We are far from supposing that the adversaries of the _actio in distans_ will be silenced by the preceding answer; as it is very probable that the answer itself will be to many of them a source of new difficulties. Still, many things are true which are difficult to be understood; and it would be against reason to deny truths sufficiently inferred from facts, only on account of the difficulty which we experience in giving a popular explanation of them. Those who, to avoid such a difficulty, deny action at a distance, expose themselves to other difficulties which are much more real, as admitting of no possible solution; and if they reject actions at a distance because their explanation appears to be difficult, they are also bound to reject even more decidedly all actions by material contact; for these indeed admit of no explanation whatever, as we have already shown.(4) To understand and explain how material elements can act at any distance is difficult, for this one radical reason: that our intellectual work is never purely intellectual, but is always accompanied by the working of that other very useful, but sometimes mischievous, power which we call imagination; and because, when we are trying to understand something that transcends imagination, and of which no sensible image can be formed, our intellect finds itself under the necessity of working without the assistance of suitable sensible representations. Our imagination, however, cannot remain inactive, and therefore it strives continually to supply the intellect with new images; but as these, unhappily, are not calculated to afford any exact representation of intellectual things, the intellect, instead of receiving help from the imagination, is rather embarrassed and led astray by it. On the other hand, the words which we are generally obliged to use in speaking of intellectual objects are more or less immediately drawn from sensible things, and have still a certain connection with sensible images. With such words, our explanations must, of course, be metaphorical in some degree, and represent the intelligible through the sensible, even when the latter is incompatible with the former. This is one of the reasons why, in some cases, men fail to express intelligibly and in an unobjectionable manner their most intellectual thoughts. True it is that the metaphysicians, by the definite form of their terminology, have greatly diminished this last difficulty; but, as their language is little known outside of the philosophical world, our use of it will scarcely help the common reader to understand what it conveys. On the contrary, the greater the exactness of our expressions, the more strange and absurd our style will appear to him who knows of no other language than that of his senses, his imagination, and popular prejudice.