Note 46 — Chapter X · Of the general Diffusion of clear Mechanical Ideas.

See Prof. Powell, On the Nature and Evidence of the Laws of Motion. Reports of the Ashmolean Society. Oxford. 1837. Professor Powell has made an objection to my use of this instance of confusion of thought; the remark in the text seems to me to justify what I said in the History. As an evidence that the fish was not supposed to produce its effect by its muscular power acting on the water, we may take what Pliny says, Nat. Hist. xxxii. 1, ‘Domat mundi rabiem, nullo suo labore; non retinendo, aut alio modo quam adhærendo:’ and also what he states in another place (ix. 41), that when it is preserved in pickle, it may be used in recovering gold which has fallen into a deep well. All this implies adhesion alone, with no conception of reaction.