1 B. of the Parts of Liv. Creat C. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that we ought to divide a being by them parts which are contained in its essence and not by its Accidents The division of Matter in Metaphysical and Physical may be rejected upon the same ground These divisions as they are objective appertain to Logick where only second notions are treated of and are very useful to the directing of Reason VI. Forms are divisible in material and immaterial If material is understood to be that which doth inhere in matter which is its most frequent and ordinary acception for most Philosophers take it in that sense then all worldly beings are material what being is there but which doth inhere in Matter You may say mans soul. The soul of man according to this acception is material But if you take immaterial for that which can or doth exist out of matter then there are immaterial forms Neither can this be naturally for a Natural Form is which giveth an actual specification and numerication to matter If so how can a form give an actual Specification and numerication to matter when it is not united to it I prove that the Form giveth an actual specification and numerication to matter Forma dat esse i. e. Specif Numer non posse esse materiae A Form giveth a being not a power of being to Matter For matter hath the power of being from it self and not from the Form This is true for most Peripateticks hold that Potentia is essential to matter The Soul of man when once freed from its tye to the body ceases to be a Form but therefore doth not cease to continue a being So that I conclude there are immaterial beings but no immaterial Forms It is ridiculous to doubt whether the Soul of man when separated hath an Appetite or Inclination to its Body or to that matter which it did once informate because the soul in its separated estate is a compleat and perfect being and doth not need a Body neither is the Soul a Form in that state Wherefore should it then have an Appetite to its Body Such an Appetite would be in vain You may answer that it wanteth a Subject to inhere or subsist in I grant it and therefore it subsisteth in God VII A Form is improperly divided in an assistent and informating Form because one being is satisfied with one Form for had it two forms it would be a double being 2. That which they intend by an assistent form is coincident with an Efficient Cause CHAP. XXIV Of the Theorems of Causes 1. That a Cause and its Effects are co-existent 2. That there are but three Causes of every Natural Being 3. That there is but one Cause of every Being 4. That all Beings are constituted by one or more Causes 5. That all Causes are really univocal 6. That all Natural Causes act necessarily 7. That the Soul of a Beast acteth necessarily 8. That all Matter hath a Form That Matter is capable of many Forms I. A Cause and its Effect are existent at one and the same time This Theorem is received among most Philosophers who render it thus Posita Causa ponitur Effectus The Cause being stated that is reduced into action its Effect is also stated or produced The Reason depends upon their relation one to the other to whose Relata it is proper to exist at one and the same time according to that trite Maxim Relata mutuo sese ponunt tollunt Relations do constitute and abolish one another II. There are three Causes of every Natural Being whereof one reduced to Action supposeth the others also to be reduced to action The Proof of this is demonstrated by the same Axiom by which the next forementioned was inferred III. There is but one Cause of all Beings A Cause here is taken in a strict sense for that which produceth an effect essentially and really distinct from it self In this Acception is an efficient the only cause of all Beings Matter and Form are no Causes according to this Interpretation but Principles because they do not constitute an effect essentially different from themselves A Cause sometime is taken in a strict sense for that which produceth an Effect different from it self modally and so there are two to wit Matter and Form Lastly A cause as it signifieth in a middle signification participating of each acception comprehends a triplicity of causes viz. An Efficient Matter and Form IV. All beings are constituted by one or more Causes God is of himself and not from any other as from an efficient cause and consisteth of one pure formal cause By formal Cause understand an immaterial being Angels are constituted by two Causes namely by an Efficient and a Form All other Beings are constituted by more V. All Causes are univocal This is to be understood of Efficients only Whatever Effect a Cause produceth it is like to its Form and is formal only For it cannot generate matter that being created Wherefore it cannot produce any thing else but what like to it self and consequently produceth alwaies the same effect whereas an equivocal cause should produce different effects You may demand why it hapneth that many effects are different as we observe in the Sun which by its heat doth produce Vegetables and Animals which are different I answer that the Difference doth result from the diversity of the Matter upon which it acteth and not from the causality that being ever one and the same The diversity of Effects is accidental to the Efficient and therefore not to be allowed of in Sciences VI. All Natural Causes act Necessarily Hence derives this Maxim Natura nunquam errat Nature doth never erre because she acts necessarily Against this Maxim may be objected that Nature erreth in generating a Monster This is no Errour of Nature It might rather be imputed an Errour if when it should produce a Monster it doth not That which acts after the same manner at all times doth not erre But Nature doth act in the same manner at all times Ergo she doth never erre I prove the Minor If she acts differently at any time it is in a Monster But she doth not act differently in a Monster as in the example forenamed of a Dog without Legs she doth through the Efficient cause educe a form out of the matter which she extendeth according to the extent of the subjected matter the matter therefore being deficient in quantity it is accidental to Nature if thereby a being is not brought to the likeness of its Species The Soul of man may be considered either 1. As a Natural Cause and so it acteth also necessarily in giving a Being and Life to the Body For as long as it abideth in the body it cannot but give Life to its Parts 2. As it is above a Natural Cause in that it hath a power of acting voluntarily without the Necessity or Impulse of Nature VII The Soul of a Beast doth act
usefulnesse and convenience Pleasant Good is which is coveted for its pleasure and delight which it affordeth These two are not to be desired for their own sake but for their covenience and pleasure which do accompany them This Division is erroneous upon a double account 1. Because Good doth not formally include in its formal concept any delight usefulnesse or honesty but onely a perfectionation 2. The dividing members cannot be equally attributed to all the kinds of good and therefore the distribution is illegitimate IV. Good according to the subject wherein it is inherent or according the appetite through which it is coveted is either Natural Sensible or Moral Natural Good is which is coveted from a natural Being The appetite through which natural Beings do covet Good is commonly called a natural Propensity or Inclination Sensible Good is which is coveted by living creatures Their appetite is called a sensitive appetite Moral Good is which is coveted by man His appetite is otherwise known by the word Will. Before I conclude this Chapter I must intreat you to remember and take notice of the several acceptions and distinct significations of Natural Supernatural Counter-natural Preter-natural of Good Moral Good and Theologick Good For you are to interpret their significations variously otherwise you will much mistake my meaning CHAP. VI. Of the greatest and highest Good 1. A further illustration of the greatest Good 2. That the highest Good is the neerest end of Natural Theology 3. What the Summum Bonum is otherwise called That the greatest Good is our last end 4. The inexpressible Joy which the soul obtains in possessing the greatest Good 5. Two great benefits which the soul receiveth from the Summum Bonum I. IT was necessary for you first to know what Good was in General before you could conceive what the highest Good is So then having laid down the Doctrine of Good in short it now remains to open to you what the greatest Good is The greatest Good is that which doth make us most perfect and that is God alone I prove it There is nothing can perfectionate usmost but God alone Wherefore he is the onely Summum Bonum II. The highest Good is the neerest end of Natural Theology I prove it That which we do immediately and neerest incline unto and covet is the neerest end But we do immediately and neerest covet and incline unto the Summum Bonum Wherefore the Summum Bonum is the neerest end I confirm the Minor We do immediately covet that which doth perfectionate us because it is out of necessity The necessity appears in this in that we must live to God for without him we cannot live or exist and consequently we cannot be perfectionated without him Now that which is most necessary must precede that which is lesse necessary for it is possible for us to live without happinesse and only to enjoy our being if God had so pleased And therefore happinesse is not absolutely necessary but is superadded to this our appetite meerly from Gods bounty We ought first to bend and incline to God because he is our Summum Bonum and doth perfectionate us and not only because he doth make us happy In this bending to God we answer to our end and are true beings The same is also witnessed by Scripture Prov. 16. God hath made all things for himself III. Summum Bonum is otherwise called our last End because it is that in which all our good Actions seem to terminate I prove that the greatest Good and happiness is our last End All Trades and Professions tend to make provision for mans life This provision as meat and drink c. serveth to keep the Body in repair that so it may continue a convenient mansion for the Soul and serve her through its organs The prime organs are the inward and outward Senses which are subservient to the Soul in advertising her of all things which may be prejudicial to man and in pleasing her by conveying the objects of all external beings to her and commending them to her Contemplation which doth chiefly consist in the discovery of the causes of all things The Soul being now brought and seated in the midst of her speculations doth not come to any rest or satisfaction there but still maketh way and passeth through them untill she arrives to the last object and its last end which is the farthest she can dyve This last object is God because he is the last end of our contemplations for beyond him we cannot conceive or think any thing It is also certain that all beings have their end and are terminated by it This doth infer that the actions of man must also have their end The principal actions of man are them of the Soul to wit his understanding The understanding is not terminated by any material substance for it can think and understand beyond it neither are created immaterial substances objects beyond which the Soul of man cannot imagine for it doth imagine know and understand God but beyond God it can imagine nothing All Beings have their causes them causes have other causes these other causes at last must owe their being to one first Cause otherwise causes would be infinite which is repugnant Wherefore we cannot think beyond the first Cause IV. The Soul having sublimed her self into a most sublime thought of God there she resteth and admireth his great power in giving a Being to all sublunary and superlunary things She admireth his wisdome and providence in preserving them all She is astonisht at his infinite love towards mankind in Breathing his Essence out of his own brest The joy and acquiessence which the Soul findeth in the contemplation of this last End and first Cause is so great and unexpressible that there is nothing in this vast World to resemble it unto but to it self Thus I have demonstrated how all the Actions of man tend to one last End and Summum Bonum V. From the Greatest Good we receive two benefits First it makes us most perfect and most happy Secondly it terminates our faculties for in all other Things we can find no rest but in the Summum Bonum only All other things can give us no rest because they are ordained for a further end and subject to changes and alterations every moment but the Summum Bonum is the same for ever and ever As for the happiness which doth redound from the possession of the Summum Bonum it is a Joy and contentment beyond expression None is capable of conceiving what it is except they who are the possessors of it The joy is such that if a man hapneth to it and is confirmed in it he can never desert it a moments want of it would seem to be the greatest misery CHAP. VII Of the false Summum Bonum 1. The Summum Bonum of the Epicureans unfolded and rejected 2. That Wealth is a greater torment than a Summum Bonum The Riches of Seneca That we ought to
sutable to him he cannot let his desires slide another way The worst actions which men do act are either when they are alone or when they are in other company and absent from their partner When they are in other company they are apt to be drunk to swear and to project base designs which a man seldome or never doth perpetrate in the presence with his mate Or if he did it is an hundred to one if her fear modesty or some other vertue did not prevent him Man could seldome think evil thoughts because his companion is supposed to divert him in proposing pleasant or usefull discourses What woman is there which can be inordinate in any of these fore-instanced actions if she is suted to a mate and adheres to his fellowship onely 'T is true women and men although both joyn'd in a constant adherence have sometimes agreed in wicked designs but this hapneth alwayes in a couple unsutably paired and consequently much given to wandring so that they did not contract that evil habit from themselves but from others Had the first man and the first woman continued constantly together it would have been a far harder task for the Devil to have deluded them but they being separated although but for a few moments and either of them admitting conference with the Devil were soon corrupted What an easie task of Government would it be if most men were paired so as never to be asunder from their fellow They could hardly assent to mischief or if they were bent to it Law might sooner work upon their joint-interest than if it were single But take this only as by way of discourse XII It is necessary among men to give honour to whom it is due and to return it with thanks when they do deserve it Were it only to cause a distinction of persons in respect to civil Government it doth imply a necessity It is proper for us to know what honour is for how could we else acquit our duty in this part to God to the supream Magistrate or to our Parents XIII We are not to be over-scrupulous in taking of an oath provided it tend to the preservation of the Commonwealth and that the supream Magistrate be it the King Prince or plural Magistrate do require it We are obliged to it upon a double consideration 1. Because the Magistrate doth command or imposed it which is obliging among all Nations 2. Because it tends to the preservation of the whole body of the people And this common reason doth convince to be binding CHAP. VIII Of the Subject of Natural Theology 1. Man consisting of Body and Soul is the adequate subject of Natural Theology 2. Reasons proving the Soul to be the original and principal subject of Theology 3. That the Understanding and Will are really and formally one The confutation of the vulgar definition of Will A full explication of the Will and the manner of its acting What speculalative and practical signifie 4. What the Will is in a large sense 5. What the Will is in a strict sense 6. An Explanation upon the first description of Will 7. The Effects of the Will Whether appetibility doth not equally imply volibility and appetibility