Page:The true intellectual system of the universe - the first part; wherein, all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted; and its impossibility demonstrated (IA trueintellectual1678cudw).pdf/37

---

---

those Atoms of his after this manner, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉· They are (saith he) like those Ramenta or dusty Particles which appear in the Sun-Beams, an Omnifarious Seminary whereof Democritus makes to be the first Elements of the whole Vniverse, and so doth Leucippus likewise. Elsewhere the same Aristotle tells us, that these two Philosophers explained Generation and Alteration without Forms and Qualities by Figures and Local Motion. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉· Democritus and Leucippus having made Figures, (or variously figured Atoms) the first Principles, make Generation and Alteration out of these; namely Generation together with Corruption, from the Concretion and Secretion of them, but Alteration from the change of their Order and Position. Again he elsewhere takes notice of that Opinion of the Atomists, that all Sense was a kind of Touch, and that the Sensible Qualities of Bodies were to be resolved into Figures, imputing it not only to Democritus, but also to the Generality of the old Philosophers, but very much disliking the same: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉· Democritus and most of the Physiologers here commit a very great Absurdity, in that they make all Sense to be Touch, and resolve sensible Qualities into the Figures of insensible Parts or Atoms. And this Opinion he endeavours to confute by these Arguments. First, because there is Contrariety in Qualities, as in Black and White, Hot and Cold, Bitter and Sweet, but there is no Contrariety in Figures; for a Circular Figure is not Contrary to a Square or Multangular; and therefore there must be Real Qualities in Bodies distinct from the Figure, Site and Motion of Parts. Again, the variety of Figures and Dispositions being Infinite, it would follow from thence, that the Species of Colours, Odours, and Tastes should be Infinite likewise, and Reducible to no certain Number. Which Arguments I leave the Professed Atomists to answer. Furthermore Aristotle somewhere also censures that other Fundamental Principle of this Atomical Physiology, That the sensible Ideas of Colours and Tastes, as Red, Green, Bitter and Sweet, formally considered, are only Passions and Phansies in us, and not real Qualities in the Object without. For as in a Rainbow there is really nothing without our sight, but a Rorid Cloud diversely refracting and reflecting the Sun-Beams, in such an Angle; nor are there really such Qualities in the Diaphanous Prisme, when refracting the Light, it exhibits to us the same Colours of the Rainbow: whence it was collected, that those things are properly the Phantasms of the Sentient, occasioned by different Motions on the Optick Nerves: So they conceived the case to be the same in all other Colours, and that both the Colours of the Prisme and Rainbow were as real as other Colours, and all other Colours as Phantastical as they: And then by parity of Reason they extended the business further to the other Sensibles. But this Opinion Aristotle condemns in these words, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉· The former Physiologers were generally o•t in this, in that

they