Nature Is Pleased With Simplicity. And Nature

Definition Of Inertia: 'the Vis Insita, Or Innate Force Of Matter, Is A Power Of Resisting By Which Every Body, As Much As In It Lies, Endeavours To Preserve Its Present State, Whether It Be Of Rest Or Of Moving Uniformly Forward In A Straight Line.

As A Blind Man Has No Idea Of Colors, So We Have No Idea Of The Manner By Which The All-wise God Perceives And Understands All Things.

[1.] And First I Suppose That There Is Diffused Through All Places An Aethereal Substance Capable Of Contraction & Dilatation, Strongly Elastick, & In A Word, Much Like Air In All Respects, But Far More Subtile. 2. I Suppose This Aether Pervades All Gross Bodies, But Yet So As To Stand Rarer In Their Pores Then In Free Spaces, & So Much Ye Rarer As Their Pores Are Less ... 3. I Suppose Ye Rarer Aether Within Bodies & Ye Denser Without Them, Not To Be Terminated In A Mathematical Superficies, But To Grow Gradually Into One Another.

Impressed Force Is The Action Exerted On A Body To Change Its State Either Of Resting Or Of Moving Uniformly Straight Forward.

My Design In This Book Is Not To Explain The Properties Of Light By Hypotheses, But To Propose And Prove Them By Reason And Experiments: In Order To Which, I Shall Premise The Following Definitions And Axioms.