in a strict sense 8. Whether mans appetite is distinct from his Will I. THe fourth Question proposed is Which is the Subject of Natural Theology By Subject I mean the Subjectum inhaesionis wherein this habit is inherent To answer you in general The whole man as he consisteth of soul and body is the subject of Theology for the effects of it to wit happinesse and joy are as sensibly received by the body as by the soul for the body receiveth its essence conservation and bodily pleasures from it The soul cannot alone be properly said to be the subject because the soul without the body is not man II. The soul is originally and principally the subject of Theology I say originally because the soul is the original cause of the pleasures of the body yea and of its constitution for the body was created for the soul and not the soul for the body The soul is the original cause of the pleasures of the body in that the soul doth make choice of them and applieth them to the body for example meat drink and other pleasures are applyed to the body in that the soul makes choice of them and conceiveth them to be pleasant to the body otherwise the body could not attain to them The soul can enjoy pleasures when the body is in paine but the body cannot when the soul is in paine The soul is the principal subject of Theology because the greatest happinesse and good is enjoyed by it the delights of the body not being comparable to them of the soul The soul receiveth its pleasure by instants of time the body onely by succession III. The operation whereby the soul doth imbrace the greatest good and happinesse is from the understanding as it is speculative and practick and not as it is a two-fold faculty formally distinct through the understanding and the will for these are not really and essentially distinct I prove it if the understanding cannot understand without the will or the will without the understanding then they are not really and essentially distinct because it is proper to beings which are really and essentially distinct to operate without each other But the understanding cannot understand without the will neither can the will will without the understanding Therefore they are not really distinct I prove the Minor The will is primarly a bending of the understanding to an action of the mind but the understanding cannot understand unlesse it bends to that action of the mind So neither can the understanding be bent to action unlesse it understandeth Wherefore the one doth imply the other The most there is between them is a modal distinction You may object that it follows hence that a man may be said to will when he understandeth to understand when he willeth which predications are absurd I answer That it includes no absurdity at all for a man when he understandeth doth will every particular act of the understanding which he understandeth or otherwise how could he understand On the other side a man understandeth when he willeth according to that trite saying Ignoti nulla Cupido That which a man doth not know he cannot desire or will Wherefore I argue again that the one includeth the other the will implyeth the understanding and the understanding the will Possibly you may deny my supposed definition of will which is a bending to an action of the mind If you refuse it propose a better Your opinion it may be is to wander with the multitude and so you commend this The will is through which a man by a fore-going knowledge doth covet a sutable or convenient good and shunneth an inconvenient evil I will first account the absurdities of this definition and afterwards prove them to be so First you
quemadmodum à lampadis flamma flammam excipimus illa nihilominus integra remanente He moveth a Question Whether the soul of a whelp is a part of the soul of the dog that begot him And why not For a material soul is divided according to the division of the matter and she is whole in its part which is most evident in plants Wherefore a soul begetteth a soul by protruding her self much after the same manner as we kindle a flame with a flame of a lamp the which neverthelesse remaineth entire Here Scaliger explains the propagation of beasts and plants and others do impiously apply the same to the rational soul and consequently make her material But to the point the rational soul cannot protrude her self in this manner because she is indivisible As for a flame that protrudes its self because it is divisible and communicateth a part of its self to another combustible matter and so raiseth a flame but this is not so in the soul. V. After the confirmation of my opinion it is requisite I should answer to what may be objected against it If the soul cannot generate a soul may one say or cannot generate his like then man is inferiour to other living creatures which do generate their like I answer That man doth generate his like for it is apparent that the Sonne i◠like the Father and that in a nobler manner than animals or vegetables who do naturally generate their like as to matter and a corruptible form but man doth generate the matter and disposeth it for the reception of an incorruptible form which done the form is immediately united to it in instanti not from the soul singly and originally but from the divine power which is alwayes concomitant to God's benediction by which he hath through his ordained will freely tied him self The divine power being then alwayes present and concomitant to the generating soul doth as it were give a rational soul to the plastick faculty of the genitures when she is ready to unite it to the body where observe that the generating soul is a subordinate and mediate cause of the infusion of the other rational soul. The creating power of God is the primar principal and immediate cause of man's rational soul and its production It is the primar and immediate cause of the soul because it createth her God of his goodnesse and blessing doth give the soul now at that instant created to the generating soul as to a subordinate and instrumental cause VI. By the generating soul I intend a material and divisible form inherent in the genitures mixt out of that which is contributed from the Father and that other from the Mother This form is analogal to a sensitive soul but notwithstanding must not be counted to be of the same species and doth informate the body of the Infant untill the advent of the indivisible immaterial immortal and rational soul and then it doth acquit the name of a form and becomes a faculty power and instrument to the said rational soul. VII God is the remote cause of man's generation and production because God doth notimmediately unite and insuse the soul into the body for were God the next cause of uniting the soul to the body then true enough man could not be said to generate man because the introduction or eduction of the form into or out of the mattor is the generation of the whole Now then man is the subordinate cause of the soul and its infusion by reason his propagature receiveth the soul which is to be infused from God who is the primar and original cause of it VIII Conclus 2. Man doth generate man naturally and per se although he doth not propagate the soul from himself I prove it He that uniteth the form to the matter as in this instance of uniting the soul to the body doth produce the totum compositum as to generate or produce the whole man But man uniteth the soul to the body therefore he generates or produces the whole man 2. Man generateth man naturally and per se because he hath an absolute secundum quid power of uniting the soul to the body for otherwise he were inferiour to other creatures This power is given him in these expressed words of Scripture saving my purpose Let man multiply How could man multiply had he not this power For did God infuse the soul immediately as Divines generally hold man could not be said to multiply but God The generating soul therefore is the Causa proxima of the infusion of the soul into the body Wherefore there are alwayes souls ready that are created at the same moment when needfull which are given to the generating soul otherwise were its uniting power in vain V. It is well expressed by Austin If the soul be seminated with the flesh it shall also die with the flesh And by Jerome If the soul of man and of Beasts be ex traduce then consequently both must be corruptible Plato in his Dialog Phaed. infers the soul's advent from without as an Herculean argument to prove her immortality Coelius Rhodoginus lib. 6. Antiq. Lect. doth wittily expresse Aristotle's meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first whereof was asserted by him to be mortal the latter to be immortal And if I mistake not he seems to affirm no lesse Lib. 2. d. gener cap. 3. viz. that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is inherent in the sperm but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of a divine rice and immortal Well may Tho. Aquinas pronounce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon all those that should maintain the rational soul to be extraduce since most Heathen Philosophers did believe otherwise What because those dull Lutherans had not the wit to know that original sinne was propagated through the body therefore they must revive that Bombastin opinion concluding the soul to be propagated likewise for to demonstrate her to participate of the said sinne This we have shewed with more probability already and therefore let us henceforth beware of so dangerous and atheistical an assertion CHAP. XXI Of Practick Natural Faith 1. What a man is to consider to prevent his downfall 2. Man's danger and folly the Devils policy A certain means whereby to be delivered from this imminent danger The whole mystery and summe of man's salvation 3. The main Question of this whole Treatise decided 4. Scripture proofs accidentally proposed inferring implicit faith in a natural man to be justifying 5. The general Rules of practick Faith 6. The occasion of man's fall briefly repeated 7. Fifteen Reasons against all passions 8. Arguments against all bodily pleasures 9. The military discipline of a natural man instructing him to warre against all his enemies that oppose him in his way to his greatest happinesse 10. The greatest and most necessary rule of this military art A scandal taken off from Physicians 11. Another great measure of the said Art 12. Whence a natural man
circle whence we are to run to that blessed Meta of the other But how preposterous and rash is it for men to slip over this part and to cast themselves without a bottom into the very depth of divine Theology Alas their apprehension is immediately drowned in it their understanding amazed at those fathomless pits of reason in what different and monstrous acceptions do most Divines attach the genuine sense of Scripture through ignorance of its precedents scope dependance And more than this each invokes the Holy Ghost for a Witness for to attest those various Interpretations But what is this but their heavy dull imaginations hallucinating in the appearance of the Scriptures like several eyes in apparent objects of the Sky some framing this others that likeness of them I am not now to be confirmed in my belief that the worst of Atheism is latent in many supposed Divines their sinister ends cheats and vile secret passions of the flesh betraying their hypocrisie Certainly were I put to pick out of any Profession some that were to surmount all others in wickedness I should not need long time to ponder upon my Verdict The cause of this perversity I can state none but presumption in those who after a twelve-moneths dosing upon Ursin's Cat. or Ames Medul do apprehend they should know the whole drift and connection of the Fundamentals of Sacred Writings which to the same appearing upon a reflection dishering and strange in expressions have soon confounded their small relicts of natural faith into a detestable Atheism however cloathed with a dissembled time-holiness under their dark habits for to feed their covetousness out of their Benefices Had these but conferred with their innate Principles of Natural Theology and arrived to the habit therof before they had applied themselves to the top of inspired Learning beyond all surmising the Fundamentals of this latter would have been evidenced to them to be the alone absolute Wisdom plain Truth and most certain infallibility Notwithstanding so universal a neglect of this part yet I question not but many may be found so well principled in both that their undoubted Faith expressed in their most Holy Life and Actions will prove a great happiness to their Followers and Hearers in such Leaders and Teachers Next touching my Scope in the Metaphysicks which was principally the substitution of such Theorems in them as might be demonstrated by sense and had their sole dependance upon it in order to a confutation of those absurd Notions purely Logical although sold for real ones that Aristotle proposed in his Metaphysicks in the interpretation and ambiguities whereof Schollars do usually consume a whole age in vain reaping no better fruits thence than that after seven years study they are enabled to say Formaliter or Materialiter to every thing But lastly my chiefest design ever since the seventeenth year of my age when I had just finisht my course in Physick and taken my last degree consisted in elaborating such demonstrations in Natural Philosophy as might serve to unfold the natures of Beings in relation to the Art of Physick hitherto so uncertain blind and unfounded on Art that I dare confidently assert that the cure of many if not of most diseases is rather to be imputed to the strength of bodies than the application of vulgar Remedies as the precipitation of Patients to their extream Fate by the ordinary courses of Physick more than to the cruelty of their distempers setting aside those frequent mistakes in discovering them and their causes All which are so much subordinated to Natural Philosophy that whatever rare Invention in Practice or infallible distinction of any disease is deprehended in the Art of Medicine must be demonstrated by Principles of Physicks Difficulties of Nature that formerly seemed so uneasie to be explained I find very obvious and evident through them Many things that have hitherto lain hidden in the Bosome of Nature and such as no Philosophy could yet discover you will meet with here Besides these you are like to read the quotation of a Book of Souls or Psychelogia formerly intending its insertion in the Second Part of Philosophy But since I apprehend my self to be much scanted of my time and that this Volumn would swell up into too great a mole I am compelled to omit the publishing of it although it hath been long since ready for the Press Before I take my leave of my Reader I must not forget to crave your permission of using some kind of terms in my Books which although somewhat alienated from their proper signification yet can give you a reason of their figurative or tropical acception such are Catochization Grove besides many others I must also acquit my self to you of my default in such plain and unpolisht Lines which I have made use of Certainly whoever is acquainted with Philosophy will know that it is Philosophical so to write neither had I been ingaged in any other Subject could I have gratified your expectation herein since it was never my fortune to read two sheets of any English Book in my life or ever to have had the view of so much as the Title Leaf of an English Grammar I have also varied in the Orthography both of spelling and pointing from the ordinary and so the Printer hath varied from me My own part herein I can easily protect and so I may the Printers since his unacquaintedness with the matter and hand-writing and the dazling of his eyes which a pair of Spectacles might easily have mended in the smalness of my Letters hath set him upon the Lee shore of accurateness however you may prevent the danger of some mistakes although not of all since I have not the opportunity of so much as casting a superficial eye over half this Volumn by directing your self to the Errata which you will find set down at the end of each Book In fine not to detain you longer in preambles I shall only commend to you one of Grave Cato's Distichs thus inverted Non hos collaudes nec eos culpaveris ipse Hoc faciant stulti quos gloria vexat inanis Condemn thou none neither give them praise Let fools do so who love peoples gaze And advise you to suspend your Verdict upon these Writings untill you have perused them twice and then if disrelishing dishering false or contradicting to give your self the trouble of letting me know my errours in the sense of them which since my only scope is to promote Learning to be taught my self and to excite others to the study of things that are yet imprisoned in darkness I shall take for a very friendly office not valuing the hearing or acknowledging my mistakes although attended as usually with some reproof provided that at the same time I may be furnished with better Principles in lieu of mine or otherwise I shall think it much below me to take notice of such Scripts intended for nothing more than Libels Moreover that my further duty may
