Translation o/" Key's Essays. 261 



which we shall produce with regard to the latter, will be con- 

 clusive as to the former, from the proximity of their nature*. 

 Now since it is agreed, that whatever falls downwards of its 

 own accord, has weight, whence that motion proceeds, who is 

 he, that shall deny this quality to air, seeing that we no sooner 

 pull a stake out of the ground, than the air rushes into the hole, 

 and fills it; and that we cannot dig a well so deep, that it does not 

 immediately descend into it, without any external effort or 

 violence? I say more: that, if there were a tube from the centre 

 of the earth to the region of lire, open at both ends, and filled 

 with the four elements, each in its usual position, if the earth 

 were drawn downwards, water would descend and occupy its 

 place, leaving its own to the air, and the air its place to fire. 

 Then, taking away the water from this station, the air will come 

 and fill it, and that again being taken away, fire will go into it, 

 and fill the whole tubt, descending to the very centre, merely 

 by being deprived of that, which prevented it from doing so. 

 They who shall say, that this happens, that a vacuum may be 

 avoided, will not say much ; they will shew us the final cause, 

 whilst we are talking about the efficient, which cannot be a 

 vacuum. For it is quite certain, that in the boundaries of 

 nature, a vacuum, which is nothing, can have no place. 

 There is no power in nature of nothing to have made the uni- 

 verse, nor to reduce it to nothing, which requires equal force. 

 But the case would be otherwise, were there a vacuum, for if 

 it could be here, it might be there, and if here and there, why 

 not elsewhere ? Why not everywrhere ? So might the universe 

 fall into nothing, by its own power : but to Him only, who had 

 power to make it, is the glory of the power to annihilate it 

 due. But if a vacuum can find no existence, how can air and 

 fire descend, full against the course of their nature? Does not 

 a positive effect, always proceed from a positively existing 

 cause? we truly affirm then, that it is weight which carries 

 these bodies downward, in order to unite all their particles 

 closely, and consequently shut all the avenues to a vacuum, 



* Literal. 

 Vol. XI. T 



