NATURE OF THfNGS. 439 



order the modes of communicating and stimulating motion, 

 its restraints, retardations, lines, impediments, its reactions 

 and combinations, its indirect paths and concatenations, in 

 short the entire progression of motions. For of little avail 

 are windy disputations, or specious discourses, or vague 

 meditations, or, lastly, plausible maxims. The business is, 

 by well digested methods, and a management adapted to 

 nature, to acquire a capacity to control, to intensify, to remit, 

 to combine with other motions, to let gently down, to bring 

 to a pause the motion of every portion of susceptible mat 

 ter, and so to accomplish the conservation, the modification, 

 and the transformation of bodies. We must, however, 

 direct our inquiries principally to those motions which are 

 uncompounded, original, ultimate, of which the rest are 

 constituted. For it is most unquestionable, that in pro 

 portion as simpler motions are discovered, in the same pro 

 portion will the power of man be augmented, delivered from 

 the trammel of using only specific and elaborated sub 

 stances, and invigorated to strike out new lines of operation. 

 And, assuredly, since the words or vocables of all lan 

 guages, in all their prodigious variety, are compounded of 

 a few simple characters, so, in like manner, are the agencies 

 and powers of the universe composed of a few primary pro 

 perties or original springs of motion. And disgraceful 

 would it be to mankind, to have studied with such perti 

 nacious exactness the tinkle of their own utterance ; but to 

 have been in the tongue of nature unlearned, and like the 

 barbarians of primeval times, before letters were invented, 

 distinguishing only the compounded sound or expression, 

 but incapable of analysing it into elementary tones and 

 characters. 



Of a fixed Sum of Matter, and that Change takes place 

 without Annihilation of Substance. 



v. 



That all things change, that nothing really perishes, and 

 the mass of matter remains absolutely the same, is suffi 

 ciently evident. And as the divine omnipotence was re 

 quired to create any thing out of nothing, so also is that 

 omnipotence to make any thing lapse into nothing. Whether 

 that would take place, by a withdrawing- of the preserving- 

 energy, or by the act of annihilation, is of no importance ; 

 this much is necessary, the interposition of a decree of the 

 Creator. Having laid down this as an aphorism, we would, 

 in order to fix the wandering of the mind, and prevent the 