formally distinct from singulars p. 45. 3. Singulars are primum cognita p. 46. 4. Universals are notiora nobis ib. CHAP. XI Of the Extream Division of a Being 1. Another Division of a Being p. 48. 2. What the greatest or most universal is ib. 3. What the greater universal is ib. 4. What a less universal is ib. 5. What the least universal is ib. 6. How the fore-mentioned Members are otherwise called ib. CHAP. XII Of the Modes or Parts of a Being 1. What a Mode is Whence a Part is named a Part. Whence a Mode is termed a Mode The Scotch Proverb verified p. 49. 2. The Number and Kinds of Modes What an Essence or a whole being is p. 50. 3. That a Mode is the Summum Genus of all Beings and their Parts ib. 4. The vulgar Doctrine of Modes rejected ib. 5. That a Substance is a Mode of a Being p. 51. 6. That a Mode is an univocal Gender to a Substance and an Accident p. 52. 7. That a Substance is an Accident and all Accidents are Substances The difference between Subsistence and Substance ib. CHAP. XIII Of the Attributes of a Being 1. Why a property is so called p. 53. 2. The Difference which Authors hold between Passion and Attribute ib. 3. That Passion and Attribute as to their Names imply the same thing ib. 4. That Attributes are really the same with their Essence That all Attributes of a Being as they are united are the same with their Essence or Being p. 54. 5. That the Attributes are formally distinct from one another ib. 6. That that which we conceive beyond the Attributes of a Being is nothing ib. 7. What an Essence is ib. CHAP. XIV Of the Kinds and Number of the Attributes of a Being 1. Whence the Number of the Attributes of a Being is taken p. 55. 2. The Number of Attributes constituting a Being ib. 3. All Attributes are convertible one with the other and each of them and all of them in union with an Essence or Being ib. 4. That all the Attributes of a Being are equall in Dignity and Evidence ib. 5. That the Order of Doctrine concerning these Attributes is indifferent ib. CHAP. XV. Of Essence and Existence 1. That Essence and Existence are generally received for Principles p. 56. 2. That Essence is no Principle ib. 3. That Existence is no Principle ib. 4. That Existence is according to the opinion of the Author p 57. 5. That Existence is intentionally distinct from Essence ib. 6. That Essence is perfecter than Existence ib. 7. That Existence is formally distinct from Substance ib. CHAP. XVI Of Unity 1. That Unity superaddes nothing Positive to a Being p. 58. 2. What Unity is That Unity properly and per se implies a Positive accidently and improperly a Negative What is formally imported by Unity ib. 3. That Unity is illegally divided in unum per se and unum per accidens ib. CHAP. XVII Of Truth 1. Why Truth is called transcendent p. 59. 2. What Truth is ib. 3. An Objection against the definition of Truth That a Monster is a true being That God although he is the remote efficient Cause of a Monster neverthelesse cannot be said to be the Cause of evil p. 60. 4. Austin 's definition of Truth p. 61. 5. That Fashood is not definable How it may be described ib. CHAP. XVIII Of Goodness 1. What Goodness is The Improbation of several Definitions of Goodness p. 62. 2. The Difference between Goodness and perfection ib. 3. What evil is ib. 4. What the absolute active End of Goodness is ib. 5. That Goodness is improperly divided in Essential Accidental and Integral Goodness p. 63. 6. How Goodness is properly divided ib. 7. That the Division of Good in Honest Delectable c. doth belong to Ethicks ib. CHAP. XIX Of Distinction 1. The Authors description of Distinction That the privative sense of not being moved is a Note of Distinction whereby the understanding distinguishes a Non Ens from an Ens. That the Positive sense of being moved in another manner than another Ens moves the understanding is a Note of Distinction between one Being and another p. 63. 2. How Distinction is divided What a real Distinction is p. 64. 3. What a Modal difference is ib. 4. That the vulgar description of a real Distinction is erroneous ib. 5. That the terms of a Distinction between two or more real Beings are requisite both or more to exist p. 65. 6. That one term of Distinction although in Existence cannot be exally predicated of another not existent Oviedo and Hurtado reamined ib. 7. What a formal Distinction is à Parte actus and how otherwise called ib. 8. What a Distinctio Rationis is How otherwise called p. 67. CHAP. XX. Of Subsistence 1. What Subsistence is What it is to be through it self from it self and in it self p. 68. 2. That a Nature cannot be conservated by God without Subsistence That the Transubstantiation of Christs Body and Bloud into Bread and Wine according to the supposition of the Papists is impossible Oviedo 's Argument against this Position answered ib. 3. The kinds of Subsistences p. 69. 4. What Termination is ib. 5. What Perfection is ib. CHAP. XXI Of remaing modes of a Being 1. What Quantity is p. 70. 2. What the kinds of Quantity are ib. 3. What Quality is ib. 4. What Relation is ib. 5. What Action is ib. 6. What Paspon is ib. 7. What Situation is ib. 8. What Duration is ib. CHAP. XXII Of Causes 1. What a Cause is That the Doctrine of Causes belongeth to Metaphysicks p. 71. 2. Wherein a Cause and Principle differ ib. 3. What an internal Cause is What Matter is ib. 4. What a Form is and how it is divided p. 72. 5. What an external Cause is ib. CHAP. XXIII Of the Kinds of Causes 1. The Number of real Causes That a final Cause is no real Cause The Causality of Matter and Form p. 73. 2. The Division of an Efficient p. 74. 3. That an Efficient is erroneously divided in a procreating and conservating Cause ib. 4. That the Division of a Cause into Social and Solitary is illegal ib. 5. That the Division of an efficient Cause into Internal and External is absurd p. 75. 6. That all Forms are Material 77. 7. That there are no assistent Forms p. 78. CHAP. XXIV Of the Theorems of Causes 1. That a Cause and its Effects are co-existent p. 78. 2. That there are but three Causes of every Natural Being ib. 3. That there is but one Cause of every Being ib. 4. That all Beings are constituted by one or more Causes p. 79. 5. That all Causes are really univocal ib. 6. That all Natural Causes act necessarily ib. 7. That the Soul of a Beast acteth necessarily p. 80. 8. That all Matter hath a Form That Matter is capable of many Forms p. 81. The FIRST PART The Third Book CHAP. I. Of Powers according to the Peripateticks 1. THe Opinion of
The division of water p. 289. 3. VVhat a Lake is The strange vertues of some Lakes 290 291 292. 4. VVhat a Fountain is The wonderfull properties of some Fountains p. 293 to 295. 5. Of Physical Wells p. 296. Of Baths p. 297. 7. Of Rivers and their rare properties ib. 298. 8. Of the chief Straits of the Sea p. 299 230. CHAP. VII Of the Circulation of the Ocean 1. That the disburdening of the Eastern Rivers into the Ocean is not the cause of its Circulation neither are the Sunne or Moon the principal causes of this motion p. 301 302. 2. The periodical course of the Ocean The causes of the high and low waters of the Ocean p. 303 304 305. 3. How it is possible that the Ocean should move so swiftly as in 12 hours and somewhat more to slow about the terrestrial Globe p 306 307 308. 4. A further explanation of the causes of the intumescence and detumescence of the Ocean The causes of the anticipation of the floud of the Ocean 309 to 312. 5. That the Suns intense heat in the torrid Zone is a potent adjuvant cause of the Oceans circulation and likewise the minima's descening from the Moon and the Polar Regions p. 313 to 316. CHAP. VIII Of the course of the Sea towards the Polar Coasts 1. What the Libration of the Ocean is That the Tides are not occasioned by Libration The Navil of the World Whence the Seas move towards the North Polar Why the Ebb is stronger in the Narrow Seas than the Floud and why the Floud is stronger than the Ebb in the Ocean Why the Irish Seas are so rough p. 316 317 318. 2. VVhy the Baltick Sea is not subjected to Tides The rise of the East Sea or Sinus Codanus p. 319. 3. The cause of the bore in the River of Seyne p. 320. 4. The causes of the courses of the Mediterranean The rise of this Sea ib. 321. CHAP. IX Of Inundations 1. Of the rise of the great Gulphs of the Ocean The causes of Inundations That the Deluge mentioned in Genesis was not universal The explanation of the Text. p 422 323. 2. The manner of the Deluge That it was not occasioned through the overfilling of the Ocean p. 324. 3. That there hapned very great Deluges since when and where p. 325. 4. The effects of the first deluge ib. 5. Inland Inundations p. 327. CHAP. X. Of the causes of the before-formentioned properties of Lakes 1. Whence the Lake Asphaltites is so strong for sustaining of weighty bodies and why it breeds no Fish The cause of qualities contrary to these in other Lakes The cause of the effects of the Lake Lerna p. 328. 2. Whence the vertues of the Lake Eaug of Thrace Gerasa the Lake among the Troglodites Clitorius Laumond Vadimon and Benaco are derived ib. 3. Whence the properties of the Lake Larius Pilats Pool and the Lake of Laubach emanate p. 329. CHAP. XI Of the rise of Fountains Rivers and Hills 1. That Fountains are not supplied by rain p. 330. 2. Aristotles opinion touching the rise of Fountains examined p. 331. 3. The Authors assertion concerning the rise of Fountains The rise of many principal Fountains of the world ib 332. 4. Why Holland is not mountanous p. 333. 5. That the first deluge was not the cause of Hills ib. 334 6. Whence that great quantity of water contained within the bowels of the Earth is derived p. 335. 7. Whence it is that most shores are mountanous Why the Island Ferro is not irrigated with any Rivers Why the Earth is depressed under the torrid Zone and elevated towards the Polars The cause of the multitude of Hills in some Countries and scarcity in others ib. 336. 8. How it is possible for the Sea to penetrate into the bowels of the Earth p. 337. CHAP XII Of the causes of the effects produced by Fountains 1. Whence some Fountains are deleterious The cause of the effect of the Fountain Lethe of Cea Lincystis Arania The causes of foecundation and of rendring barren of other Fountains The causes of the properties of the Fountains of the Sun of the Eleusinian waters of the Fountains of Illyrium Epirus Cyreniaca Arcadia the Holy Cross Sibaris Lycos of the unctious Fountain of Rome and Jacobs Fountain p. 338 339. 2. The causes of the effects of Ipsum and Barnet Wells p. 340. 3. Whence the vertues of the Spaw waters are derived ib. 4. Of the formal causes of Baths 341. CHAP. XIII Of the various Tastes Smells Congelation and Choice of Water 1. Various tastes of several Lakes Fountain and River waters p. 342. 2. The divers sents of waters p. 343. 3. The causes of the said Tastes That the saltness of the Sea is not generated by the broyling heat of the Sun The Authors opinion ib. 4. The causes of the sents of wates p. 345. 5. What Ice is the cause of it and manner of its generation Why some Countries are less exposed to frosts than others that are nearer to the Line ib. 346. 6. The differences of frosts Why a frost doth usually begin and end with the change of the Moon p. 347. 7. The original or rise of frosty minims Why fresh waters are aptest to be frozen How it is possible for the Sea to be frozen p. 348. 8. What waters are the best and the worst the reasons of their excellency and badaess p 349 350. CHAP. XIV Of the commerce of the Ayr with the other Elements 1. How the Air moves downwards VVhat motions the Elements would exercise supposing they enjoyed their Center VVhy the Air doth not easily toss the terraqueous Globe out of its place How the Air is capable of two contrary motions 351 352. 2. That the Air moves continually from East through the South to West and thence back again to the East through the North. p. 353. 3. An Objection against the airs circular motion answered p. 354. 4. The Poles of the Air. ib. 5. The proportion of Air to Fire its distinction into three profundities p. 355 CHAP. XV. Of the production of Clouds 1. VVhat a Cloud is how generated its difference How a Rainbow is produced Whether there appeared any Rainbows before the Floud 356 2. The generation of Rain p. 357. 3. How Snow and Hail are engendred p. 358. 4. The manner of generation of winds ib. to 362. 5 The difference of winds Of Monzones Provincial winds general winds c. Of the kinds of storms and their causes What a mist and a dew are p. 362 to 370. CHAP. XVI Of Earthquakes together with their effects and some strange instances of them 1. VVhat an Earthquake is The manner of its generation The concomitants thereof p. 370. 2. The kinds and differences of Earthquakes ib. 371 372. 3. The proof of the generation of Earthquakes p. 373. 4. Their Effects upon the air p. 374. CHAP. XVII Of fiery Meteors in the Air. 1. Of the generation of a Fools fire a Licking fire Helens fire Pollux
and Castor a Flying Drake a burning Candle a perpendicular fire a skipping Goat flying sparks and a burning flame p. 375 376. 2. Of the generation of Thunder Fulguration and Fulmination and of their effects Of a thunder stone p. 377 378. 3. Of Comets Of their production p. 379 380 381. CHAP. XVIII Of the term Antiperistasis and a Vacuum 1. Whether there be such a thing as an Antiperistasis p. 382. 2. Whether a Vacuum be impossible and why p. 383. 3. Experiments inferring a Vacuum answered p. 384 385. 4. Whether a Vacuum can be effected by an Angelical or by the Divine Power p. 386. 5 Whether Local Motion be possible in a Vacuum A threefold sense of the doubt proposed In what sense Local Motion is possible in a Vacuum in what not ib. 387. CHAP. XIX Of Physical Motion 1. What a Physical Motion is The kinds of it The definition of Alteration Local Motion and quantitative motions The subdivision of Local Motion p. 388 389. 2. That all alterative and quantitative motions are direct p. 390. 3. That all externall motions are violent ib. 4. That all weighty mixt bodies being removed from their Element are disposed to be detruded downwards from without but do not move from any internal inclination or appetite they have to their universal Center p. 391 392. 5. The causes of swiftness and slowness of external Local Motion 393 6. That light bodies are disposed to be moved upwards ib. 7. That airy bodies being seated in the fiery Region are disposed to be moved downwards p. 394. CHAP. XX. Of Attraction Expulsion Projection Disruption Undulation and Recurrent Motion 1. How Air is attracted by a water-spout or Siphon p. 395. 2. The manner of another kind of Attraction by a sucking Leather 396. 3. How two slat Marble stones clapt close together draw one another up ib. 4. How a Wine-Coopers Pipe attracts Wine out of a Cask ib. 5. How sucking with ones mouth attracts water p. 397. 6. How a Sucker attracts the water ib. 7. The manner of Attraction by Filtration p. 398. 8. The manner of Electrical Attraction ib. 9. How fire and fiery bodies are said to attract p. 399. 400. 10. What Projection is and the manner of it p. 401. 11. What Disruption Undulation and Recurrent motion are ib 402. CHAP. XXI Of Fire being an Introduction to a New Astronomy 1. The Fires division into three Regions p. 402. 2. The qualification of the inferiour Region What the Sun is What his torrid Rayes are and how generated ib. 3. How the other Planets are generated ib. 4. How the fixed Stars were generated p. 404. 