But Properties are God: the naked mass
Acts only by its inactivity.
Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think40
That as one body is the aggregate
Of atoms numberless, each organiz'd;
So by a strange and dim similitude,
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds
throwing gold thro' gold; and as this æther must be equally diffused over the whole sphere of its activity, it must be as dense when it impels cork as when it impels gold: so that to throw a piece of cork upward, would be as if we endeavoured to make cork penetrate a medium as dense as gold: and tho' we were to adopt the extravagant opinions which have been advanced concerning the progession of pores, yet however porous we suppose a body, if it be not all pore, the argument holds equally; the fluid must be as dense as the body in order to give every particle its impulse.
It has been asserted that Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy leads in its consequences to Atheism: perhaps not without reason. For if matter by any powers or properties given to it, can produce the order of the visible world, and even generate thought; why may it not have possessed such properties by inherent right? and where is the necessity of a God? matter is, according to the mechanic philosophy capable of acting most wisely and most beneficently without Wisdom or Benevolence; and what more does the Atheist assert? if matter possess those properties, why might it not have possessed them from all eternity? Sir Isaac Newton's Deity seems to be alternately operose and indolent; to have delegated so much power as to make it inconceivable what he can have reserved. He is dethroned by Vice-regent second causes.
We seem placed here to acquire a knowledge of effects. Whenever we would pierce into the Adyta of Causation, we bewilder ourselves; and all, that laborious Conjecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of imagination. We are restless, because invisible things are not the objects of vision—and philosophical systems, for the most part, are received not for their Truth, but in proportion as they attribute to Causes a susceptibility of being seen, whenever our visual organs shall have become sufficiently powerful.
