But as Nature seems to have observed a kind of justice and compensation in every thing, she has not neglected philosophers more than the rest of the creation, but has reserved them a consolation amid all their disappointments and afflictions. This consolation principally consists in their invention of the words _faculty_ and _occult quality_. For it being usual, after the frequent use of terms, which are really significant and intelligible, to omit the idea which we would express by them, and preserve only the custom by which we recal the idea at pleasure; so it naturally happens, that after the frequent use of terms which are wholly insignificant and unintelligible, we fancy them to be on the same footing with the precedent, and to have a secret meaning which we might discover by reflection. The resemblance of their appearance deceives the mind, as is usual, and makes us imagine a thorough resemblance and conformity. By this means these philosophers set themselves at ease, and arrive at last, by an illusion, at the same indifference which the people attain by their stupidity, and true philosophers by their moderate scepticism. They need only say, that any phenomenon which puzzles them arises from a faculty or an occult quality, and there is an end of all dispute and inquiry upon the matter. But among all the instances wherein the Peripatetics have shown they were guided by every trivial propensity of the imagination, no one is more remarkable than their _sympathies, antipathies, and horrors of a vacuum_. There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it. This inclination, 'tis true, is suppressed by a little reflection, and only takes place in children, poets, and the ancient philosophers. It appears in children, by their desire of beating the stones which hurt them: in poets by their readiness to personify every thing; and in the ancient philosophers, by these fictions of sympathy and antipathy. We must pardon children, because of their age; poets, because they profess to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy; but what excuse shall we find to justify our philosophers in so signal a weakness? SECTION IV. OF THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY.