25 Review of the Principia of Newton. 
you for writing well, on such a variety of subjects: Their 
perusal has afforded: me much instruction. "Fhe aceompany- 
ing letter was peculiarly agreeable, both for its matter and 
manner. I hope you have received the articles I direeted to: 
you in return. _ May you you long live, an. ornament tothe age + 
and a contributor to science. 
“tee Samurc Lk. Mircuitt.. 
Art. V.—A Review of the Principia of Newton. 
[Continued from Volk XT. p. 246.] 
IT was tauntingly ebjected to the Newtonian Philosophy, 
by the Cartesians and others, that his analysis ef powers. or 
forces, as the causes of the great a of nature, went 
not to opplsn_ te the agency employed, or its eae Operandi, 
whe nical or spiritual. They, therefore, de- 
Socanagted ee, powers occult qualities, or perpetual mira-. 
cles. If we cannot ascend continually in the grand seale of 
causes and effects, aud resolve those already discovered. into 
others still higher, or consider them as the last links of a chain 
ndent only and immediately on the Author of the Uni- 
nee those philosophers agreeably to their schemes of work- 
i t @ priori, and perfect systems, would suppose 
he have been done. If such cavils could be an objection to 
ur author’s philosophy, they might be made, with equal 
justice, to all philosophy, and indeed to all scientific knowl- 
edge ; for the nature and essence of things generally, are un- 
known to us, and from the total inadequacy of our faculties 
to i seer them, none except the Cariesian hypothesisers 
ever made any seas or pretensions ore a knowl- 
covering its nature, or essence, but its existence and opera- 
tive effects. Thus the fact of the existence of some power 
which we call gravity, which causes bodies to descend to the 
, and which is proved also by Newton, to extend to the 
indeed are occult causes, whose 
