LXXXV. It would be even some consolation to us under our ignorance,
if only the manner, in which nature works in the interior part of
her operations, was hidden from our eyes; but the most humiliating
circumstance is, that it is the same, with respect to every thing that
immediately presents itself to our senses. Bodies are familiar to our
touch; but hitherto, we have not been able to discover, whether they are
composed of indivisible points, or of parts infinitely divisible; nor to
what it is owing, that one body is hard, and another soft, one solid,
another fluid, one opake, and another diaphanous. We are continually
viewing colours; but we do not yet know, what sort of things colours
are; whether they are mere reflexions of the light, or whether they are
intrinsic accidents appertaining to the object. The light illuminates,
and assists us to see; but we find our understandings greatly obscured,
when we consider the nature of light. Whether we conceive it to be
substance, accident, body, or spirit, none of them are applicable to its
nature, and still they all seem to be so. And with how many impenetrable
doubts and difficulties are we surrounded, when we consider the species
which we call visible? If there is any one difficulty superior to, or any
one inequality more striking than another in the mysteries of physics, I
will venture to pronounce this is it. How the visible species of a star
in the firmament, can in an instant, be translated from the same star to
our eyes, when it must travel in that instant many thousands of miles, is
beyond conception; as is likewise, how this species can exist at one and
the same time, in the whole immense space between this and the firmament;
it being certain, that in all this space, there is not a point, from
which, by taking the view, you will not see the star. How also, contrary
to the maxim of Aristotle, can many material species, differing only in
number, exist or be seen, from the same point of space; it being certain,
that you may from such an identical point, see distinctly, many stars at
the same time? I shall omit many other objections, that are not inferior
or less forcible to these I have urged, against the common opinion,
that might be also urged, against the mode of reasoning of the modern
philosophers.