Selected quad for the lemma: end_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
end_n	low_a	part_n	upper_a	1,487	5	9.1326	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28982	A free enquiry into the vulgarly receiv'd notion of nature made in an essay address'd to a friend / by R.B., Fellow of the Royal Society.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1686 (1686)	Wing B3979; ESTC R11778	140,528	442

but a notional Rule cannot in a Physical sense be said to perform these things but they are really performed by Judges Officers Executioners and other Men acting according to that Rule Thus when we say that Custom does this or that we ought to mean only that such things are done by proper Agents acting with Conformity to what is usual or customary on such Occasions And to give you an yet more apposite Instance do but consider how many Events are wont to be ascrib'd to Fortune or Chance and yet Fortune is in reality no Physical Cause of any thing for which Reason probably it is that Ancienter Naturalists than Aristotle as himself intimates take no notice of it when they treat of Natural Causes and only denotes that those Effects that are ascribed to it were produc'd by their true and proper Agents without intending to produce them as when a Man shoots at a Deer and the Arrow lightly glancing upon the Beast wounds some Man that lay beyond him unseen by the Archer 't is plain that the Arrow is a Physical Agent that acts by virtue of its Fabrick and Motion in both these Effects and yet Men will say that the slight hurt it gave the Deer was brought to pass according to the course of Nature because the Archer design'd to shoot the Beast but the mortal Wound it gave the Man happen'd by Chance because the Archer intended not to shoot Him or any Man else And whereas divers of the old Atomical Philosophers pretending without good Reason as well as against Piety to give an account of the Origin of things without recourse to a Deity did sometimes affirm the World to have been made by Nature and sometimes by Fortune promiscuously employing those Terms They did it if I guess aright because they thought neither of them to denote any true and proper Physical Cause but rather certain Conceptions that we Men have of the manner of acting of true and proper Agents And therefore when the Epicureans taught the World to have been made by Chance 't is probable that they did not look upon Chance as a True and Architectonick Cause of the System of the World but believ'd all things to have been made by the Atoms considered as their Conventions and Concretions into the Sun Stars Earth and other Bodies were made without any Design of Constituting those Bodies Whilst this Vein of framing Paradoxes yet continued I ventur'd to proceed so far as to Question Whether one may not infer from what hath been said That the chief Advantage a Philosopher receives from what Men call Nature be not that it affords them on divers occasions a Compendious way of expressing themselves Since thought I to consider things otherwise than in a Popular way when a Man tells me that Nature does such a thing he does not really help me to understand or to explicate how it is done For it seems manifest enough that whatsoever is done in the World at least wherein the rational Soul intervenes not is really effected by Corporeal Causes and Agents acting in a World so fram'd as Ours is according to the Laws of Motion setled by the Omniscient Author of things When a Man knows the contrivance of a Watch or Clock by viewing the several pieces of it and seeing how when they are duely put together the Spring or Weight sets one of the Wheels a work and by that another till by a fit Conse cution of the Motions of these and other parts at length the Index comes to point at the right Hour of the Day The Man if he be wise will be well enough satisfied with this knowledge of the Cause of the propos'd Effect without troubling himself to examine whether a Notional Philosopher will call the time-measuring Instrument an Ens per se or an Ens per accidens And whether it performs its Operations by virtue of an internal Principle such as the Spring of it ought to be or of an external one such as one may think the appended Weight And as he that cannot by the Mechanical affections of the parts of the Universal matter explicate a Phaenomenon will not be much help'd to understand how the Effect is produc'd by being told that Nature did it So if he can explain it Mechanically he has no more need to think or unless for brevity's sake to say that Nature brought it to pass than he that observes the Motions of a Clock has to say that 't is not the Engine but 't is Art that shews the Hour whereas without considering that general and uninstructive Name he sufficiently understands how the parts that make up the Engine are determin'd by their Construction and the Series of their Motions to produce the Effect that is brought to pass When the lower end of a Reed being dipp'd for Instance in Milk or Water he that holds it does cover the upper end with his Lips and fetches his Breath and hereupon the Liquor flows into his Mouth We are told that Nature raiseth it to prevent a Vacuum and this way of raising it is call'd Suction but when this is said the word Nature does but furnish us with a short Term to express a concourse of several Causes and so does in other Cases but what the Word Suction does in this For neither the one nor the other helps us to conceive how this seemingly spontaneous Ascension of a heavy Liquor is effected which they that know that the outward Air is a heavy fluid and gravitates or presses more upon the other parts of the Liquor than the Air contained in the Reed which is rarefy'd by the Dilatation of the Sucker's Thorax does upon the included part of the Surface will readily apprehend that the smaller pressure will be surmounted by the greater and consequently yield to the Ascension of the Liquor which is by the prevalent external pressure impell'd up into the Pipe and so into the Mouth as I among others have elswhere fully made out So that according to this Doctrine without recurring to Nature's Care to prevent a Vacuum one that had never heard of the Peripatetick Notions of Nature or of Suction might very well understand the mention'd Phaenomenon And if afterwards he should be made acquainted with the receiv'd Opinions and Forms of Speech us'd on this occasion he would think that so to ascribe the Effect to Nature is needless if not also erroneous and that the common Theory of Suction can afford him nothing but a compendious Term to express at once the Concourse of the Agents that make the Water ascend How far I think these extravagant Reasonings may be admitted you will be enabled to discern by what you will hereafter meet with relating to the same Subjects in the VII Section of this Discourse And therefore returning now to the rise of this Digression namely That 't is not unlike you may expect I should after the Vulgar Notion of Nature that I lately mention'd without acquiescing in it substitute