NATURE OF THINGS. 443 



For simple and absolute immobility, either in the parts or 

 the totality of bodies, there is none ; but what is so regarded, 

 is the effect of the obstacles, restraints, and balances with 

 one another, subsisting among motions. For instance, when 

 in the vessels perforated at the bottom, which we use in 

 watering gardens, the water does not find vent through the 

 holes, if the mouth of the vessel be closed, it is evident 

 that this is occasioned by the resilient motion, not the qui 

 escent property of the water. For the water desires to 

 fall, precisely as much as if it were performing the act of 

 descent ; but as there is not a body to fill up the vacuity 

 formed at the top of the vessel, the water at the bottom is 

 drawn back, and with considerable force, by the water at 

 the top. Thus, in wrestling, if a man grasp another weaker 

 than himself in such a way that he is unable to move, and 

 yet continues to strain his utmost, the motion of renitency 

 is not made less because it is mastered and tied by the 

 stronger motion. 



Now the observation we make on false quiescence is 

 useful to be known in numberless cases, and affords no 

 little light in the inquiry into the nature of solid and liquid 

 bodies, or of consistency and fluidity. For solids seem to 

 remain at rest in their positions, but liquids subject to agi 

 tation and interfusion of parts. Thus a column, or any 

 other figured body of water, cannot be raised as one of 

 wood or stone. It is therefore hastily supposed that the 

 upper parts of the water tend (in their natural motion, as it 

 is termed) to flow downwards, but the corresponding parts 

 of the wood not. But this is not true; since in the parts 

 of the wood forming its top, there exists the same tendency 

 to motion downwards as in water ; and it would be brought 

 into act, were it not fettered and drawn the other way by 

 a superior motion. Now the appetite of continuity or horror 

 of separation, which is in itself no less incident to water 

 than to wood, is in the wood stronger than the motion of 

 gravity, in water weaker. For that liquids also partake of 

 this motion is manifest. Thus we see in a succession of 

 waterdrops, how, to prevent a solution of continuity, the 

 water draws itself out and tapers to a thin filament, so long- 

 as the fluid which succeeds supplies the means ; but should 

 water be wanting to maintain the continuity, it then gathers 

 itself into globules, the diameter of which is considerably 

 greater than the filament previously formed. In the same 

 way we see that the water with difficulty admits of being 

 broken into more minute particles, since it does not without 



