Parts, wherein their Heat and Activity consists. And as it is of no use,
and hinders the Operations of Nature, and makes her languish, so there
is no evidence for its Existence, and therefore it ought to be rejected.
And if it be rejected, the Hypotheses that Light consists in Pression
or Motion, propagated through such a Medium, are rejected with it.
And for rejecting such a Medium, we have the Authority of those the
oldest and most celebrated Philosophers of _Greece_ and _Phoenicia_,
who made a _Vacuum_, and Atoms, and the Gravity of Atoms, the first
Principles of their Philosophy; tacitly attributing Gravity to some
other Cause than dense Matter. Later Philosophers banish the
Consideration of such a Cause out of natural Philosophy, feigning
Hypotheses for explaining all things mechanically, and referring other
Causes to Metaphysicks: Whereas the main Business of natural Philosophy
is to argue from Ph nomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce
Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which
certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the
World, but chiefly to resolve these and such like Questions. What is
there in places almost empty of Matter, and whence is it that the Sun
and Planets gravitate towards one another, without dense Matter between
them? Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain; and whence arises
all that Order and Beauty which we see in the World? To what end are
Comets, and whence is it that Planets move all one and the same way in
Orbs concentrick, while Comets move all manner of ways in Orbs very
excentrick; and what hinders the fix'd Stars from falling upon one
another? How came the Bodies of Animals to be contrived with so much
Art, and for what ends were their several Parts? Was the Eye contrived
without Skill in Opticks, and the Ear without Knowledge of Sounds? How
do the Motions of the Body follow from the Will, and whence is the
Instinct in Animals? Is not the Sensory of Animals that place to which
the sensitive Substance is present, and into which the sensible Species
of Things are carried through the Nerves and Brain, that there they may
be perceived by their immediate presence to that Substance? And these
things being rightly dispatch'd, does it not appear from Ph nomena that
there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in
infinite Space, as it were in his Sensory, sees the things themselves
intimately, and throughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by
their immediate presence to himself: Of which things the Images only
carried through the Organs of Sense into our little Sensoriums, are
there seen and beheld by that which in us perceives and thinks. And
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