[To this I reply,
that I first considered in general all the clear and distinct
notions of material things that are to be found in our
understanding, and that, finding no others except those of figures,
magnitudes, and motions, and of the rules according to which these
three things can be diversified by each other, which rules are the
principles of geometry and mechanics, I judged that all the
knowledge man can have of nature must of necessity be drawn from
this source; because all the other notions we have of sensible
things, as confused and obscure, can be of no avail in affording us
the knowledge of anything out of ourselves, but must serve rather to
impede it]. Thereupon, taking as my ground of inference the simplest
and best known of the principles that have been implanted in our
minds by nature, I considered the chief differences that could
possibly subsist between the magnitudes, and figures, and situations
of bodies insensible on account of their smallness alone, and what
sensible effects could be produced by their various modes of coming
into contact; and afterwards, when I found like effects in the
bodies that we perceive by our senses, I judged that they could have
been thus produced, especially since no other mode of explaining
them could be devised.
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