Section VI

Summary

Having in the foregoing section proposed some of the considerations that have dissatisfied me with the received notion of nature, it may now be justly expected that I should also consider what I foresee will be alleged in its behalf by the more intelligent of its favourers. And I shall not deny the objections I am going to name against my opinion to be considerable, especially for this reason: that I am very unwilling to seem to put such an affront upon the generality as well of learned men as of others, as to maintain that they have built a notion of so great weight and importance upon slight and inconsiderable grounds. The reasons that I conceive may have induced philosophers to take up and rely on the received notion of nature are such as these that follow.

And the first argument, as one of the most obvious, may be taken from the general belief – or, as men suppose, observation – that divers bodies, as particularly earth, water, and other elements, have each of them its natural place assigned it in the universe; from which place, if any portion of the element, or any mixed body wherein that element predominates, happens to be removed, it has a strong incessant appetite to return to it, because when it is there it ceases either to gravitate or (as some schoolmen speak) to levitate, and is now in a place which nature has qualified to preserve it, according to the axiom that locus conservat locatum [a place keeps (or maintains) whatever is located there].