THOUGHTS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 9 
of corpuscles, atoms, molecules, stars, suns, planets, ether, 
etc., and fictions are quite unnecessary and objectionable, the 
facts are sufficiently stupendous and adequate to produce the 
inevitable and natural results. 
Newton himself in his letter to Bentley appears to contra- 
dict the fiction of the inherent attraction of matter by 
matter, he wrote to Bentley as follows :—‘‘ It is inconceivable 
that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation 
of something else which is not material, operate upon and 
affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must do if 
gravitation in the sense of Epicurus be essential and inherent 
init. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential 
to matter, so that one body’can act upon another at a 
distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any- 
thing else, by and through which their action and force may 
be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an 
absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical 
matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall 
into it.’ 
It is interesting to note that on this subject both 
Descartes and Newton were right, in the main, and up to 
a certain point, allowing for what we now can see was 
erroneous. Newton in his idea (up to a certain point) of 
gravitation ; and Descartes (with a margin for errors) in his 
idea of vortices. It is the Vortices not of Descartes, but of 
nature that causes the gravitation (or rather vortication) 
that Newton sought to mathematically demonstrate, and 
that experiment and observation has confirmed. To 
Descartes and Clerk Maxwell must ever belong the honour 
of drawing attention thereto and doing their utmost to make 
clear the same. But Vortices must be formed. How? 
Matter having motion, must have direction and eventually 
adjacency, and collision. The collisions give variety to the 
