Robert Southey

“ For if matter by any powers or properties given to it, can produce the order of the visible world, and even generate thought; why may it not have possessed such properties by inherent right? and where is the necessity of a God? matter is, according to the mechanic philosophy capable of acting most wisely and most beneficently without Wisdom or Benevolence; and what more does the Atheist assert? if matter possess those properties, why might it not have possessed them from all eternity? Sir Isaac Newton's Deity seems to be alternately operose and indolent ”

“ David Hartley from whom this account of æther is chiefly borrowed, makes it the instrument of propagating those vibrations or configurative motions which are ideas. It appears to me, no hypothesis ever involved so many contradictions; for how can the same fluid be both dense and rare in the same body at one time? yet in the Earth as gravitating to the Moon, it must be very rare; and in the Earth as gravitating to the Sun, it must be very dense. ”

“ For, as Andrew Baxter well observes, it doth not appear sufficient to account how this fluid may act with a force proportional to the body to which another is impelled, to assert that it is rarer in great bodies than in small ones: it must be farther asserted that this fluid is rarer or denser in the same body, whether small or great, according as the body to which that is impelled is itself small or great. ”

“ We seem placed here to acquire a knowledge of effects. Whenever we would pierce into the Adyta of Causation, we bewilder ourselves; and all, that laborious Conjecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of imagination. ”

“ Threaten'd destruction, tho' oft announc'd withheld,
Tho' still withheld, expected.
These the Maid205
Mark'd as they steer'd their dusky flight along;
And lo! she was amidst them.
Paved with bones
The floor breath'd pestilence: the emblazon'd walls
With ensigns and with blood-stain'd arms were hung,
The trophies of Ambition. ”

“ Return, adven'trous Song! to where Dunois
↑ Line 34 Sir Isaac Newton at the end of the last edition of his Optics, supposes that a very subtile and elastic fluid, which he calls æther, is diffused thro' the pores of gross bodies, as well as thro' the open spaces that are void of gross matter; he supposes it to pierce all bodies, and to touch their least particles, acting on them with a force proportional to their number or to the matter of the body on which it acts. ”

“ We are restless, because invisible things are not the objects of vision—and philosophical systems, for the most part, are received not for their Truth, but in proportion as they attribute to Causes a susceptibility of being seen, whenever our visual organs shall have become sufficiently powerful. ”

“ He supposes likewise, that it is rarer in the pores of bodies than in open spaces, and even rarer in small pores and dense bodies, than in large pores and rare bodies; and also that its density increases in receding from gross matter; so for instance as to be greater at the 1/100 of an inch from the surface of any body, than at its surface ”

“ And each stain'd wave dash'd on the shore a corse.
Nor did not the large blood-drops fall from Heaven
Portentous! while aloft were seen to float,
His hideous features blended with the mist,345
The long black locks of Slaughter. Peace beheld,
And o'er the plain with oft-reverted eye
Fled, till a place of Tombs she reach'd, and there
Within a ruin'd sepulchre obscure
Found hiding-place.
The delegated Maid 350
Gaz'd thro' her tears, then in sad tones exclaim'd,
"Thou mild-ey'd Form! wherefore ah! wherefore fled?
The name of Justice written on thy brow
Resplendent shone ”