And if they can thus make three distinct ideas of
substance, what hinders why another may not make a fourth?
19. Substance and accidents of little use in philosophy. They who
first ran into the notion of accidents, as a sort of real beings
that needed something to inhere in, were forced to find out the word
substance to support them. Had the poor Indian philosopher (who
imagined that the earth also wanted something to bear it up) but
thought of this word substance, he needed not to have been at the
trouble to find an elephant to support it, and a tortoise to support
his elephant: the word substance would have done it effectually. And
he that inquired might have taken it for as good an answer from an
Indian philosopher,- that substance, without knowing what it is, is
that which supports the earth, as we take it for a sufficient answer
and good doctrine from our European philosophers,- that substance,
without knowing what it is, is that which supports accidents. So
that of substance, we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused,
obscure one of what it does.
20. Sticking on and under-propping. Whatever a learned man may do
here, an intelligent American, who inquired into the nature of things,
would scarce take it for a satisfactory account, if, desiring to learn
our architecture, he should be told that a pillar is a thing supported
by a basis, and a basis something that supported a pillar.
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