Page:The System of Nature.djvu/70

 truth, which applies with equal uniformity to what is called physical, as to what is termed moral.

It is upon this disposition in matter and bodies, with relation to each other, that is founded those modes of action which natural philosophers designate by the terms attraction, repulsion, sympathy, antipathy, affinities, relations; that moralists describe under the names of love, hatred, friendship, aversion. Man, like all the beings in nature, experiences the impulse of attraction and repulsion; the motion excited in him differing from that of other beings, only, because it is more concealed, and frequently so hidden, that neither the causes which excite it, nor their mode of action are known. This system of attraction and repulsion is very ancient, although it required a NEWTON to develop it. That love, to which the ancients attributed the unfolding, or disentanglement of chaos, appears to have been nothing more than a personification of the principle of attraction. All their allegories and fables upon chaos, evidently indicate nothing more than the accord or union that exists between analogous and homogeneous substances; from whence resulted the existence of the universe: whilst discord or repulsion, which they called SOIS, was the cause of dissolution, confusion, and disorder; there can scarcely remain a doubt, but this was the origin of the doctrines of the TWO PRINCIPLES. According to DIOGENES LAERTIUS, the philosopher, EMPEDOCLES, asserted, that "there is a kind of affection by which the elements unite themselves; and a sort of discord, by which they separate or remove themselves."

However it may be, it is sufficient for us to know that by an invariable law, certain bodies are disposed