e, or suffer,
or feel anything by sense, is an imperfection. The former, I say, agrees
to God, but not the latter. God knows, or hath ideas; but His ideas are
not conveyed to Him by sense, as ours are. Your not distinguishing, where
there is so manifest a difference, makes you fancy you see an absurdity
where there is none.

HYL. But, all this while you have not considered that the quantity of
Matter has been demonstrated to be proportioned to the gravity of bodies.
And what can withstand demonstration?

PHIL. Let me see how you demonstrate that point.

HYL. I lay it down for a principle, that the moments or quantities of
motion in bodies are in a direct compounded reason of the velocities and
quantities of Matter contained in them. Hence, where the velocities are
equal, it follows the moments are directly as the quantity of Matter in
each. But it is found by experience that all bodies (bating the small
inequalities, arising from the resistance of the air) descend with an
equal velocity; the motion therefore of descending bodies, and
consequently their gravity, which is the cause or principle of that
motion, is proportional to the quantity of Matter; which was to be
demonstrated.

PHIL. You lay it down as a self-evident principle that the quantity of
motion in any body is proportional to the velocity and MATTER
taken together; and this is made use of to prove a proposition from
whence the existence of CARTER is inferred. Pray is not this arguing in
a circle?

HYL. In the premise I only mean that the motion is proportional to the
velocity, jointly with the extension and solidity.

PHIL. But, allowing this to be true, yet it will not thence follow that
gravity is proportional to MATTER, in your philosophic sense of the
word; except you take it for granted that unknown SUBSTRATUM, or
whatever else you call it, is proportional to those sensible qualities;
which to suppose is plainly begging the question. That there is magnitude
and solidity, or resistance, perceived by sense, I readily grant; as
likewise, that gravity may be proportional to those qualities I will not
dispute. But that either these qualities as perceived by us, or the
powers producing them, do exist in a MATERIAL SUBSTRATUM; this is what
I deny, and you indeed affirm, but, notwithstanding your demonstration,
have not yet proved.

HYL. I shall insist no longer on that point. Do you think, however, you
shall persuade me that the natural philoso