Withdraw this foundation of bodies as inter-resisting forces causing one another in collision to form a joint mass with a common velocity but without penetration, and the evidence of the third law disappears; for in the case of attractive forces we know nothing of their modus operandi except by the analogy of the collision of inter-resisting bodies, which makes us believe that something similar, we know not what, takes place in gravity, magnetism, electricity, &c. Now, Mach, though he occasionally drops hints that the discovery of the law of collision comes first, yet never explains the process of development from it to the third law of motion.