ASTRONOMY. 25o 



present , it might have followed no stated law at all. If 

 attraction be what Cotes, with many other Newtonians, 

 thought it to be, a primordial property of matter, not de- 

 pendent upon or traceable to any other material cause ; 

 then, by the very nature and definition of a primordial prop- 

 erty, it stood indifferent to all laws. If it be the agency of 

 something immaterial, then also, for any thing we know of 

 it, it was indifferent to all laws. If the revolution of bodies 

 round a centre depend upon vortices, neither are these lim- 

 ited to one law more than another. 



There is, I know, an account given of attraction which 

 should seem, in its very cause, to assign to it the law which 

 we find it to observe ; and wliich, therefore, makes that law 

 a law not of choice, but of necessity : and it is the account 

 which ascribes attraction to an emanation from the attract- 

 ing body. It is probable that the influence of such an em- 

 anation will be proportioned to the spissitude of the rays of 

 which it is composed ; which spissitude, supposing the rays 

 to issue in right lines on all sides from a point, will be re- 

 ciprocally as the square of the distance. The mathematics 

 of this solution we do not call in question : the question with 

 us is, whether there be any sufficient reason for believing 

 that attraction is produced by an emanation. For my part, 

 I am totally at a loss to comprehend how particles stream- 

 'mgfr07?i a centre should draw a body toicards it. The im- 

 pulse, if impulse it be, is all the other way. Nor shall we 

 find less difficulty in conceiving a conflux of particles, in- 

 cessantly flowing to a centre, and carrying down all bodies 

 along with it, that centre also itself being in a state of rapid 

 motion through absolute space ; for by what source is the 

 stream fed, or what becomes of the accumulation ? Add 

 to which, that it seems to imply a contrariety of properties, 

 to suppose an ethereal fluid to act, but not to resist ; pow- 

 erful enough to carry down bodies with great force towards 

 a centre, yet, inconsistently with the nature of inert matter, 

 powerless and perfectly yielding with respect to the motion? 