5. A further explanation of the Stars their Ventilation That there are many Stars within the Planetary Region that are invisible Of the appearance of new Stars or Comets Of the Galaxia or Milk-way p. 405. 6. That the fiery Regions are much attenuated p. 406. CHAP. XXII Of the Motion of the Element of Fire 1. VVhere the Poles of the Heavens are p. 408. 2. The Opinions of Ptolomy and Tycho rejected p. 409. 3. That the Planets move freely and loosely and why the fixed Stars are moved so uniformly ib. 4. The Suns retrograde motion unfolded and the cause of it ib. 5. How the Ecliptick AEquator and the Zodiack were first found out p. 410 6. The manner of the fiery Heavens their ventilation p. 411. 7. Whence it is that the Sun moves swifter through the Austrinal Medeity and slower through the Boreal How the Sun happens to measure a larger fiery Tract at some seasons in the same time than at others p. 412. 8. VVhence the difference of the Suns greatest declination in the time of Hipparchus Ptolomy and of this our age happens p. 414. 9. An undoubted and exact way of Calculating the natural end of the World The manner of the Worlds dissolution The same proved also by the holy Scriptures The prevention of a Calumny ib. 415 416. CHAP. XXIII Of the Magnitude and distance of the Sun and Moon and the motion of the other Planets 1. That the Magnitude of the Sun hath not been probably much less certainly stated by any The Arguments vulgarly proffered for the proof of the Suns Magnitude rejected p. 417 418. 2. That the Sun might be capable enough of illuminating the World were he much lesser than the terraqueous Globe than I suppose him to be p 419. 3. That the shadow of the Earth is to some extent Cylindrical ib. 4. That the Sun existing in the AEquator doth at once illuminate the whole Hemisphere of the Earth ib. 5. Concerning the diminution or increase of the shadow of the Earth within the Polars together with the cause of the Prolongation and Abbreviation of the dayes That the Sun is much bigger than he appears to be p 420. 6. What the spots of the Sun and Moon are and their causes ib. 7. That the Arguments proposed by Astronomers for rendring the Moon lesser than the Earth and proving the distance of the Sun are invalid p. 421. 8. That the Moon is by far lesser than the Earth ib. 9. Several Phaenomena's of the Moon demonstrated p. 422. 10. Concerning the motion of Venus and Mercury p 423. 11. Of the motion of the fixed Stars and their Scintillation p. 424. CHAP. I. Problems relating to the Earth 1. Why two weighty bodies are not moved downwards in parallel Lines p. 426. 2. Why a great Stone is more difficultly moved on the top of a high hill than below p. 427. 3. Why a pair of Scales is easier moved empty than ballanced ib. 4. Whence it is that a man may carry a greater weight upon a Wheelbarrow than upon his back ib. 5. Why a weighty body is easier thrust forward with a Pole than immediately by ones arms besides 5. other Probl. more p. 428 429 430 6. Why a stick thrust into a hole if bended is apt to be broke near the hole What the cause of the relaxation of a bowed stick is p. 431. 7. Whether Gold doth attract Mercury ib. 8. Why the herb of the Sun vulgarly called Chrysanthemum Peruvianum obverteth its leaves and flowers to the Sun wheresoever he be p. 432. Why the Laurel is seldom or never struoken by Lightning b. CHAP. II. Containing Problems relating to Water 1. Why is red hot Iron rendered harder by being quencht in cold water p. 432. 2. Whence is it there fals a kind of small Rain every day at noon under the AEquinoctial Region p. 433. 3. How Glass is made ib 4. Whence it is that so great a Mole as a Ship yeelds to be turned by so small a thing as her Rudder p. 434. 5. What the cause of a Ships swimming upon the water is p 335. 6. Whether all hard waterish bodies are freed from fire ib. CHAP. III. Comprizing Problems touching the Air. 1. Whether Air â—e weighty p 436. 2. Whether a Bladder blown up with wind â—e heavier than when empty ib. 3. Why water contained in a beer glass being
the existence of which is incurrent into our Senses Wherefore the Essences of these we may perfectly apprehend On the other side God is not known to us unless indistinctly and by his Attributes not by his Essentials My Answer to this is That our Knowledge of God is no less distinct evident and sensible I term it sensible because according to the Dogmatical Institutions of Aristotle the Root and Evidence of our Knowledge is and sloweth from our Senses than of Naturals and to speak truth we neither understand certainly the Essence of God nor of his Creatures only their Existences and other Accidents and Modes under which the Peripateticks imagine the Essentials of a Being to be latent So that only the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth appear unto us Whence my Inference is that the Ratio Formalis of knowing immaterial and material Beings is the same whereby we know the Essences of both in an equal manner We doubt no less of the Being of God than of the Being of his Creatures because as we know these to have a Being and Essence by their sensible operations and effects For Omne quod est est propter operationem All which is or hath a being is or hath it for an Operation so we are also certain of the being and Essence of God by his Operation and Effects upon our Senses We know that a material Substance consisteth of Matter because we apprehend a trinal dimension of parts in it which is an Accident concomitant to Matter or rather Matter it self We are also sensible of a Form inhering in that Matter through its Qualities and distinct moving We gather from Experience that Nihil fit a seipso no material Essence receiveth a Being from it self but from an Efficient By which three Causes a Natural Being is generated and from them derives its Definition In like manner do our Senses declare to us that God's Nature is immaterial For we cannot perceive a trinal dimension of Parts in him only that he consisteth of a pute single and formal Being because we cannot but perceive his formal and spiritual Operations and Effects upon all material Beings Wherefore the Knowledge of God proveth no less evident to us and in the same degree and manner of Perfection then of Elementary and Created Substances IV. Knowledge in the forementioned Definition doth equally imply a Practick and Theoretick Knowledge the ground of which Division is founded upon the Matter and not the Form of Philosophy so that according to the same sense the understanding is called either Practick or Theoretick not formally as if the Understanding were twofold in man but because it apprehendeth an object according to its double Representation of being Practical or Theoretical V. Subjectum circa quod or Object of Philosophy are all Beings comprehending real and objective Beings Essences and their Modes which latter are not specifically distinct from the former but identificared and considered here as real notwithstanding partaking of a Modal Distinction wherefore it makes no Formal Distinction in this universal Knowledge In the like manner are the Phaenomena appearances in Astronomy supposed and taken for real and move the understanding as distinctly as if they were real Beings strictly so termed otherwise they could not be referred to a Science VI. The Subjectum inhaesionis or Subject wherein Philosophy is inherent is the Understanding The Understanding is either Divine Angelical Humane or Diabolical In God Philosophy is Archetypick in Angels and Men Ectypick in Devils neither they apprehending and discerning all things depravately and erroneously CHAP. III. Of Philosophers 1. What a Philosopher is Four Properties necessary in a Philosopher That nothing is more hateful and noysom than a man but half Learned 2. The first Universities The Rise and Number of Sects sprung from these Universities The Fame of Socrates 3. What Meanes Philosophers made use of to procure themselves a Repute and Fame I. A Philosopher or a Wise man is a great Artist and all-knowing He is an Artist in that he can direct all his Actions to a good and true end and All-knowing since there is nothing existent but which he may know definitely Wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is well derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 clear because a Philosopher understandeth all things clearly which condition makes up one of the three Proprieties of a Philosopher which are 1. To know all things 2. To have a capacity of teaching all which he knoweth 3. To teach and divulge his Knowledge liberally not for Loan which is mercenary and not suiting with the Dignity of a Philosopher and freely Scire tuum nihil est nisite scire hoc sciat alter Alas thy Knowledge is scarce worth a Pin If thou keep secret what thou hast within Hence slow these trite Sayings Libere Philosophandum Amicus Socrates Amicus Plato sed magis Amica Veritas Non est jurandum in verba Magistri We are to deliver Philosophy freely that is with a Socratick Liberty or without adhering strictly to Authorities of Wise men since that all men are subject to Errours and the contrary of many of their Assertions are found to be true we have cause enough to doubt of all which they have commended to our Studies and not to be tied as if by Oath and Slavery to believe our Masters words in every Tittle an Abuse equal to Popery enjoyning all men upon danger of their Soules perdition not to question the least Sillable of the Dictates of their Priests It is no less Errour to reject all which wise men have Published their Works testifying their immense Parts and Abilities So that our securest course is to walk in the middle Path and close with the Body of Philosophers in this Saying Socrates is my good Friend Plato is my good Friend but the Truth is my best Friend To which this doth also allude Plato is ancient but the Truth is more ancient To these three I will add a fourth Philosophandum est sed paucis We are to prove our selves Philosophers in short or in few words This was one of the Famous Precepts of Ennius whereby he reproved those disturbers of Learning who through the abundance of their futil Arguments aery words and tedious Probo tibi's might have raised anger in Socrates himself which disposition to nugation and pratling you cannot miss of in a man who is but half Learned who generally hath depravate Conceptions of most things which he meets withal Such are they who strive to defend and propagate most absurd and pseudodox Tenents many of which do secretly contain Atheism As Assertions of the Pre-existence of Souls Multiplicity of worlds the Souls being extraduce and infinite others which necessarily are Concomitants of these before-mentioned In a word Homine semidocto quid iniquius what is there more detestable and hateful than a man but half Learned Which Apothegm may be justly transferred to a Physitian Medico semiperito quid
may demand to what Science or Art it belongeth to treat of final Causes I answer That they are treated of in Logick and Moral Philosophy but in a different manner Logick discourseth of final Causes as Notions thereby to direct the understanding in enquiring into the truth of things and Ethicks treats of them as they are dirigible to Good and Happiness III. An Efficient Cause is erroneously divided in a procreating and conservating Cause A procreating cause is by whose force a being is produced A conservating cause is by whose vertue a being is conservated in its Essence I prove that this Division is not real but objective only The dividing Members of a real division must be really distinct from one another But these are not really distinct c. Ergo. The Major is undeniable I confirm the Minor All beings are conservated by the same Causes by which they were procreated Therefore really the same I prove the Antecedence Nutritive causes are conservant causes But Nutritive causes are the same with Procreative causes Ergo. The Minor is evidenced by a Maxim Iisdem nutrimur quibus constamus We are nourished by the same causes by which we do subsist or have our Essence Wherefore Nutritive or Conservant Causes are really for by Nutriture we are conservated or a parte rei the same differing only objectively a parte actus Here you may answer that these Instances are of material causes but not of Efficients To this I reply That no cause can be a conservative cause but a Material Cause As for an Efficient cause I prove it to be no conservating cause That which conservateth a being must conservate its essence namely Matter and Form but Matter and Form are conservated only internally by apposition of that which is like to what was dissipated or which is like to themselves Wherefore an Efficient can be no conservating cause because it acteth only externally or from without A being might be conservated externally if its impairment did befal it from without that is from an external Agent which is only accidental to it An efficient then may Logically be called a conservative cause per Accidens IV. An Efficient is likewise divided in solitary and social A solitary Efficient is which produceth an effect alone or without the assistance of another cause A social cause is which produceth an effect joyntly with another As two Watermen rowing in one Boat are social causes of the moving of the Boat through the water This Division is no less illegal then the other I prove it All beings act alone and in unity as far as they are Causes and although two or more concur to the effect of a being yet they two act formally but as one and their Ratio Agendi is one Ergo formally they are but one as far as they are Causes yet in the foresaid instance as they are men they are two which duplicity is accidental to a cause The same Argument may be urged against the division of a cause in a cause perse and a cause per Accidens in univocal and equivocal in universal and particular V. An Efficient is Internal or External An Internal Efficient is which produceth an effect in it self An external Efficient is which produceth an effect in another This division is stranger then any of the rest The strangeness consisteth in this that thereby a being is capable to act upon it self and consequently upon its like Which if so what can it effect but that which was before It cannot produce a distinct being because it doth not act distinctly but identificatively This granted infers That the Soul being the internal cause of its Faculties as they affirm cannot produce any thing but what is like to it self Consequently that the Faculties are identificated with the soul and thence that a Substance is an Accident and an Accident a Substance 2. A Substance acting upon it self that is upon its sibi simile like for what is more like to a Substance then it self produceth a distinct effect and not its like which is another absurdity following the forementioned Division Iâ— will also follow hence that a substance doth act immediately through it self which is against their own Dictates To remove this last Objection they answer that a Substance may or can and doth act immediately through it self by emanation but can or doth not act by transmutation They describe an emanative action to be whereby an effect is produced immediately without the intervent of an Accident This description doth not distinguish Transmutation from Emanation for transmutation is also whereby an effect is produced without the intervent of an Accident and so transmutation may be as immediate to its Agent as emanation If there is any difference it is this in that emanation is an action not terminating or influent upon any other being but in and upon it self Transmutation is the Termination of its Influence upon another being Pray tell me why emanation may not be as properly called transmutation as not for there is no effect but which is different from its cause and changed by its cause For if it is not changed it remaines the cause still Ergo Emanation is also a Transmutation The Faculties of the Soul are said to be emanative effects Ergo they must be its understanding Faculty only for this only doth not terminate in any other being but in it self As for the other Faculties to wit vital and sensitive they are effects of the soul terminated in other beings Ergo These are no emanative Actions as they affirm them to be That which hath the most probability of being an emanative action and distinct from transmutation is the understanding faculty of the Soul Neither is this action distinct from Transmutation That which doth change the soul is an Object but the soul of it self alone doth not act or cannot act upon it self unless it be changed by an Object for were there no Object the Souls Rational Faculty would be nothing and frustraneous wherefore it is generally held that Angels when created had also notions or species which are objects concreated with their understanding Ergo emanative actions are also transmutative All matter is transient Wherefore the division of matter in transient and immanent is erroneous Transient matter is out of which a being is constituted by transmutation so bloud is the transient matter of flesh Immanent matter is out of which a being is constituted without any transmutation as Wood is the immanent matter of a Ship Here one part of the division is referred to a Natural Production the other to artificial How is this then a regular distribution since its dividing Members ought to be of one Species or kind The same Improbation may be applied against the distribution of matter in sensible and intelligible which distinctions are accidental to matter and therefore may be justly omitted for we ought to insert nothing in a Science but what doth essentialy relate to its Subject Hence Aristotles Precept is in
