1. The magnitude and duration of the world, inscrutable.—2. No place in the world empty.—3. The arguments of Lucretius for vacuum, invalid.—4. Other arguments for the establishing of vacuum, invalid.—5. Six suppositions for the salving of the phenomena of nature.—6. Possible causes of the motions annual and diurnal; and of the apparent direction, station, and retrogradation of the planets.—7. The supposition of simple motion, why likely.—8. The cause of the eccentricity of the annual motion of the earth.—9. The cause why the moon hath always one and the same face turned towards the earth.—10. The cause of the tides of the ocean.—11. The cause of the precession of the equinoxes. [Sidenote: The magnitude and duration of the world, inscrutable.] 1. Consequent to the contemplation of sense is the contemplation of bodies, which are the efficient causes or objects of sense. Now every object is either a part of the whole world, or an aggregate of parts. The greatest of all bodies, or sensible objects, is the world itself; which we behold when we look round about us from this point of the same which we call the earth. Concerning the world, as it is one aggregate of many parts, the things that fall under inquiry are but few; and those we can determine, none. Of the whole world we may inquire what is its magnitude, what its duration, and how many there be, but nothing else. For as for place and time, that is to say, magnitude and duration, they are only our own fancy of a body simply so called, that is to say, of a body indefinitely taken, as I have shown before in chapter VII. All other phantasms are of bodies or objects, as they are distinguished from one another; as colour, the phantasm of coloured bodies; sound, of bodies that move the sense of hearing, &c. The questions concerning the magnitude of the world are whether it be finite or infinite, full or not full; concerning its duration, whether it had a beginning, or be eternal; and concerning the number, whether there be one or many; though as concerning the number, if it were of infinite magnitude, there could be no controversy at all. Also if it had a beginning, then by what cause and of what matter it was made; and again, from whence that cause and that matter had their being, will be new questions; till at last we come to one or many eternal cause or causes. And the determination of all these things belongeth to him that professeth the universal doctrine of philosophy, in case as much could be known as can be sought. But the knowledge of what is infinite can never be attained by a finite inquirer. Whatsoever we know that are men, we learn it from our phantasms; and of infinite, whether magnitude or time, there is no phantasm at all; so that it is impossible either for a man or any other creature to have any conception of infinite. And though a man may from some effect proceed to the immediate cause thereof, and from that to a