ON THE LAWS OP NATURE'. "ZTt ■ 



fmalleft particular. Supported on accurate obferva^ 

 * f tions and profound meditation, Newton faw the ne- 

 u ceffity of acknowledging the attractive power as an 

 H original property of matter." / 



According to Kant's philofophy only two moving 

 powers can be conceived in matter, attractive and re- 

 pelling power. From thefe, as Kant expreffes himfelf, 

 every moving power in material nature may be de- 

 duced, 



That is : all the movements in nature are effects of 

 attractive or of repulfive power. 



Matter is impenetrable, by it's expanfive power. But- 

 this is the cpnfequence of the reptiihve power 



Pere Bofcovitch in like manner founds the impene-' 

 trability of bodies on the repellent power of the ele-* 

 mentary parts. 



The grand^ fimple, eternal laws of attraction and' 

 repulfion, to which, what are for the moft part un- 

 known to us, the particular law, of chymical affinities,, 

 of electrical and magnetical phasnomena, may in all 

 probability be reducible, explain to us the origin of 

 the phyfical world* 



Observations have made us acquainted with an ac- 

 tive matter, which has motion, and, as Bofcovitch 

 fays with reafon, is never, for one inftant, in a ftate : 

 of abfolute reft'. All in the phyfical world is tiothingf 

 but metamorpholis. It is only the forms which alter; 

 The quantity of matter remains ever the fame. The' 

 fame fubitace paffes fucceffively through all the three 7 



* See Kant's metaphyseal principles of the fcience of nature, 

 P- 35- 



t See Kant's metaph. princ. of the fcience of nature, p. 43. 



king^ 



