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306 THE WILL IN NATURE.
"
All bodies with which we are acquainted, when raised
into the air and quietly abandoned, descend to the earth s
surface in lines perpendicular to it. They are therefore
urged thereto by a force or effort, the direct or indirect
result of a consciousness and a will existing somewhere,
though beyond our power to trace, which force we term
l
gravity"
The writer who reviewed Herschel s book in the October
number of the
"
Edinburgh Review
"
of 1833, anxious, as a
true Englishman, before all things to prevent the Mosaic
record 2
from being imperilled, takes great umbrage at this
passage, rightly observing that it cannot refer to the will
of God Almighty, who has called Matter and all its proper
ties into being; he utterly refuses to recognise the validity of
the proposition itself, and denies that it follows consistently
from the preceding upon which Herschel wishes to found
it. My opinion is, that it undoubtedly would logically
follow from that (because the contents of a conception
are determined by its origin), but that the antecedent
itself is false. It asserts namely, that the origin of the
conception of causality is experience, more especially such
experience as we ourselves make in acting by means of our
1 Even Copernicus had said the same thing long before :
"
Equifom
existimo Gravitatem non aliud esse quam appetentiam quandam natu-
ralem, partibus inditam a divina providentia opificis universorum, ut in
unitatem integritatemgue steam, se conferant, in formam Globi coeuntes.
Quam affectionem credibile est etiam Soli, L/unae caeterisque errantiwn
fulgoribus, inesse, ut eyus efficacia, in ea qua se repraesentant rotunditate
permaneant; quae nihilominus multis modis suos efficiimt circuittis"
("Nicol. Copernici revol." Lib. I, Cap. IX. Compare "Exposition des
Decouvertes de M. le Chevalier Newton par M. Maclaurin ; traduit de
1 Anglois par M. Lavirotte," Paris, 1749, p. 45). Kerschel evidently saw,
that if we hesitate to explain gravity, as Descartes did, by an impulse
from outside, we are absolutely driven to admit a will inherent in bodies..
Non datur tertium. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
2 Which he has more at heart than all the wisdom and truth in the
world. [Add. to 3rd ed.]