causes. Had they fallen upon
the just conclusion, they would have returned back to the situation
of the vulgar, and would have regarded all these disquisitions with
indolence and indifference. At present they seem to be in a very
lamentable condition, and such as the poets have given us but a faint
notion of in their descriptions of the punishment of Sisyphus and
Tantalus. For what can be imagined more tormenting, than to seek with
eagerness, what for ever flies us; and seek for it in a place, where it
is impossible it can ever exist?

But as nature seems to have observed a kind of justice and compensation
in every thing, she has not neglected philosophers more than the rest
of the creation; but has reserved them a consolation amid all their
disappointments and afflictions. This consolation principally consists
in their invention of the words: faculty and occult quality. For
it being usual, after the frequent use of terms, which are really
significant and intelligible, to omit the idea, which we would express
by them, and to preserve only the custom, by which we recal the idea at
pleasure; so it naturally happens, that after the frequent use of terms,
which are wholly insignificant and unintelligible, we fancy them to be
on the same footing with the precedent, and to have a secret meaning,
which we might discover by reflection. The resemblance of their
appearance deceives the mind, as is usual, and makes us imagine a
thorough resemblance and conformity. By this means these philosophers
set themselves at ease, and arrive at last, by an illusion, at the
same indifference, which the people attain by their stupidity, and true
philosophers by their moderate scepticism. They need only say, that
any phenomenon, which puzzles them, arises from a faculty or an occult
quality, and there is an end of all dispute and enquiry upon the matter.

But among all the instances, wherein the Peripatetics have shewn they
were guided by every trivial propensity of the imagination, no one is
more-remarkable than their sympathies, antipathies, and horrors of
a vacuum. There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature, to
bestow on external objects the same emotions, which it observes in
itself; and to find every where those ideas, which are most present to
it. This inclination, it is true, is suppressed by a little reflection,
and only takes place in children, poets, and the antient philosophers.
It appears in children, by their desire o