Take the air but for a minute from the greatest part of
living creatures, and they presently lose sense, life, and motion.
This the necessity of breathing has forced into our knowledge. But how
many other extrinsical and possibly very remote bodies do the
springs of these admirable machines depend on, which are not
vulgarly observed, or so much as thought on; and how many are there
which the severest inquiry can never discover? The inhabitants of this
spot of the universe, though removed so many millions of miles from
the sun, yet depend so much on the duly tempered motion of particles
coming from or agitated by it, that were this earth removed but a
small part of the distance out of its present situation, and placed
a little further or nearer that source of heat, it is more than
probable that the greatest part of the animals in it would immediately
perish: since we find them so often destroyed by an excess or defect
of the sun's warmth, which an accidental position in some parts of
this our little globe exposes them to. The qualities observed in a
loadstone must needs have their source far beyond the confines of that
body; and the ravage made often on several sorts of animals by
invisible causes, the certain death (as we are told) of some of
them, by barely passing the line, or, as it is certain of other, by
being removed into a neighbouring country; evidently show that the
concurrence and operations of several bodies, with which they are
seldom thought to have anything to do, is absolutely necessary to make
them be what they appear to us, and to preserve those qualities by
which we know and distinguish them.
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