Page:Treatise of Human Nature (1888).djvu/83

63 produce after the suppos'd annihilation; and it has already been remark'd, that impressions can give rise to no ideas, but to such as resemble them.

Since a body interpos'd betwixt two others may be suppos'd to be annihilated, without producing any change upon such as lie on each hand of it, 'tis easily conceiv'd, how it, may be created anew, and yet produce as little alteration. Now the motion of a body has much the same effect as its creation. The distant bodies are no more affected in the one case, than in the other. This suffices to satisfy the imagination, and proves there is no repugnance in such a motion. Afterwards experience comes in play to persuade us that two bodies, situated in the manner above-describ'd, have really such a capacity of receiving body betwixt them, and that there is no obstacle to the conversion of the invisible and intangible distance into one that is visible and tangible. However natural that conversation may seem, we cannot be sure it is practicable, before we have had experience of it.

Thus I seem to have answer'd the three objections above mention'd; tho' at the same time I am sensible, that few will be satisfy'd with these answers, but will immediately propose new objections and difficulties. 'Twill probably he said, that my reasoning makes nothing to the matter in hand, and that I explain only the manner in which objects affect the senses, without endeavouring to account for their real nature and operations. Tho' there be nothing visible or tangible interpos'd betwixt two bodies, yet we find by experience, that the bodies may be plac'd in the same manner, with regard to the eye, and require the same motion of the hand in passing from one to the other, as if divided by something visible and tangible. This invisible and intangible distance is also found by experience to contain a capacity of receiving body, or of becoming visible and tangible. Here is the whole of my system; and in no part of it have I endeavour'd to explain the cause, which separates bodies after this manner,