But as to the causes of these general causes, we should
in vain attempt their discovery; nor shall we ever be able to
satisfy ourselves, by any particular explication of them. These
ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human
curiosity and enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts,
communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate
causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature; and we
may esteem ourselves sufficiently happy, if, by accurate enquiry and
reasoning, we can trace up the particular phenomena to, or near to,
these general principles. The most perfect philosophy of the natural
kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the
most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves
only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of
human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and
meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid
it.
27. Nor is geometry, when taken into the assistance of natural
philosophy, ever able to remedy this defect, or lead us into the
knowledge of ultimate causes, by all that accuracy of reasoning for
which it is so justly celebrated. Every part of mixed mathematics
proceeds upon the supposition that certain laws are established by
nature in her operations; and abstract reasonings are employed, either
to assist experience in the discovery of these laws, or to determine
their influence in particular instances, where it depends upon any
precise degree of distance and quantity.
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