e? If the PHENOMENA are nothing else but IDEAS; God is
a SPIRIT, but Matter an unintelligent, unperceiving being. If they
demonstrate an unlimited power in their cause; God is active and
omnipotent, but Matter an inert mass. If the order, regularity, and
usefulness of them can never be sufficiently admired; God is
infinitely wise and provident, but Matter destitute of all contrivance
and design. These surely are great advantages in PHYSICS. Not to
mention that the apprehension of a distant Deity naturally disposes men
to a negligence in their moral actions; which they would be more cautious
of, in case they thought Him immediately present, and acting on their
minds, without the interposition of Matter, or unthinking second
causes.--Then in METAPHYSICS: what difficulties concerning entity in
abstract, substantial forms, hylarchic principles, plastic natures,
substance and accident, principle of individuation, possibility of
Matter's thinking, origin of ideas, the manner how two independent
substances so widely different as SPIRIT AND MATTER, should mutually
operate on each other? what difficulties, I say, and endless
disquisitions, concerning these and innumerable other the like points, do
we escape, by supposing only Spirits and ideas?--Even the MATHEMATICS
themselves, if we take away the absolute existence of extended things,
become much more clear and easy; the most shocking paradoxes and
intricate speculations in those sciences depending on the infinite
divisibility of finite extension; which depends on that supposition--But
what need is there to insist on the particular sciences? Is not that
opposition to all science whatsoever, that frenzy of the ancient and
modern Sceptics, built on the same foundation? Or can you produce so much
as one argument against the reality of corporeal things, or in behalf of
that avowed utter ignorance of their natures, which doth not suppose
their reality to consist in an external absolute existence? Upon this
supposition, indeed, the objections from the change of colours in a
pigeon's neck, or the appearance of the broken oar in the water, must be
allowed to have weight. But these and the like objections vanish, if we
do not maintain the being of absolute external originals, but place the
reality of things in ideas, fleeting indeed, and changeable;--however,
not changed at random, but according to the fixed order of nature. For,
herein consists that constancy and truth of things which se