ESSAY II. Of Sdbstance : and of Solid Extension and a- Thinking Power, as the two 'only original Substances. i SECT. I.-Mr. Locke's Notion of Substance considered. SUBSTANCE is another of those mysteries wherein we bewilder and lose ourselves by attempting to make something out of nothing. Mr. Locke had happily refuted that unreasonable .notion of substance in general, which makes it to be some real thing in nature, different from all the united qualities, the sup- posed properties and powers of body or spirit, and he has expos- ed it to just-ridicule, asin.Book 2. Chap. 13. §. 18, 19, 20. In Chap. 23. §.2, 3, and 6. and in other places he tells us, " What- ever be the secret and abstract nature of substance.in general, all the ideas we have of particular distinct sort of substances are nothing but several combinations of simple ideas co-existent in such (though unknown) cause of their union, as makes the whole subsist of itself :" And he often speaks of this same unknown cause of the union of properties both in corporeal and spiritural substances, as in §. 15, 37. Now I acknow`ledge ,I have very little tosay againstMr. Locke's representation,of thenotion which he has of particular substances, if this unknown something, which he supposes to be the cause of the union of their properties, were not so much insisted on, as tolead-his readers into a belief that there is such a sort of unknown real being called substance in general, which supports all the properties that we observe inpar- ticular different beings, and which he before had refuted and ridiculedwith so much justice andelegance. I confess I see no sufficient reason why we may not content ourselves with the notion and description of substance in themain which the schools give us, viz. Substantia est Ens per se subsistens Sf substans accidentibus ; in English thus, 1. It is thatwhich-sup- ports accidents or qualities in being, which could have nobeing or existence at all without such a support or such a subject in which to exist. 2. It is that which can exist, or which subsists by itself, without dependence on any created being. All this is not at all disagreeable to Mr. Locke's sentiment : For when we observe any being, whose several modes we perceive inhering and united in it as in-one commonsubject or bond oftheir union, this we call a substance: and this name ofsubstance we also attribute to this being from a further consideration that it subsistsof itself, i. e. independent upon any other created being. Voi.. vttt. Z
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