Philosophical and Literary Essays Author:John Gregory Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: And I fhall endeavour further to illu- ftrate the Time principle, and its obvious neceflary inferences, by the nearly corre- fponding refult of fimihr combinatio... more »ns of the principles of change in certain operations of mind, which are either wholly or partly involuntary, fuch as fenfation and belief. For this purpofe, I fhall give fome inftan- ces of the truth of the necefTary inferences already ftated, and confequently of the truth of the two principles afTumed, in three different branches of phyfical fcience, mechanical philofophy, chemiflry, and phy- fiology ; each of which is in fome mea- fure regulated by certain laws peculiar to itfelf, while all feem to be fubjeft to thofe two more general laws. Perhaps it will be thought needlefs, of little better than begging the queftion, to offer inflances of the truth of conclufions deduced from the principle of the inafli- vity of body, and that of the conftant conjundion of caule and effedl, from the phenomena of mechanical philofophy, as pcrfon in the leaf t acquainted with B b c this chapter{Section 4this branch of fcience knows, that in il there is not even a fufpicion, among men of competent judgement and knowledge, of any exception to either of thofe two principles. And I believe fuch a fuppofi- tion would at once be pronounced, not merely falfe, but abfurd, even by the vulgar. Neverthelefs, as mechanical philofophy affords many of the bef t underftood and moft diftindl and obvious examples of the truth of the inferences and of the principles in queftion, I fhall juft mention, but without offering any commentary in proof of them, which I am fure would be needlefs, that the well-known phenomena of the motions of the comets and planets, and the irregularities of thefe motions from the mutual influence of the moving bodie...« less