itation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it.
And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate
gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to
matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a
_vacuum_, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which
their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so
great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical
matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity
must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain
laws."--_Newton's letter in Bentley's Works_, Vol. III., pp. 211, 212.]

[Footnote 3: And yet, so strong is the propensity to metaphor, that
scientific men talk of the _vis inertiae_ as a true force, though the
ideas expressed by the two Latin words are certainly incongruous. The
mistake here arises from confounding inertness, or resistance to
force,--a merely negative idea,--with the true force which is necessary
to overcome it; or rather, since force can only be measured by its
results, and must always be adequate to the effect produced, inquirers
have adopted the convenient hypothesis of two antagonistic forces, not
always recollecting that one of them is merely passive.]

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'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation', by Francis Bowen

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