222 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



offer a few further observations on the question, 

 whether gravitation and the law of gravitation be 

 necessary attributes of matter. We have spoken 

 of the selection of this law ; but is it selected ? 

 Could it have been otherwise ? Is not the force 

 of attraction a necessary consequence of the fun- 

 damental properties of matter ? 



This is a question which has been much agi- 

 tated among the followers of Newton. Some 

 have maintained, as Cotes, that gravity is an 

 inherent property of all matter; others, with 

 Newton himself, have considered it as an ap- 

 pendage to the essential qualities of matter, and 

 have proposed hypotheses to account for the 

 mode in which its effects are produced. 



The result of all that can be said on the sub- 

 ject appears to be this : that no one can demon- 

 strate the possibility of deducing gravity from 

 the acknowledged fundamental properties of 

 matter: and that no philosopher asserts, that 

 matter has been found to exist, which was des- 

 titute of gravity. It is a property which we 

 have no right to call necessary to matter, but 

 every reason to suppose universal. 



If we could show gravity to be a necessary 

 consequence of those properties which we adopt 

 as essential to our notion of matter, (extension, 

 solidity, mobility, inertia) we might then call it 

 also one of the essential properties. But no one 

 probably will assert that this is the case. Its 