adorned with that variety of Accidents it is probable that Nature hath bestowed them for Action say they and not for nought They do not only allow one power to a Substance which might suffice but a multitude yea as many as there are varieties of acts specifically differing from one another effected through a Substance This leaneth upon an Argument of theirs thus framed The Soul being indifferent to divers Acts there must be somthing superadded by which it is determined to produce certain Acts. Neither is this Opinion deficient in Authorities of Learned Philosophers Averrhoes Thomas Aq. Albertus magn Hervaeus Apollinaris and others consenting thereunto Dionysius also in his Book concerning divine Names teacheth that Celestial Spirits are divisible into their Essence Vertue or Power and Operation III. The said powers are not only affixt to the Souls Essence but are also formally and really distinct from it They are perswaded to a formal distinction because else we might justly be supposed to will when we understand and to understand when we will or to tall when we smell and so in all others They are moved to a real distinction by reason that all powers in a Substance are really distinct from its Matter and Form Weight and Lightness which are Powers inherent in the Elements whereby they encline to the Center or decline from it are not the Matter of Earth and Fire nor their forms and therefore they are really distinct from their Essence IV. These Powers are concreated with the soul and do immediately flow from her Essence An Argument whereby to prove this is set down by Thom. Aq. among his Quaest. Powers are accidentary forms or Accidents properly belonging to their Subject and concreated with it giving it also a kind of a being It is therefore necessary that they do arise as Concomitants of its Essence from that which giveth a substantial and first being to a Subject Zabarel de Facult an Lib. 1. Cap. 4. sheweth the dependance of the powers from the Soul to be as from their efficient cause from which they do immediately flow not by means of a transmutation or Physical Action which is alwaies produced by motion Others add that the Soul in respect to its faculties may be also counted a Material Cause because it containeth her faculties in her self and a final Cause the faculties being allotted to her as to their End V. Immaterial Powers are inherent in the Soul as in their agent or fountain Material Faculties as the Senses Nourishing Faculty and the like are inserted in the Matter yet so far only as it is animated Hence doth Aristotle call the latter Organical Powers from their inherence in the Organs VI. Powers are distinguisht through their Acts and Objects to which they tend and by which they are moved to act For example Any thing that is visible moveth the fight and is its proper Object which doth distinguish it from the other Senses and Powers which are moved by other Objects Thus far extends the Doctrine of Aristotle touching Powers which although consisting more in Subtilities and Appearances then Evidences and Realities notwithstanding I thought meet to expose to your view since most Modern Authors do persist in the same and thence to take occasion to examine the Contents thereof in these brief subsequent Positions By the way I must desire the Reader to remember that the distinction of Powers from their Subject is commonly treated of in the Doctrine of the Soul and solely applied to it there being not the least doubt made of it elsewhere Wherefore I have also proposed the same as appliable to the Soul but nevertheless shall make further enquiry into it so far as it doth concern all Matters in general CHAP. II. Of all the usual Acceptions of Power 1. The Etymology of Power The Synonima's of Power 2. The various Acceptions of Power 3. What a Passive Natural Power and a Supernatural Passive or Obediential Power is 4. Various Divisions of Power I. THe unfolding the name is an Introduction to the knowledge of the thing it self and therefore it will not be amiss to give you the Etymology of Power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Power is derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I can or have in my power So Potentia from Possum signifying the same Power in English hath its original from Pouvoir in French noting the like viz. to can or be able Power Vertue Might Strength and Faculty are Synonima's or words of one Interpretation Thus of â—ntimes we make enquiry what Vertue Strength Power or Faculty hath such or such an Herb that is what can it effect II. The Acception of the word Power is very ambiguous 1. Sometime it is understood passively for a disposition whereby a Substance is apt to receive the strength of an Agent 2. Actively for that through which a being can act 3. It s signification doth vary much according to the Subject which it doth respect as when we say a being in power that is a being which is not actually but yet may or can be So likewise a Cause in power is which doth not actually produce an effect but which can produce one Zabarel remarketh a double Acception of Power 1. Improperly it is taken for a Power which is joyned to its Act Thus we say of a man who actually walketh that he can walk 2. Properly it is attributed only to a Power which doth precede its Act Thus we say a man is a Logician when he can be one III. A Passive Power as it is capable to receive a Natural Act is called a disposition As it may receive a Supernatural Act that is an Act from a Supernatural Cause it is then named an Obediential Power The Power which was inherent in Lots Wife of receiving the Form of a Pillar of Salt was an Obediential Power IV. Again those Powers are either Natural Violent or Neutral A Natural Power is such which is agreeable to its Nature as the power in Fire of ascending is Natural to it A violent power is which is disagreeing to the Nature of its Subject as in fire there is a violent Power of moving downward A Neutral power is which is neither the one or the other but participates of both Such is the power in fire of moving circularly A Power may be understood either for a Logical power which is nothing else but a non-repugnance or for a Physical power which is the same with a Natural disposition or for a Moral Power which is nothing else but the Will Lastly in Metaphysicks it is that which is presupposed to be in an actus entitativus There is also mention made in Philosophy of an Objective Power which is not much different from a Non-repugnance or a Logical Power but expresly it is a Possibility of existing in a being which the understanding doth give it before its Existence Many more Additions of Power might be proffered as that a Power is either Created or Increated Accidental or Substantial
else but where we are at present The falshood of this Theorem is evident because that greatest happinesse which we enjoy in this world is like but in an inferious degree to that which we expect in the other Neither is any happinesse to be parallel'd to the greatest but which is a true Theologick happinesse If so then a Theologick happinesse must be our Summum Bonum No wonder therefore if Philosophers being destitute of this Theologick habit were false Philosophers This is the reason why Aristotle and other supposed Philosophers never arrived to the possession of the greatest happinesse because they were ignorant of God And is it not therefore unworthy of a Philosopher to be a slave to their Dictates which affected slavery hath proved an obvious cause of the greatest errours in Church and State How full of Anguish fear jealousle and uncertainties were their souls through their not knowing the true God They could never enjoy any durable happinesse as long as their minds were perplexed with them doubts In what perplexity did Aristotle die even when his languishing soul pressed out these words In doubts have I lived and in more anguish do I die whither I shall go I know not wherefore thou Being of Beings have mercy upon me What did the joys and pleasures of Epicure amount unto when he was tormented with such miserable pains of the strangury as chased his soul out of his body II. The greatest happinesse is which of all things makes a man most happy Happinesse is a concomitant of a joyfull thing or an effect wrought by a joyfull object upon man the reception of which makes him truly happy Here we will first enquire Whether the greatest happinesse is the neerest End of Natural Theology 2. How it is otherwise called 3. What it is 4. Which is the subject of this habit 5. How it is to be procured In answer to the first I say that the greatest happinesse is not the neerest and principal end of Theology I prove it That which doth not chiefly and immediately move a man in Theology is not the neerest and principal end but the greatest happinesse doth not chiefly and immediately move a man in Theology Therefore it is not the neerest and principal end of Theology 2. It is the next end to the neerest and an inseparable concomitant of the neerest end I prove it That which we do enjoy next after the possession of the habit of Natural Theology and of the Summum Bonum is the next end to the neerest But we do chiefly enjoy the greatest happinesse next after the possession of the habit of Theology and of the Summum Bonum Therefore it is the next end to the neerest There is none which ever did possesse the habit of Theology but confirms the truth and assurance of the Minor 4. The greatest happinesse is sometime called Summum Bonum or the greatest good from its causality because it doth through its presence confer the greatest happinesse upon that Subject which it doth irradiate Hence Austin de Civ Dei lib. 8. cap. 3. Finis autem boni appellatur quo quisque cum pervenerit beatus est That is called the end of good which maketh every man happy that doth attain to it Note that the greatest happinesse is only tropically named Summum Bonum from a Metonomia causae pro effectu CHAP. III. Of GOOD 1. What Good is 2. That Aristotle 's Definition of Good is erroneous 3. Diogenes his Definition of Good 4. The Explanation of the Definition of Good How the several kinds of Good differ from one another 5. What Moral Good is what moral evil is 6. What Theologick Good and evil is BOnum Good is that which doth make the subject which doth possesse it perfect Or Good is that which all Beings do incline unto for to perfect themselves The highest and greatest Good must then be that which makes a man most perfect and happy or that which all men need to perfect themselves with the same perfection which man had when he was first created I said need and not desire or incline into because all men do not desire the Summum Bonum for all men do not come to the knowledge of it yet all men need it for to perfect themselves II. There are many definitions of Good spread among Philophers whereof some are false either in not adequating the whole definitum or else in attributing falsities by it to the definitum or subject defined Among these that of Aristotle is counted most authentick* Good is that which all things do incline unto or covet This definition must either agree with Good as it is proper to all Beings and Transcendent or as it is restricted to rationals and animals in which only there is an appetite and coveting or as it is most limited to rationals only If we take it according to the first acception the definition is not formal but only accidental for it is accidental to beings as they are Good to be coveted or be desired from another being Neither doth it hold true in the last acception because we desire many things which are evil and hurtfull to us To this may be answered that a being so far as it is desired is good although it prove accidentally hurtfull This answer is not satisfactory for we do oftentimes desire things knowing them to be evil and therefore we do desire them as evil for the will doth covet things as they are understood if then the understanding doth understand them to be evil the will must consequently will them as evil Possibly some do reply that the understanding doth conceive them very things which a man afterwards doth covet To be good otherwise he could not desire them For Did he desire them as evil then he would desire his own destruction and be inferiour to all other creatures which are onely bent to that which doth perfect their nature or you may return your answer thus that good is either apparent or real and truly good and that the understanding doth understand all beings to be good apparently or really or otherwise you may distinguish good in good which is honest or profitable and usefull or pleasant and state that the understanding doth conceive all things either as they are honest useful or pleasant This doth not remove all objections as to the first The will of man is not restrained to a certain object as Naturals are but is also extended to contrary objects to wit to good and evil Neither is it singly limited to contradictories as to will evil and to leave it because to desist from an action is no action and for that reason we cannot properly say that the actions of the will are free quoad contradicentia tantum only in willing evil and ceasing from it Secondly Should God punish us for doing evil when we cannot act any thing but evil it would appear somewhat severe for punishment is to punish a delict and sinne in doing that which
