14 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book I. 



id, An Hegemonic, or Governing Principle ; 2 do, Animal Life ; 

 3tio, Vegetable Life ; And, 410, An Elemental Life, which is the 

 loweft of all, above which the others rife by juft degrees, as I have 

 already obferved. 



Thefe are the four a£tive Principles in Nature, and which alone 

 deferve the name of Principles. For, as to Matter, it is, as I have 

 faid in the note below, nothing but the fubjedt upon which thofe 

 Principles operate, being that which receives all Forms, but has it- 

 felf none ; and therefore, as Timacus the Locrian fays, in the be- 

 ginning of his treatife De An'ima Mundi^ it is not to be conceived di- 

 rectly, but only by analogy. 



Having faid fo much concerning Motion in this Chapter, before 

 I conclude it, I muft make a confeffion to the reader, that, in what 

 I have written concerning the continuation of Motion in the laft 

 Book of the preceding Volume, I have done much injuftice to Sir 

 Ifaac Newton, and a great deal more than juftice to myfelf ; for I 

 have faid that Sir Ifaac took his notion of a State of Motion^ and of 

 its being continued, when once begun, by a Vis Infita^ or power ef- 

 fential to Matter, from the French philofopher Des Cartes ; and I 

 have alfo fuppofed, that I was the firft who dared to argue againft 

 what Sir Ifaac has laid down as an Axiom, and to affert that Mo- 

 tion, however begun, whether by Mind or by Bodily Impulfe, was 

 carried on by Mind, and not by any Power belonging to Matter. 

 But in both thefe things I was miftaken. For, as to Sir Ifaac ha- 

 ving borrowed his notions upon this fubjedt from Des Cartes, I 



find, 



The great Author of all Nature is vV£§«t/(r4«< and «{nTdf, actording to Plato, and 

 far above cur comprehenfion ; and mere matter, on the other hand, is as far below 

 It. Nor is it unnatural to fuppofe, that a creature of fuch finite capacities as we 

 are Ihould not be able to comprehend the extremities of the univerfe, but onlv fome 

 things that lie in the middle. 



