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. Would he
not think himself mocked, instead of taught, with such an account as this? And a stranger to them would be very
liberally instructed in the nature of books, and the things they contained, if he should be told that all learned books
consisted of paper and letters, and that letters were things inhering in paper, and paper a thing that held forth
letters: a notable way of having clear ideas of letters and paper. But were the Latin words, inhaerentia and
substantio, put into the plain English ones that answer them, and were called sticking on and under-propping, they
would better discover to us the very great clearness there is in the doctrine of substance and accidents, and show
of what use they are in deciding of questions in philosophy.
