[161] "By moonlight, in a wilderness."--'Poetical Works,' edit.
1863.--ED.
[162] See p. 40.--ED.
[163] Such is the conception of body in Des Cartes' own system, _body_
is every where confounded with _matter_, and might in the Cartesian
sense be defined, Space or Extension, with the attribute of
Visibility. As Des Cartes at the same time zealously asserted the
existence of intelligential beings, the reality and independent
Self-subsidence of the soul, Berkeleyanism or Spinosism was the
immediate and necessary consequence. Assume a _plurality_ of
self-subsisting souls, and we have Berkeleyanism; assume one only
(_unam et unicam substantiam_), and you have Spinosism, that is, the
assertion of one infinite self-subsistent, with the two attributes of
thinking and appearing. _Cogitatio infinita sine centro, et omniformis
apparitio._ How far the Newtonian _vis inertiæ_ (interpreted any
otherwise than as an arbitrary term = x y z, to represent the unknown
but necessary supplement or integration of the Cartesian notion of
body) has patched up the flaw, I leave for more competent judges to
decide. But should any one of my Readers feel an interest in the
speculative principles of Natural Philosophy, and should be master of
the German language, I warmly recommend for his perusal the earliest
known publication of the great founder of the Critical Philosophy
(written in the twenty-second year of his age!), on the then eager
controversy between the Leibnitzian and the French and English
Mathematicians, respecting the living forces--_Gedanken von der wahren
Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte_: 1747--in which Kant demonstrates the
_right reasoning_ to be with the latter; but the Truth of _Fact_, the
evidence of _Experience_, with the former; and gives the explanation,
namely: Body, or Corporeal Nature, is something else and more than
geometrical extension, even with the addition of a _vis inertiæ_. And
Leibnitz, with the Bernouillis, erred in the attempt to demonstrate
geometrically a problem not susceptible of geometrical construction.--The
tract, with the succeeding _Himmels-system_, may with propriety be
placed, after the _Principia_ of Newton, among the striking instances
of early Genius; and as the first product of the Dynamic Philosophy in
the Physical Sciences, from the time, at least, of Giordano Bruno,
whom the idolaters burnt for an Atheist, at Rome, in the year 1600.
See the 'Friend,' pp. 151-55. [Or pp. 69, 70, Bohn's edition.--ED.]
[164] For Newton's own doubtfully suggested ether, or _most_ subtle
fluid, as the ground and immediate Agent in the phenomena of universal
gravitation, was either not adopted or soon abandoned by his
disciples; not only as introducing, against his own canons of right
reasoning, an _ens imaginarium_ into physical science, a suf_fiction_
in the place of a legitimate sup_position_; but because the substance
(assuming it to exist) must itself form part of the problem, it was
meant to solve. Meantime Leibnitz's pre-established harmony, which
originated in Spinosa, found no acceptance; and, lastly, the notion of
a corpuscular substance, with properties _put_ into it, like a
pincushion hidden by the pins, could pass with the unthinking only for
any thing more than a confession of ignorance, or technical terms
expressing a hiatus of scientific insight.
[165] _Apul. Metam._ 1.--H. N. C.