26. The cause of coherence of atoms in extended substances incomprehensible.
The little bodies that compose that
fluid we call water, are so extremely small, that I have never heard of any one, who, by a microscope, (and yet I
have heard of some that have magnified to ten thousand; nay, to much above a hundred thousand times),
pretended to perceive their distinct bulk, figure, or motion; and the particles of water are also so perfectly loose
one from another, that the least force sensibly separates them. Nay, if we consider their perpetual motion, we must
allow them to have no cohesion one with another; and yet let but a sharp cold come, and they unite, they
consolidate; these little atoms cohere, and are not, without great force, separable. He that could find the bonds that
tie these heaps of loose little bodies together so firmly; he that could make known the cement that makes them
stick so fast one to another, would discover a great and yet unknown secret: and yet when that was done, would he
be far enough from making the extension of body (which is the cohesion of its solid parts) intelligible, till he
could show wherein consisted the union, or consolidation of the parts of those bonds, or of that cement, or of the
least particle of matter that exists. Whereby it appears that this primary and supposed obvious quality of body will
be found, when examined, to be as incomprehensible as anything belonging to our minds, and a solid extended
substance as hard to be conceived as a thinking immaterial one, whatever difficulties some would raise against it.