God By no means God is not pleased with any praises but of such as are like to him as for others they are an abomination to him Praising denotes a gladnesse or joy which cannot he in any one who is yet detained by his original misery We must therefore desire God to help us in striving and resisting against all bodily pleasures and passions I say strive for we must labour hard or else God will scarce help us And this was not unknown to the worst of Heathens as their common saying doth witnesse Dii laboribus omnia vendunt The gods sell all things for labour When now you begin to feel your misery to be lessened then praise God with all your heart and with all gladnesse for his Mercy and Goodnesse extended towards you and herein you are to abide for ever for as God's Mercy is without end even so must you continue in praises without end Lastly Beg of God to illuminate your understanding that you may understand all things more distinctly thereby to admire God the more And now you do begin somewhat to resemble the first man in all his mental operations and felicities But the body still remaining unclean it is necessary for the soul to leave it for a while that it may be purified through fire with the rest of the Elements and so be made a fit palace to receive the soul in again The soul needs no purification and therefore ascendeth directly to God's bosome So that I do much agree herein that there is a Purgatory for the body but none for the soul. XIII Hereupon enquiry may be made Whether the soul expiring out of the body and carried to God if Good or to the Devil if evil is to be an Angel or to live with God for ever without any office Or Whether she is to be re-united to the body when purified It is probable that the soul deserting the body is to be immediately an Angel and to continue in office untill such time that the compleat number of souls have likewise finisht their course I prove it It is improbable that the soul should desist from serving God and professing its duty because she was created for the same end Secondly Her condition would exceed that of Angels were she exempted from all duty these being also created for God's service for Spirits are called Angels from their Office which is to serve God The word is derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 denoting a messenger which again from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I send The Office which the separated soul is capable of exercising is of taking care of souls yet in the body in helping and assisting them for as the Devil doth seduce us by depraving our appetites and fancies so to the contrary do Angels enlighten our understandings and suppress our immoderate appetites XIV This office they shall remain in untill the consummation of the world at which time every soul shall be re-united to its body now purified by fire and transformed into a splendid substance All the Elements shall then be sublimed into a pure nature and all other things else shall return to what they were at the time of the first man's innocency Beasts shall receive new natures their wild ones shall become tame and obedient to man as formerly The poisonous herbs shall be changed again into wholsome All flowers shall re-indue their primitive fragrancy Summarily all men that shall escape the terrour of that great day of judicature shall be placed in the same state and Paradice which the first man enjoyed and the same Law shall be imposed upon men as before Man shall abide eternally in Paradise he shall eat and drink but he shall not generate The great instrument and cause of man's redemption shall eternally reign over him Here I have described man's second Paradise there remains only the proof of its particulars 1. That the separated soul shall be re-united to its body is apparent because God created her at first with a natural propensity to the body and that she should be a perfection to it which propensity is yet remaining in her because God doth not recall any thing that he doth or hath done This propensity is a certain sign that God will raise up its body again otherways it would be in vain The body 't is likely will be the same Quoad formam accidentalem figuram according to its precedent form shape and figure because thereby the saved souls may know one another again when they meet in Paradise and rejoyce together alwayes praising God for his mercy and goodnesse XV. The soul being now returned to its body must be contained by a corporeal place This corporeal place must be a Paradise upon earth because God did first bestow it upon man as being agreeable to his integrity and perfection and of the other side as being consentaneous to God's infinite goodnesse through which he conferred a compleat and entire happinesse upon man The same now remaining to wit man's perfection and God's goodnesse it is certain that he will conferre the same happinesse upon man namely Paradise because God in his wisdom finding it to be suitable to man then will ordain the same again now his wisdom being the same If God then is pleased to conferre the same Paradise upon man it is evident that all the Elements shall be purified otherwayes how could it be a fit place for to imbrace so pure a substance The same Law 't is probable shall continue because the same obedience and duty will be required from man as before Beasts Herbs and Flowers the second Paradise shall abound with because God judged it convenient before and therefore his wisdome being unchangeable will judge the same then He shall eat and drink because otherwayes the fruits of Paradise and mans nutritive organs should be in vain He shall not generate because the number of men will be compleated The cause and instrument of our Redemption was an entirely righteous and effentially holy man yet more than a man for it was impossible for man alone to satisfie God's justice since then the chief instrument of our salvation was a man his body being of the same nature with others must require a corporeal place but of this little can be said since man through his reason cannot dive unto it neither is it revealed unlesse obscurely What shall I say more to you O that most splendid second Paradise abounding with innumerable springs of ineffable joys This is the Palace whither the victorious Soul shall be conducted by a number of glorious Angels to the greatest of Kings attended by myriads of Cherubims there in the sight of them all to receive the Laurel and to be installed into an everlasting dignity office and possession Thence she takes her place among those illustrious attendants and sings Hymns to the melodious ear of the chief Musician O hear their sweet noise ring Gloria Gloria Deo in excelsis Te Deum laudamus in
is Water and Ayr mixt together in such a proportion that the tenuity of the air may render the water attenuated and fluid that so it may be apt to penetrate through the depth of the Mixture for otherwise water of it self is of that thickness that it exceeds Ice or Chrystal Now this Ayr incrassated or Water attenuated doth open and expand the density of the earth makes way for the fire to enter and at last retaines the whole mixture in a coherence and compactness Of this more hereafter Again A body consists of the same Principles or Elements into which it is dissolveable but all natural bodies are dissolveable into the first Elements therefore all bodies consist of the said first Elements I shall only instance in some few examples for proof of the Minor Milk in its dissolution is changed into Curds which through their weight go down to the bottom are analogal to earth 2. Into Butter which containeth in it incrassated ayir and fire for it is also inflammable a sign of fire Lastly Into Whey which is responding to attenuated water The like is observable in Blood dividing it self into Melancholy expressing earth in its weight colour and Substance for drying it it becomes perfect Sand into Choler agreeing with fire in its motive and alterative qualities into pure blood through its gluing quality or lentor not unlike to incrassated ayr Lastly into Flegm or Phlegme resembling water Doth not the ordinary division of mans body in spirits impetum facientes humors and solid parts demonstrate its composition or constitution out of the Elements For the Spirits are nothing else but fire and ayr Humors contain most water and the solid parts most earth The Spagyrick Art proves the same by distillation through which water Spirits and Oyl the two latter being made up most of Fire and Ayr are separated from the Caput mortuum Sal fixum or earth and Subsidencies 'T is true Sal Sulphur and Mercurius are different Names but re ipsa are the Elements What is Sal but Earth Sulphur but fire and ayr Mercurius but water Hereby I have not only proved the existence of elements but also their Number nominatim atque in specie III. Give me leave to expound the Definition in the first place quantum ad nomen In the word Element is considerable its Etymology from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 capio quod element a in sese omnia capiunt mixta It s name is likewise homonymous in a large sense promiscuously convertibiliter denoting a Principle or Cause In a strict sense it is differing from both Eudemus Alexander and Thomas Aq. opiniate that through Principle Principium is only meant an agent cause through Cause a formal and final Cause through elements Matter Averrhoes and Albert. by Principles intend an efficient cause through Causes final Causes by elements Matter and Form Generally Principles are understood to be of a larger extent then Causes and Causes then elements So that Aristotle B. 5. of Metaph. Ch. 1. describes a Principle to be that from whence a thing is is made or is known by this you see that a principle is of a more large signification then either of the others but a cause is which contributeth to the being of a thing either by substituting it self for a Subject as the Matter or through actuating and giving it an essence and its consequence as the Form or by determining it to an end as the final cause IV. The distinction which I have made between them is that cause is of a larger extent then Principles are taken in Physicks but in Theology a Principle is larger then it these denoting the internal causes of a natural being as matter and form but remotely as I have already hinted Elements point out to sensible and immediate internal causes of a natural being V. A natural cause is which hath a vertue of acting naturally or which acteth according to that power which God hath conferred upon it at its first Creation So that Van Helmont saith well in his Physic. Arist. Dist. 3. Ego vero credo naturam jussum Dei quo res est id quod est agit quod agere jussa est But I believe that Nature is Gods Command through which a thing is that which it is and acteth that which it is commanded to act They are Causes to wit internal causes or principles of a being because they contribute themselves to the constitution of that being I said out of which because they are the matter of all natural beings and through which because they are also the Form of all the said beings How they are or become so you may expect to read below The elements are described and taken singly or separately ratione only or ex supposito and not realiter for they never did exist singly neither could they exist so supposing they were created in that nature in which they were because of their relative forms but confusedly in the Chaos Aristotle nameth the bodies constituted by those mixt bodies as if they were different from naturals but that was only to make good the first part of his Metaphysical Physicks and thereby to distinguish them from the others namely his proper and elementary Physicks VI. Three causes do concur to the production of a natural being whereof two are internal to wit natural matter and form the other is external namely the Efficient I prove the necessity of these three first there must be a Subject or Matter out of which a being is produced for ex nihilo nihil fit out of nothing nothing can be produced But I instance in some particulars the good wives know that for to make a Pudding they need Matter namely Flower Eggs c. to make it out of or to build a House a Mason will require Stones for his Matter c. Now when they have these materials they endeavour to make somthing of them that is to introduce a new thing shape or face into it or educe a new thing out of it which locution is more proper then the former it being the efficient doth ex intrinseco quasi formam educere and what is that but the Form And lastly Experience tels us that quod nihil fit a seipso nothing is produced from it self but from another which is the Efficient as in the building of a house you may have stones and Morter for your matter yet unless a Mason who is the Efficient place them together and introduce or rather educe the form of a House the matter will abide matter CHAP. V. Of New Philosophy and the Authours of it 1. Helmontius his Arrogance and Vainglory How and wherein he rejects the Peripatetick Philosophy His own Principles 2. The Life and Death of the said Helmontius 3. A Confutation of all his Physical Principles in particular 4. Some few Arguments against Rerè des Cartes his Principles in general I. I Thought fit to make a stop in my Discourse and before I proceed
any further to propose the Opinions of others concerning the first Principles Elements and Constitution of natural Bodies Baptista van Helmont impropriating the knowledge of true Philosophy and Physick to himself alone cals Hippocrates Galen Aristotle and all other wise men Fooles and terms their Dictates figments but withal propounds new foundations of Philosophy and Physick threatning a great danger to those who did obstinately adhere to their Tenents and promising an infinite treasure to such as should receive his Wherefore I shall first contractly relate his Philosophick Principles then examine them Fol. 33. of his Ort. Med. Dist. 3. He reproves the heathens for falsly teaching the Number of Elements to be four as also for asserting three Principles to wit Matter Form and Privation All things saith he are idle empty and dead and therefore stand only in need of a vital and seminal Principle which besides life have also an order in them He denieth the four Genders of Causes the first matter the causality of a form receiving it for an effect alone Further he states only two causes namely Matter and her internal Agent Efficient or Archeus In the same place he terms Matter a co-agent not a subject which he saith was improperly attributed to her by Philosophers And in Dist. 21. he denieth the congress of the four Elements yea not of two of them to concur to the constitution of mixt bodies His two Causes or Principles he cals bodies in one place in another as you may read below he detracts it from the latter The first of the said Principles is called ex quo out of which the latter per quod through which Dist. 23. he concludes water to be a beginning out of which initium ex quo and the Ferment to be the seminal beginning through which that is Disposing whence the Semen Seed is immediately produced in the matter which it having acquired becometh through it life or the media materia the middle matter of that being extending to the period of the thing it self or to the last matter Dist. 24. The Ferment is a created formal being which is neither a Substance or Accident but neither in the manner of light fire magnal forms c. created from the beginning of the world in the places of their Monarchy for to prepare and excite the semina seeds and to precede them I consider the ferments to be truly and actually existing and to be individually distinguisht through Species kinds Wherefore the ferments are Gifts and Roots establisht from the Lord the Creator to all ages being sufficient and durable through their continual propagation that they might raise and make seeds proper to themselves out of the water to wit wherein he gave the earth a virtue of germinating he gave it as many ferments as there are expectations of fruits Wherefore the ferments produce their own seeds and not others That is each according to its Nature and Properties as the Poet saith For nature is underneath the earth Neither doth all ground bring forth all things For in all places there is a certain order placed from God a certain manner and unchangeable root of producing some determinate effects or fruits not only of Vegetables but also of Minerals and Insects For the bottomes of the earth and its Properties differ and that for some cause which is connatural and coeval to that earth This I do attribute namely to the formal ferment that is created therein Whence consequently several fruits bud forth and break out of themselves in several places whose seeds we see being carried over to other places come forth more weakly like to an undercast child That which I have said concerning the ferment cast into the earth the same you shall also find in the Ayr and the Water The difference which there is between the ferment and efficient is that the former is the remote Principle of Generation and produceth the latter which is the semen which is the immediate active Principle of a thing Here you have a Synopsis of his Philosophy which in the progress throughout his Book he repeats ad nauseam usque II. When I first took a view of the Title of his Volume which was The Rise of Medicine that is The unheard of Beginnings of Physick A new Progress of Medicine to a long Life for the revenge of Diseases by the Author John Babtista van Helmont Governour in Merode Royenlorch Oorschot Pellines c. He might be Governour of himself in those places but not of c. I wonder what those places signified since the people of Brussel admired upon what his Heir liveth This old man in his life-time was strangely melancholy and by Fits transported into Phanatick Extasies questionless had he been of a Religious House he would much have added by help of these Raptures to the incredible Bulk of the Golden Legends but his Daemon turned them to Physick He had a great Design in Christening his Son Mercurius to have made another Trismegistus of him and not unlikely for wherever he is he is all-knowing I was much abused by the Title of his Tract hoping to have found a new sound Archologia and lighting upon ignorance of Terms abuse of words but a most exact Orthography limiting almost every second word with a Comma or a stop as being measured by his asâ—matick breathing The Fame which he deserved from his Countrey-folkes was equal to a famous Mountebank The Church-yard was the surer Register of his Patients His Arrogance and Boastings were Symptomes of his depravate conceptions His Cruelty fell it last upon his own bowels through which he lost his Life for the neglect of very ordinary means This is the account I had at Brussels of his Life and Transactions which I thought was not unworthy of my insertion in this place thereby to disadvise some from a rash belief to his vain words that so they might avoid the same Dangers and Cruelties upon their own and other mens Lives III. But in reference to his Dictates He rejects the number of four Elements without proposing any Argument for Confutation He denieth the existence of a first matter also without giving proof for the contrary Both which we have already demonstrated The form is an effect saith he and not a cause this argueth his misseapprehension of a cause and effect for most Authors agree that a cause in a large sense is whatever produceth an effect now the form produceth an effect in giving a specification to the whole It seems he intends nothing for a cause unless it be really distinct from its effect which in a strict and proper sense may be allowed but if granted nevertheless he is in an Errour for asserting Matter and the Archeus to be causes neither of which are really distinct from the being constituted by them Further it is no reason that because the form is an effect therefore it can be no cause for all beings in respect to their own production are effects and yet
