as, they would
do well to make known those distinct ideas, or at least to give three
distinct names to them, to prevent in so important a notion the
confusion and errors that will naturally follow from the promiscuous
use of so doubtful a term; which is so far from being suspected to have
three distinct, that in ordinary use it has scarce one clear distinct
signification. And if they can thus make three distinct ideas of
substance, what hinders why another may not make a fourth?

19. Substance and accidents of little use in Philosophy.

They who first ran into the notion of ACCIDENTS, as a sort of real
beings that needed something to inhere in, were forced to find out the
word SUBSTANCE to support them. Had the poor Indian philosopher (who
imagined that the earth also wanted something to bear it up) but thought
of this word substance, he needed not to have been at the trouble to
find an elephant to support it, and a tortoise to support his elephant:
the word substance would have done it effectually. And he that
inquired might have taken it for as good an answer from an Indian
philosopher,--that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which
supports the earth, as take it for a sufficient answer and good doctrine
from our European philosophers,--that substance, without knowing what it
is, is that which supports accidents. So that of substance, we have no
idea of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it does.

20. Sticking on and under-propping.

Whatever a learned man may do here, an intelligent American, who
inquired into the nature of things, would scarce take it for a
satisfactory account, if, desiring to learn our architecture, he should
be told that a pillar is a thing supported by a basis, and a basis
something that supported a pillar. Would he not think himself mocked,
instead of taught, with such an account as this? And a stranger to them
would be very liberally instructed in the nature of books, and the
things they contained, if he should be told that all learned books
consisted of paper and letters, and that letters were things inhering
in paper, and paper a thing that held forth letters: a notable way of
having clear ideas of letters and paper. But were the Latin words,
inhaerentia and substantio, put into the plain English ones that answer
them, and were called STICKING ON and UNDER-PROPPING, they would better
discover to us the very great clearness there is in the doctrine of
subs