is being || abstracted from wisdom, goodness, power, and any particular sort of duration; and Í have as true an idea of being, when these are excluded out of it, as when extension, place, solidity, and mobility are excluded out of my idea. And therefore, if being in general, and God, be the same, I have a true idea of God when I exclude out of it power, goodness, wisdom, and eternity. 35. As if there was no difference ¶ between "man's being his own light," and "not seeing things in God." Man may be enlightened by God, though it be not by "seeing all things in God." The finishing of these hasty thoughts must be deferred to another season. Oates, 1693. JOHN LOCKE. * See Reason and Religion, &c. Part 11. Contemp. II. § 37, n 215, Ibid. § 38, p. 216, 217. Ibid. § 40, p. 219. Ibid. § 39, p. 217, 213. Ibid. § 43, p. 223. ELEMENTS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. (I AM not acquainted with a better compendium of natural philosophy than this. The science, no doubt, has received very great improvements since the time of Locke, but his exposition of it is still sufficiently exact for all practical purposes. The explanations of terms are brief, correct, and intelligible; and the accounts of the grander phenomena of the universe, though designed only as incentives to inquiry, are such as to open up very magnificent prospects before the mind. As it would be preposterous to render that long by annotation which the author expressly made short and simple, that it might be the more easily comprehended and the substance of it lodged firmly in the memory, I shall trouble the reader with very few notes.-ED.] CHAPTER I. OF MATTER AND MOTION. MATTER is an extended solid substance; which being comprehended under distinct surfaces, makes so many particular distinct bodies. Motion is so well known by the sight and touch, that to use words to give a clearer idea of it would be in vain. Matter, or body, is indifferent to motion or rest. There is as much force required to put a body, which is in notion, at rest; as there is to set a body, which is at rest, into motion. No parcel of matter can give itself either motion or rest, and therefore a body at rest will remain so eternally, except some external cause puts it in motion; and a body in motion will move eternally, unless some external cause stops it. A body in motion will always move on in a straight line, unless it be turned out of it by some external cause, because a body can no more alter the determination of its motion than it can begin, alter, or stop, its motion itself. The swiftness of motion is measured by distance of place and length of time wherein it is performed. For instance, if A and B, bodies of equal or different bigness, move each or them an inch in the same time, their motions are equally swift; but if A. moves two inches in the time whilst B is moving one inch, the motion of A is twice as swift as that of B. The quantity of motion is measured by the swiftness of the motion,* and the quantity of the matter moved, taken together. For instance, if A, a body equal to B, moves as swift as B, then it hath an equal quantity of motion. If A hath twice as much matter as B, and moves equally as swift, it hath double the quantity of motion, and so in proportion. It appears, as far as human observation reaches, to be a settled law of nature, that all bodies have a tendency, attraction, or gravitation towards one another. The same force, applied to two different bodies, produces always the same quantity of motion in each of them. For instance, let a boat which with its lading is one ton, be tied at a distance to another vessel, which with its lading is twenty-six tons; if the rope that ties them together be pulled, either in the less or bigger of these vessels, the less of the two, in their approach one to another, will move twenty-six feet, while the other moves but one foot. Wherefore the quantity of matter in the earth being twenty-six times more than in the moon, the motion in the moon towards the earth, by the common force of attraction, by which they are impelled towards one another, will be twenty six times as fast as in the earth; that is, the moon will move twenty-six miles towards the earth, for every mile the earth moves towards the moon. Hence it is, that, in this natural tendency of bodies towards one another, that in the lesser is considered as gravitation, and that in the bigger as attraction,† because the motion * Whether this be consistent with the received theory of motion is more than I can say, but it appears to me to be a fallacy; for motion having reference to the space traversed, and the time in which the transit is performed, there is as much motion in an ounce ball which traverses five hundred yards in a given number of seconds as in a pound ball which traverses the same distance in the same time, though the motive power which set the matter in motion must be evidently greater than that which imparted motion to the former. Locke, therefore, appears here to confound motion with the motive power; that is, if I apprehend his meaning exactly.-ED + Besides the works of Sir Isaac Newton and the more modern hi of the lesser body (by reason of its much greater swiftness) is alone taken notice of. This attraction is the strongest the nearer the attracting bodies are to each other; and, in different distances of the same bodies, is reciprocally in the duplicate proportion of those distances. For instance, if two bodies, at a given distance, attract each other with a certain force, at half the distance they will attract each other with four times that force; at one third of the distance, with nine times that force; and so on. Two bodies at a distance will put one another into motion by the force of attraction; which is inexplicable by us, though made evident to us by experience, and so to be taken as a principle in natural philosophy. Supposing then the earth the sole body in the universe, and at rest; if God should create the moon, at the same distance that it is now from the earth, the earth and the moon would presently begin to move one towards another in a straight line by this motion of attraction or gravitation. If a body, that by the attraction of another would move in a straight line towards it, receives a new motion any ways oblique to the first, it will no longer move in a straight line, according to either of those directions, but in a curve that will partake of both. And this curve will differ, according to the nature and quantity of the forces that concurred to produce it; as, for instance, in many cases it will be such a curve as ends where it began, or recurs into itself: that is, makes up a circle, or an ellipsis* or oval very little differing from a circle. losophers, to which the reader will refer on this subject, it may be worth while to examine the previous speculation of Hobbes, in which the same theory is developed, though with less method and completeness. (Ele ments of Philosophy, Part IV. c. xxx. § 2. See also Lord Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, 703-4.)-ED. * Kepler seems to have been the first who observed that the planets may move in ellipses; but it was reserved for Sir Isaac Newton to demonstrate the truth of this observation. The reader will find this demonstration in Lord King's Life of Locke, vol. i. p. 389, et seq., "where," in the opinion of his Lordship, "the lemmas which are prefixed are expressed in a more explanatory form than those of the Principia usually Bra"-ED. |