How much the World, and the great Bodies therein, are manag'd according to the _Laws of Motion_, and _Statick Principles_, and with how much more of clearness and satisfaction, many of the more abstruse _Phaenomena_ have been salved on such Principles, within this last Century of years, than formerly they had been; I need not discourse to you, who are well versed in it. For, since that _Galilaeo_ and (after him) _Torricellio_, and others, have applied _Mechanick_ Principles to the salving of _Philosophical_ Difficulties; _Natural Philosophy_ is well known to have been rendered more intelligible, and to have made a much greater progress in less than an hundred years, than before for many ages. The _Seas Ebbing and Flowing_, hath so great a connexion with the _Moons_ motion, that in a manner all Philosophers (whatever other Causes they have joyned with it), have attributed much of its cause to the _Moon_, which either by some _occult quality_, {265} or _particular influence_, which it hath on moyst Bodies, or by some _Magnetick vertue_, drawing the water towards it, (which should therefore make the Water there _highest_, where the Moon is _vertical_) or by its gravity and pressure downwards upon the Terraqueous Globe (which would make it _lowest_ where the Moon is _vertical_) or by whatever other means (according to the several Conjectures of inquisitive persons,) hath so great an influence on, or at least a connexion with, the Sea's Flux and Reflux, that it would seem very unreasonable, to seclude the consideration of the Moons motion from that of the Sea: The _Periods of Tides_ (to say nothing of the greatness of them near the New moon and Full moon) so constantly waiting on the Moon's motion, that it may be well presumed, that either the one is governed by the other, or at least both from some common cause.