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.