if he hath set down any of the Elements as of Fire Ayr Water or Earth plainer then Aristotle hath explained them His Demonstrations are altogether remote from sense Besides the confusedness of his method In fine I cannot imagine what practick use may be made of them As for these Particulars which I have here cited against him I shal prove their falsities in the progress of my following Discourse CHAP. VI. Of the Material Principle of Natural Beings 1. The Causes of the Elements 2. That the Elements are really compounded natural beings 3. That Matter and Quantity are really identificated 4. What Quantity is What its Ratio formalis is 5. That in rebus quantis there is a maximum and a minimum Definitum 6. Experimental Instances proving that there are actual Minima's and that all natural beings do consist out of them 7. The pursuit of the preceding Instances inferring a Continuum to be constituted out of actual Indivisibles Some Geometrical Objections Answered SOmewhat hath been heretofore stated touching the matter and form of Natural bodies which being remote we must descend lower and adde a few notes respecting the matter and form of the Elements Wherefore remember I. That the elements are natural beings and therefore consist of natural matter and form and are constituted from an Efficient II. The Elements arising from the conjunction of matter and form are not to be counted single bodies in that respect nor in any other but as much compounded as any other body derived from them that is in this Phrase Elementa sunt majora composita ac caetera ab ipsis orta entia quanquam haec illis censenda sunt magis composita So that it was an errour in Aristotle to define an element by a single body or being They could not be thought to be single in any other respect but in their real separate existences but such they never had any their relative form contradicting it III. It is a property in matter to be an internal cause which through its quantity is capable of receiving a form So the elements were affected with a quantity through which they received their forms I do here strive as much as may be to reserve that old custom of termes and phrases in Physicks which Aristotle hath assigned to us but again reflecting upon the abuse and improperness of them I am compelled to call to mind a Rule of my Metaphysicks to wit that the essence of all things are but modes united and for that reason counting quantity a mode I cannot make any thing else of matter but a mode I mean matter in a concrete sense for what is matter really but quantity it self they differing only ratione and how that Thus Quantity is only notional or a term assinged by the understanding to a res quanta for to explain that a thing is made out of it and yet that whereout the thing is made is quantity still So form is nothing else but a notion whereby we express the activity and quality of a thing and beyond that activity and quality it is nothing Wherefore observe Quantity and Quality being the two essential principal and eminent modes of a natural being and fit terms and notions they are usually treated of distinctly in this part of Philos. under the name of matter and form Now do not take either of them separately for a Substance unless they be both joyned together You may also remember that Quantity is the only Accident allowed to matter by the Peripateticks but this quantity not being possible to exist through it self others did confer a forma quantitativa upon matter for a forma they imagined it needed because through it quantity was distinguisht from nothing now that which makes a distinction is the form only Besides what is quantity without form Even nothing because without a form it is not that which it is as further appears by the definition of a form Since then we have proved that matter is primarily nothing else but quantity we shall easily make it appear that it cannot exist without the other modes as place duration c. IV. Quantity is a mode of a being through which it is extended that is through which it hath one part existing beyond the other or thus Quantity is the Mole Magnitude or Dimension of a being That which doth immediately follow this magnitude is the extension of parts and that which doth follow this extension is internal and external place and habit c. I say these affections follow one another not really for they are existent all at once but intentionally only because the one doth represent it self to the understanding before the other Now when the dispute is about the Ratio formalis of quantity whether it be divisibility mensurability mole magnitude extension of parts c. it is to be understood which of them doth primarily represent it self to the mind not which of them is re prius for they are really co-existent and identificated In Answer to the Question thus stated I hold that the extension of one part beyond the other or its repletion and possession of place is the potissima ratio quantitatis That which we do first conceive through the perception of a res quanta is its repletion of place or extension of one part beyond the other for at the first sight of a body we judge it to be a body because it appeares to us to have one part extended beyond the other or to possess a place this is presently after confirmed to us because it seems to be a bulk mole magnitude or to be divisible and by that we conclude it is no Spirit or nothing and as I said before because it doth replenish that place and is commensurated by it As for extension of parts one beyond the other it is the same with the repletion of an internal place which that it hath we come to know through its repletion of an external place Take quantity concretâ— for a res quanta or res extensa sive locata mensurata divisibilis it matters not which as long as we agree inre although differing in nomine V. In Quantity or rather rebus quantis or in materialibus there is a minimum definitum and a maximum definitum Wherefore all beings must be one of those or interjacent between them for that which is less then minimum is nothing that which is more then maximum is infinitum neither of which is natural Fire we see if it be less then it can abide in its least quantity it goeth out and becomes nothing So whatever is less then a Sand of earth or the least drop of water is nothing of the said Species That which is actu greater then the world is infinite neither is there any thing bigger quantitate materials then it ergo there is a maximum Further were there not a minimum or a maximum there must be an infinitum actuale granted which the finiteness of all things
necessarily be so for water strictly so named had it been heaved up it would have been against its first nature and been moved violently which is improbable since that nullum violentum est perpetuum no violent motion is lasting The nature of air certifieth us that it must be it which moved above the waters under it Lastly The waters above the waters strictly so termed are called the Firmament from its firmness because they are as a deep frame or a strong wall about the waters underneath for to keep them together in a counterpoise from falling to an insinitum but it is ai◠that is above the waters and is a Firmament to them ergo the ayr must be comprehended under the Notion of waters Or thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Hebrew is by the Rabbi's and Hebrews expounded an Expansion or thing expanded for its Root is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to attenuate if so then by the waters above must be implied ayr whose nature it is to be expanded as I shewed before So whether you take the word according to the interpretation of the Septuagints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Firmament or of the Rabbi's Expansion there can be nothing else intended by it but ayr I say then as by waters a duplicity of Elements is implied so by the Heavens ayr and fire are implied I prove it Light is fire flaming but the light was drawn from the Chaos if from the Chaos ergo not from the earth for by earth there is only meant earth single but from the Heaven which imports a conjunction of Elements viz. of Ayr and Fire Secondly Is light being a flaming fire drawn from the Heaven ergo there was fire latent in it So let this serve to answer Van Helmont his Objection who denieth fire to be an Element because its name is not set down in the first Chap. of Gen. neither is ayr mentioned among the Elements in so many Letters yet it is comprehended among them 'T is true Fowl are called Fowl of the ayr but what of that this doth not infer that ayr is an Element because Fowl are named Fowl of the Ayr. Secondly Earth and Water are there expressed in so many letters ergo the Chaos was made up of all the four Elements III. The Elements in the Chaos underwent an exact mixture because each being a stem and perfection to the other they required it for had they been unequally mixt then that part which had not been sufficiently counterpoysed by its opposite Element would have fallen from the whole Hence it followeth that they must have been of an equal extent and degree in their first vertue or quality and not only so but also in their quantity that is they consisted all of an equal number of minima's that so each minimum of every Element might be fitted sustained and perfectionated by three single minimum's of each of the other Elements Now was there but one minimum of any of the Elements in excess above the other it would overbalance the whole Chaos and so make a discord which is not to be conceived But here may be objected That the earth in comparison with the heavens beares little more proportion to their circumference then a point I confess that the air and fire exceed the earth and water in many degrees but again as will be apparent below there is never a Star which you see yea and many more then you see but containes a great proportion of earth and water in its body the immense to our thinking Region of the air and fire are furnished with no small proportion of water and earth so that numeratis numerandis the earth and water are not wanting of a minimum less then are contained either in the fire or ayr IV. The efficient of this greatest and universal body is the greatest and universal cause the Almighty God I prove it The action through which this vast mole was produced is infinite for that action which takes its procession ab infinito ad terminum finitum sive a non ente ad ens from an infinite to a finite term or from nothing to somthing is to be counted infinite but an infinite action requireth an infinite agent therefore none but God who is in all respects infinite is to be acknowledged the sole cause and agent of this great and miracuious effect It was a Golden saying upon this matter of Chrysippus the Stoick If there is any thing that doth effect that which man although he is indued with a reason cannot that certainly is greater mightier and wiser then man but he cannot make the Heavens Wherefore that which doth make them excels man in Art Counsel and Prudence And what saith Hermes in his Pimand The Maker made the universal world through his Word and not with his Hands Anaxagoras concluded the divine mind to be the distinguisher of the universe It was the Saying of Orpheus That there was but one born through himself and that all other things were created by him And Sophocles There is but one true God who made Heaven and the large earth Aristotle Lib. 2. De Gen. Cor. c. 10. f. 59. asserts God to be the Creator of this Universe And Lib. 12. Metaph. c. 8. He attests God to be the First Cause of all other Causes This action is in the holy texts called Creation Gen. 1. 1. Mark 10. 6. Psal. 89. 12. Mal. 2. 10. Creation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not alwaies intended for one and the same signification sometimes it implying the Creation of the world as in the Scriptures next forementioned other whiles it is restricted to Mankind Mark 16. 15. Mat. 28. 19. Luke 24. 47. In other places it is applied to all created beings Mark 13. 19. Gen. 14. 22. Job 38. 8. Prov. 20. 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To create is imported by divers other Expressions 1. By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To Form Gen. 2. 7. Esay 43. 7. 2. By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To make Gen. 1. 31. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He hath establisht Psal. 89. 12. Psal. 104. 5. Mat. 13. 35. Heb. 6. 1. 1 Pet. 1. 20. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To stretch or expand Psal. 10. 2. Es. 42. 5. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To prepare or dispose Prov. 8. 27. Psal. 74. 16. V. Creation is a production of a being out of and from nothing Tho. gives us this Definition in Sent. 2. Dist. 1. Quest. 1. Art 2. Creation is an emanation of an universal Being out of nothing By an universal being he intends a being as it comprehends all material and immaterial beings So that this is rather a definition of the creation of the material and immaterial world then a definition of the Formality of Creation 2. His Definition is defective and erroneous for he adds only out of nothing This is not enough it being possible for a thing to emanate out of nothing and yet not be created the immaterial operations of Angels and
