Cornelius was forc'd to give Martin sensible images; thus calling up the Coachman he ask'd him what he had seen at the Bear-garden? The man answer'd he saw two men fight a prize; one was a fair man, a Sergeant in the Guards, the other black, a Butcher; the Sergeant had red breeches, the Butcher blue; they fought upon a Stage about four o'clock, and the Sergeant wounded the Butcher in the leg.
Mark (quoth Cornelius) how the fellow runs through the praedicaments. Men, Substantia; two, quantitas; fair and black, qualitas; Sergeant and Butcher, relatio; wounded the other, actio & passio; fighting, situs; Stage, ubi; two o'Clock, quando; blue and red Breeches, habitus.
At the same time he warn'd Martin, that what he now learn'd as a Logician, he must forget as a natural Philosopher; that tho' he now taught them that accidents inher'd in the subject, they would find in time there was no such thing; and that colour, taste, smell, heat, and cold, were not in the things but only phantasms of our brains. He was forc'd to let them into this secret, for Martin could not conceive how a habit of dancing inher'd in a dancing∣master, when he did not dance; nay, he would demand the Characteristicks of Relations: Crambe us'd to help him out by telling him, a Cuckold, a losing gamester, a man that had not din'd, a young heir that was kept short by his father, might be all known by their countenance; that, in this last case, the Paternity and Filiation leave very sensible impressions in the relatum and correlatum. The greatest difficulty was, when they came to the Tenth Praedicament: Crambe affirmed, that his Habitus was more a substance than he was; for his cloaths could better subsist without him, than he without his cloaths.
[Memoirs Of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus, pp. 54-55.]
It might sound a little odd to think of 'fighting' as a kind of posture, but in a duel of swords you need a fighting stance. The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus was written by the Scriblerus Club, so one finds it attributed to different Scriblerians, with Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and John Arbuthnot perhaps being the most common. One of the common themes of the work is that the eighteenth century was a muddle of old and new, without much rhyme or reason, which is why Cornelius teaches his skeptical student that everything he learns as a logician (still based on Aristotle) he has to forget as a natural philosopher (based on non- and sometimes anti-Aristotelian principles).
