28 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



might have been the same at all distances ; it 

 might have increased as the distance increased : 

 or it might have diminished with the increase of 

 the distance, yet in ten thousand difterent propor- 

 tions from ttie 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 dependent 

 upon, or traceable to, any other material cause ; 

 then, by the very nature and definition of a pri- 

 mordial property, it stood indifterent 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 

 limitted to one law more than another." 



^ The notion of gravitation being a quality inherent in matter, 

 and which could not be separated from its other qualities, has long 

 been abandoned. To argue that it is necessarily inherent never 

 could be consistent vv^ith the most ordinary perception of the mean- 

 ing affixed to the terms necessary and contingent. All that could 

 really be intended, therefore, is what wc have just now stated in 

 the first sentence of this note. But that, too, appears wholly 

 groundless. The only appearance of a reason was derived from 

 the intensity of all streams of matter proceeding from a centre in 

 every direction being weakened in proportion to their diffusion, 

 and their diffusion being proportioned to the squares of the dis- 

 tance (by similar triangles and the property of the circle, and 

 generally of similar figures.) But suppose we overlook the purely 

 hypothetical nature of the connexion between such emanations 

 and gravitation, (sanctioned as the theory in a certain degree 

 seems to be by no less an authority than Laplace J\l6c. C6l. liv. xv, 

 c. 1,) and admit the hypothesis that matter, according to its pre- 

 sent constitution in other respects, must have gravitation in the 



