19.  Substance and accidents of little use in Philosophy.

They who first ran into the notion of accidents, as a sort of real beings that needed something to inhere in, were forced to find out the word substance to support them.  Had the poor Indian philosopher (who imagined that the earth also wanted something to bear it up) but thought of this word substance, he needed not to have been at the trouble to find an elephant to support it, and a tortoise to support his elephant:  the word substance would have done it effectually.  And he that inquired might have taken it for as good an answer from an Indian philosopher,—­that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which supports the earth, as take it for a sufficient answer and good doctrine from our European philosophers,—­that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which supports accidents.  So that of substance, we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it does.

20.  Sticking on and under-propping.

Whatever a learned man may do here, an intelligent American, who inquired into the nature of things, would scarce take it for a satisfactory account, if, desiring to learn our architecture, he should be told that a pillar is a thing supported by a basis, and a basis something that supported a pillar.  Would he not think himself mocked, instead of taught, with such an account as this?  And a stranger to them would be very liberally instructed in the nature of books, and the things they contained, if he should be told that all learned books consisted of paper and letters, and that letters were things inhering in paper, and paper a thing that held forth letters:  a notable way of having clear ideas of letters and paper.  But were the Latin words, inhaerentia and substantio, put into the plain English ones that answer them, and were called sticking on and under-propping, they would better discover to us the very great clearness there is in the doctrine of substance and accidents, and show of what use they are in deciding of questions in philosophy.

21.  A Vacuum beyond the utmost Bounds of Body.

But to return to our idea of space.  If body be not supposed infinite, (which I think no one will affirm,) I would ask, whether, if God placed a man at the extremity of corporeal beings, he could not stretch his hand beyond his body?  If he could, then he would put his arm where there was before space without body; and if there he spread his fingers, there would still be space between them without body.  If he could not stretch out his hand, it must be because of some external hindrance; (for we suppose him alive, with such a power of moving the parts of his body that he hath now, which is not in itself impossible, if God so pleased to have it; or at least it is not impossible for God so to move him:) and then I ask,—­whether that which hinders his hand from moving outwards be