467 ON SOME METAPHYSICAL SUBJECTS. and intestine motion or rest of the small invisible and impercep- tible particles of matter of which it is composed, to complete the nature of them, and to give them those sensible qualities of colour, hardness, Sec. and to make them be what they are. This is re- quired in the bodies which we call water, quicksilver, gold, wood or clay ; but it is no matter what the outward and gross shape of them is, for that makes no difference, nor belongs to the su- ture of them. But in the other bodies there must be both the outward visi- ble figure, as well as the inward shape, situation, rest or motion, and fermentation of the imperceptible solid or fluid parts to com- pose the nature of it, or make it be what it is ; this is evident in a gold ring, a rope, an egg; and the same is true of all plants and animals, as a rose, an oak, a horse, an eagle. It is granted, that the sharpest understanding can penetrate but a very little way into the natures of essences of natural beings and the special forms of them, in the present state ; we know and distinguish the bodies that are round about us by their out- ward figures and sizes, and by their sensible qualities, by their effects upon our senses, and their sensible operations upon one another, much more than we do by any of the figures or intestine motions of those little imperceptible atoms and particles of which they are composed, for these being invisible to us for the most part, lie out of the reach of our knowledge. And therefore our description Of natural bodies is much more drawn from their sen- sible qualities. The matter of which a body is matte, is either proxime or remote; the proxime matter of which a-house is made, is bricks, tiles, and mortar, beams and rafters, boards and nails. The remote matter is clay, sand and lime, trees and iron ; and they are called remote, because bricks and tiles are made of clay, mortar is made of sand and lime; beams, rafters, and planks are cut out of trees, and nails are formed of iron. The proxime matter of a book, is its leaves printed with words, bound up in covers ; but paper and printer's ink are the remote matter of it, together with pasteboard and leather. Note, Matter and form have been by the Aristotelian philosophers, generally ranked amongst the causes, and treated of there, but without any just reason; yet they may be justly called the constituent principles of things, though they are not proper causes. Note, Matter and form are words which have been trans- ferred from corporeal beings to several other risings which relate to the intellectual world, with some analogous or kindred signi- fication : the matter of the science of anatomy, or that about which it converses, is the body of man: the tbrnt is a skilful dis- section and knowledge, or description of the several parts of
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=