part of the distance out of its present situation, and
placed a little further or nearer that source of heat, it is more than
probable that the greatest part of the animals in it would immediately
perish: since we find them so often destroyed by an excess or defect of
the sun's warmth, which an accidental position in some parts of this our
little globe exposes them to. The qualities observed in a loadstone must
needs have their source far beyond the confines of that body; and the
ravage made often on several sorts of animals by invisible causes, the
certain death (as we are told) of some of them, by barely passing
the line, or, as it is certain of other, by being removed into a
neighbouring country; evidently show that the concurrence and operations
of several bodies, with which they are seldom thought to have anything
to do, is absolutely necessary to make them be what they appear to us,
and to preserve those qualities by which we know and distinguish them.
We are then quite out of the way, when we think that things contain
WITHIN THEMSELVES the qualities that appear to us in them; and we
in vain search for that constitution within the body of a fly or an
elephant, upon which depend those qualities and powers we observe in
them. For which, perhaps, to understand them aright, we ought to look
not only beyond this our earth and atmosphere, but even beyond the sun
or remotest star our eyes have yet discovered. For how much the being
and operation of particular substances in this our globe depends on
causes utterly beyond our view, is impossible for us to determine. We
see and perceive some of the motions and grosser operations of things
here about us; but whence the streams come that keep all these curious
machines in motion and repair, how conveyed and modified, is beyond our
notice and apprehension: and the great parts and wheels, as I may so
say, of this stupendous structure of the universe, may, for aught we
know, have such a connexion and dependence in their influences and
operations one upon another, that perhaps things in this our mansion
would put on quite another face, and cease to be what they are, if some
one of the stars or great bodies incomprehensibly remote from us,
should cease to be or move as it does. This is certain: things, however
absolute and entire they seem in themselves, are but retainers to other
parts of nature, for that which they are most taken notice of by us.
Their observable qualities, actio