General Scholium - "The Spirit"

"The Spirit"

The General Scholium ends with a mystifying paragraph about a "certain most subtle Spirit, which prevades and lies hid in all gross bodies." It has been largely interpreted as Newton's view and prospect of electricity, a phenomenon of which little was known about at the time. Newton describes some attributes of this Spirit and concludes:

But these are things that cannot be explained in a few words, nor are we furnished with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination and demonstration of the laws which this electric spirit operates.