388 NEW ESSAYS 



p. 408, in which, by way of justifying the opinion he 

 had maintained against the learned prelate, namely that 

 matter might think, he says among other things : * It is 

 true, I say, " that bodies operate by impulse and nothing 

 else " (Essay, bk. ii. ch. 8, 1 1). And so I thought when 

 I writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their 

 operation. But I am since convinced by the judicious 

 Mr. Newton's incomparable book, that it is too bold a 

 presumption to limit God's power, in this point, by my 

 narrow conceptions. The gravitation of matter towards 

 matter, by ways inconceivable to me, is not only a demon- 

 stration that God can, if He pleases, put into bodies 

 powers and ways of operation above what can be devised 

 from our idea of body, or can be explained by what we 

 know of matter, but also an unquestionable and every- 

 where visible instance, that He has done so. And 

 therefore in the next edition of my book I shall take 

 care to have that passage rectified 129 .' I find that in the 

 French translation of this book, doubtless made from the 

 latest editions 130 , this section n reads thus: 'It is 

 evident, at least so far as we can conceive it, that bodies 

 act upon one another by impulse and not otherwise ; for 

 it is impossible for us to understand that a body can act 

 upon that which it does not touch, which is as much as 

 to imagine that it can act where it is not 1S V 



Essay, vol. i. Prolegomena, p. xli ; Stillingfleet's Works (1710), vol. iii. 

 pp. 413 sqq. ; Locke's Works (1823), vol. iv. 



129 See Fraser's ed. of Locke's Essay, vol. i. p. 171 note. Also 

 Locke's Works (10 vol. ed., 1823), vol. iv. p. 467. 



130 See Prefatory Note. The italics are by Leibniz. The Eng- 

 lish edition has merely : ' The next thing to be considered is, how 

 bodies produce ideas in us ; and that is manifestly by impulse, the 

 only way which we can conceive bodies to operate in.' 



31 Of course the Newtonian theory does not necessarily imply 

 that a body can act where it is not. The whole is greater than the part: 

 how exceedingly true ! Nature abhors a vacuum : how exceedingly 

 false and calumnious ! Again, Nothing can act but where it is : with 

 all my heart ; only, WHERE is it ? ' Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, bk. i. 

 ch. 8 (Library ed., vol. i. p. 52). Cf. Newton, Principia, def. 8, and 

 Scholium Generale ; also Stallo, Concepts of Modern Physics, ch. 5. 



