l Philosophy_ is well known to have been rendered more
intelligible, and to have made a much greater progress in less than an
hundred years, than before for many ages.

The _Seas Ebbing and Flowing_, hath so great a connexion with the _Moons_
motion, that in a manner all Philosophers (whatever other Causes they have
joyned with it), have attributed much of its cause to the _Moon_, which
either by some _occult quality_, {265} or _particular influence_, which it
hath on moyst Bodies, or by some _Magnetick vertue_, drawing the water
towards it, (which should therefore make the Water there _highest_, where
the Moon is _vertical_) or by its gravity and pressure downwards upon the
Terraqueous Globe (which would make it _lowest_ where the Moon is
_vertical_) or by whatever other means (according to the several
Conjectures of inquisitive persons,) hath so great an influence on, or at
least a connexion with, the Sea's Flux and Reflux, that it would seem very
unreasonable, to seclude the consideration of the Moons motion from that of
the Sea: The _Periods of Tides_ (to say nothing of the greatness of them
near the New moon and Full moon) so constantly waiting on the Moon's
motion, that it may be well presumed, that either the one is governed by
the other, or at least both from some common cause.

But the first that I know of, who took in the consideration of the
_Earth's_ motion, (_Diurnal_ and _Annual_) was _Galilaeo_; who in his
_Systeme of the World_, hath a particular discourse on this subject: Which,
from the first time I ever read it, seemed to me so very rational, that I
could never be of other opinion, but that the true Account of this great
_Phaenomenon_ was to be referred to the Earths motion, as the _Principal_
cause of it: Yet that of the Moon (for the reasons above mentioned) not to
be excluded, as to the determining the _Periods of Tides_, and other
circumstances concerning them. And though it be manifest enough, that
_Galilaeo_, as to some particulars, was mistaken in the account which there
he gives of it; yet that may be very well allowed, without any blemish to
so deserving a person, or prejudice to the _main Hypothesis_: For that
Discourse is to be looked upon onely as an _Essay_ of the _general
Hypothesis_; which as to _particulars_ was to afterwards adjusted, from a
good _General History of Tides_; which it's manifest enough that he had
not; and which is in a great measure yet wanting. For were the matter of