CHAPTER III. 491 sible qualities, because they are ideas or modes which we attri- bute to things merely as they affect ourselves or any sensitive beings. They are called also secondary qualities, because they arise from the different combinations and dispositionsof those real and primary qualities before named, and their power to impress our senses in very different manners. The matter of a body is either proxime or remote; the proxime matter of a ship is timber, the remote is trees. Note 1. Matter and form have been improperly ranked among the causes, yet they may be called constituent principles of things. 2. Matter and form have been transferred from things cor- poreal to intellectual : So we speak of the matter of a sermon or treatise, which is the theme of discourse ; and the form of it, which is the manner in which the speaker or writer treats of it. Hence arises the famous distinction of material and formal, usually and pertinently applied to subjects of various kinds, whether intellectual or corporeal. Wheat is bread materially, and ideas or terms are materially, a proposition ; but neither ono nor the other are formally so. Having spoken of the nature of things in this chapter, it may not be amiss to take notice of a few distinctions relating to it. The term nature is sometimes taken for the eternal and unchangeable reason of things so it is necessary in the nature of things that three and four should make seven; and that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two right angles. Sometimes it signifies the course and order of second causes, whether minds or bodies together with the laws of matter and motion which God the first cause has ordained in this world ; in this sense it is natural for the limbs to move when the soul wills, and the four seasons of the year should succeed each other in Europe. In this latter signification of the word some things are said to be according to nature, as when au oak brings forth acorns. Some are beside nature, as when an animal brings forth a mon- ster. Some may be called contrary to nature, as when the stock of apple-tree brings forth pears by virtue of the twig of a pear- tree grafted into it ; Rom, xi. 24. Other things areabove nature, as are all the instances of divine and miraculous operation ; though these are sometimes called contrary to nature too, as when the streams of Jordan ran backward, or the sun stood still, CHAP. III.Of Existence, whether actual, possible, or im- possible, necessary or contingent, dependent or independent, EXISTENCE is distinguished from essence as the actual being of a thing is distinguished from its mere nature considered as possible.
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