BOOK I PART III
shall tell them how they may avoid it; and that
is, by concluding from the very first, that they
have no adequate idea of power or efficacy in
any object; since neither in body nor spirit, nei-
ther in superior nor inferior natures, are they
able to discover one single instance of it.
The same conclusion is unavoidable upon
the hypothesis of those, who maintain the ef-
ficacy of second causes, and attribute a deriva-
tive, but a real power and energy to matter. For
as they confess, that this energy lies not in any
of the known qualities of matter, the difficulty
still remains concerning the origin of its idea.
If we have really an idea of power, we may at-
tribute power to an unknown quality: But as
it is impossible, that that idea can be derived
from such a quality, and as there is nothing in
known qualities, which can produce it; it fol-