likewise free to defend a penetration of bodies IV. We find a very dense contest among Philosophers about the manner of condensation and rarefaction 1. Scotus in 4. Distinct 22. Quaest. 4. opiniates that there are new parts of quantity produced in rarefaction and other old ones corrupted 2. Marsilius in his Metaph. Quest. 9. Art 2. asserteth that in rarefaction and condensation the whole or entire old quantity is corrupted 3. Others to salve their Doctrine of Condensation and Rarefaction are constrained to affirm a penetration of quantity which they say may naturally happen provided it be not of all but of some parts only 4. Hurtado Phys. Disput. 15. Sect. 5. Subject 4. laies down a Principle invented by his Master which according to his Judgment proveth an Expedient to expound the nature of Rarity and Density There are saith he certain indivisibles contained in bodies through the inflation or puffing up of which bodies do acquire a greater or less place But to avoid all inconveniences they allow these indivisible points not to be formally only but virtually also divisible and extensible according to place and force impelled upon them To this Opinion doth Arriaga also subscribe Disp. 16. Sect. 9. 5. The Jâ—suits of Conimbrica Lib. 1. Cap. 5. q. 17. Art 1. state that Rarity and Density are consistent in a certain quality inherent in quantity through which that quantity is contracted or extended to a greater or less space In fine after a long sweat they are forced to confess ingenuously with Hurtado that this difficulty is not to be cleared V. The subtil Doctor runs far beyond his Byas in admitting a natural corruption in parts and that happening almost every moment wherefore he is rejected by all in this particular What the Assertors of the third Opinion have stiffely affirmed in their whole Philosophy that they are now reduced to deny and exposed to a probation of a penetration of quantity which if a quantity is consistent of potential parts only and indivisible into indivisibilities then no question but it will go for them for then it remains indisputable that in a Line the points do all penetrate one another and consequently must consist out of infinite potential parts Hurtado and Arriaga do now yield to actual formal indivisibles but yet virtually divisible How an indivisible can be inflated they do omit the illustration This is most certain that contiguous indivisibles are inextensible and therefore may not be inflated 2. This Inflation is violent but there are many bodies naturally dense as the earth and therefore inflation being violent is not a means tending to addensation Besides they pass by to express their meaning of Indivisibles whether such as Zeno and Democritus teached or others VI. If they side with Democritus they fall into a greater Errour for his Indivisibles were 1. Infinite 2. Fluctuating in a void place 3. Of various Figures All three most notorious contradictions For can a thing be infinite and yet be terminated with Figures a plain Contradiction 2. Can finite bodies be produced out of infinite material Causes If material causes are infinite the body constituted by them must also be infinite Wherefore another Contradiction 3. There is no real vacuum but an imaginary one 4. Can a thing be indivisible and yet be under various figures There is no figure indivisible but a round Minimum because all its parts are fallen equally so close to the Center that they escape a real division thereby although not a mental one but other figures as Triangles must of necessity be devisible because all figures are made out of a Circle or Rotundity for take away the Angles of a Triangle Quadrangle c. and there remaines a Circle The reason why a round Minimum escapes division is because there is nothing sticking out whereupon an extrinsick Agent can take hold because its extream imaginary parts are strongest in being equally united to the Center and therefore one imaginary part is so strengthned by the other fastened to the other that any real division is impossible upon them but a triangular or any other angular figure is divisible because its real parts are unequally allied to the Center whence there ariseth a strong opposition in one respect and yet a small resistance in another for the angles do receive the force of an extrinsick Agent but a round minimum shoves it off and so makes but little resistance and yet a great opposition we see that a small round Bullet shall pass where a great angular body shall not although impelled with the same force and do consist of the same matter the reason is because in a round figure there is less resistance and the opposition is the greater because of the union of parts I have oft thought upon the intention of that ordinary Saying Vis unita est fortior Strength united is made stronger This holds good only in a round figure for therein force is most united for all its parts are equally allied to the Center and every part helpeth the other and makes no resistance but great opposition This appears in your round short-arst Fellowes who shall carry a greater burden then the biggest and tallest men I do remember that I have seen at a Sea-Village called Scheeveling in the Low-Countries a dozen men or fewer remove and carry a Pink of no very small burden upon their backs from the shore into the Sea Their strength was very improportionable to move so great a body but the placing of themselves in a round Figure did soon square their force to the Bulk Three of them were placed before at one side of the bowes three on the other side three more on each side of the Ship and so those twelve moved with their backs one against the other circularly not thrusting the Ship forward or from them for then they could not have done it but every man moved circularly to the Center and against the force of his Diametrical opposite and so lifted the fore parts of the Ship up upon their backs which being a little raised from the ground fell or moved forward through her own declining weight Touching the men themselves each of them put himself into a circular posture applying his back against the Ship resting his hands and arms upon his Knee and inclining his Head and Neck towards his Breast But this by the way The Conimbricenses endeavour to help the matter by shifting it off to a quality inherent in quantity Indeed I had alwaies apprehended a quality according to the Peripateticks to have inhered in a substance and not in quantity for it is absurd to assert in their Philosophy that one Accident inheres in the other Nevertheless they intend Matter by Quantity wherefore by the way you may observe that nolentes volentes they cannot apprehend any thing by Matter but quantity as I have proved before Further to patch the cause of Density upon Quality is a blind shifting for Quality is so remote a name
and there are so many qualities that unless they indigitate to a particular sensible quality they effect little Their vain Groapings Guessings and Ignorances depend upon the Cloud which they leave upon the nature of Density and Rarity for did they but study the true Definition of either it would not a little contribute to their Information In the first place They imagine Density to be a violent quality whereas you see it is natural 2. They make no distinction between Density Thickness for Thickness doth in the same sense although improperly contain much matter in little Dimensions notwithstanding they are different so doth Thinness contain little matter under great Dimensions as improperly as Rarity Wherein is Rarity then distinct from Thinness nevertheless do Authors affirm that many thin bodies are dense The same is attested by Cardan How then can the above-given Definition stand good A thing shall then contain at once much matter in small dimensions and little matter in great dimensions ergo a thing is thin and thick rare and dense at once No question it is also an erroneous Assertion that some thin bodies are essentially dense or that any thick bodies are essentially rare neither is Tenuity or Crassitude the cause of Density as Scaliger doth well infer in his 283 Exerc. but a contiguous Gravity VII The first power or Form of Fire is Levity with Contiguity The Second next slowing thence is Rarity which is an expansion or diduction of a body that is light with Contiguity This followeth Levity with Contiguity because a thing which is contiguously light cannot but be diducted Scaliger doth justly except against Cardan in Exerc. 4. You say that the reason or manner of a rare and dense body is taken from the multitude or paucity of matter Moreover it is not the multitude or paucity of Matter makes Density or Rarity neither doth Density cause the multitude of matter or Rarity the paucity of it The Demonstration is the same for both because the same body may be rarified or condensed without the encrease or decrease of Matter Averrhoes Lib. 4. Phys. Comment 84. doth hesitate very much in this Particular as appeares by his contradictory affirmations for in that place he asserts that Rarity and Density are contraries in quantity Again in the next following Comment he saith that Rarity and Density are not of the essence of quantity In Lib. 7. Phys. Com. 15. he affirms Rarity and Density to be qualities but in Lib. 1. Metaph. Com. 15. he refers them to the Predicament of Situs and Lib. 8. Phys. Com. 77. he saith that Rarefaction and Condensation are Local Motions Zimara doth labour to draw all these various Dictates of Averrhoes to a good sense When he seemed to place them in the Category of Situs saith he his intention was only to relate the Opinion of other men In saying that Rarefaction and Condensation were in the Predicament of quantity he meant that quantity did consecute them but not formally for a greater quantity doth follow Rarity and thence the possession of a greater place wherefore Rarefaction is primarily and essentially an alteration and a motion to quality but secondarily and by consequence it is to a greater quantity and a larger place Tolet. Lib. 4. Phys. Cap. 9. Text 84. tels us the Opinion of Aristotle upon this intricate Point He expounds his Judgment upon Rarefaction which in short implies Rarity and Density to be two contrary qualities educed out of the power of matter as others also are for when a thing is condensed or rarified that doth not happen properly because something is expelled or something doth enter or because the parts are conjoyned among themselves or are separated by reason of a vacuum voidness but because such a quality Rarity or Density is educed out of the power of matter so as that its Subject should be changed as when it is made hot or cold for the Ancients said that no part of a thing was changed in Rarefaction or Addensation but that its parts came only somewhat nearer or were removed from between themselves However Aristotles Dictates contain nothing of this but when a thing is rarefied or condensed the whole and the parts too are changed by an accidental mutation in receiving a quality educed out of the power of matter which is apparent because in a rare body every part is rare which if Rarity hapned only through the separation of parts among themselves the parts doubtless would remain dense which is false as appeares in things that are rare and most in the Elements A great deal ado about nothing That which through it self is most obvious they involve into obstruseness through their Cavils Whether Averrhoes intended his words in that meaning as Zimara comments or not which is more probable because he doth not give the least hint of an indirect sense of his words and therefore they are to be understood in their direct intention As for Zimara his reconciliation that alledging no reason and since the same might be guessed of his words although he had purposed them for a contrary signification it doth not merit any acceptance is not material either promising no truth or evidence Tolet. rejects the Judgment of the Ancients upon this Particular but hath not the ingenuity to add Reasons to consute them only from an inbred School-bending to Aristotle saith as he is told He declares then with the Philosopher that in Rarefaction and Addensation the whole and parts are changed by an accidental mutation in receiving a quality educed out of matter because in a rare body every part is rare In the first place his Reason is weak for in a rare body every part is not rare as appeares in the ayr which they term to be rare wherein many dense parts as black Clouds are contained nevertheless the whole Body is called Ayr a majori 2. Supposing that every part of the whole is rare he infers nothing but that every part or the whole is rare which is idem per idem 2. If Rarity saith he were caused through separation of parts among themselves the parts would remain dense It seems by Rarity and Density he apprehends nothing else but the diminution or augmentation of quantity for in the same Comment he writes thus You must note that to be made little out of great is to be condensed and out of little great to be rarified Here he contradicts himself before he stated them qualities now they are changed into quantities But to his Reason 'T is true as he saith if Rarity were caused through separation of parts in a mean body among themselves the parts would remain dense supposing that the light parts were separated from it But supposing the dense parts of a mean that is equally consistent of dense and rare parts body the remaining parts would be rare 2. A dense body is not rarefied through any separation of its parts or inflation of its minima's but by the adjoyning of
a more convenient position of your hands So water when it is violently detained is intended in its gravity because its expansion which is a more convenient position doth intend its motion and yet the same strength and force of gravity was latent in the water when it was in its natural position Water doth alwaies affect and covet a globous figure now through this globosity the water is rendered disadvantageous to exert its weight because all its parts cannot joyn together in opposing the body which it is to depress but being in a Globe the undermost parts of that Globe do partly sustain the force of the uppermost and centrical parts and the same undermost parts being interposed between the other body and the other parts cause that the others parts cannot come at the body That this is so the trial of this Experiment will soon certifie you weigh some long pieces of Iron or Wood in a payr of Scales and observe the weight of them then divide them into less pieces so as they may lie closer and weigh them again you will find that the last shall be much lighter then the first besides I have tried it many other waies This Reason will also serve to illustrate the manner of intention of weight in earth when it is violently detained Ayr moveth stronger upwards when its parts are more divided and expanded for then every particle of the ayr contributes its motion and so in fire Nevertheless the same force was actually in the ayr and fire below In this sense it is I have made use of Intention of Qualities above in the Precedent Chapter Wherefore it appeares hence that there is no such refraction or intention of qualities as the Peripateticks imagine to themselves V. A mixt body is usually divided into a body perfectly mixed and a body imperfectly mixed and as usually received among the Vulgar but whether this Division be lawful is doubted by few An imperfectly mixed body they describe to be a body whose mixture is constituted only by two or three elements a great errour there being no body in the world excepting the elements themselves but their mistion consisteth of four Ingredients This I have proved before Others think to mend the matter by saying that an imperfect mixed body consists of Ingredients but a little alterated and therefore its form is not different from the element which predominates in it To the contrary the Ingredients in imperfectly mixed bodies are as much alterated as there is vertue in them to alterate one another and who will not assert the form of a Comet to be different from the form of fire or Snow from the form of water c. There is no mixed body but it is perfectly mixed for if it be imperfectly mixed it will not constitute a mixt body 'T is true some mixt bodies contain a fuller proportion of Elements then others and therefore are more durable and may be of a more perfect proportion yet the mixture of a body which lasteth but a moment is as much a mistion as that which lasteth an age and consequently as perfect in reference to mixture CHAP. XVIII Of Temperament 1. That Temperament is the form of Mixtion That Temperament is a real and positive quality 2. The Definition of a Temperament Whether a Temperament is a single or manifold quality VVhether a complexion of qualities may be called one compounded quality 3. VVhether a Temperament be a fifth quality A Contradiction among Physitians touching Temperament Whether the congress of the four qualities effects but one Temperament or more 4. That there is no such thing as a Distemper What a substantial Change is 5. What an Altsration or accidental change is That the Differences of Temperament are as many as there are Minima's of the Elements excepting four 1. THe Form of Mistion is Temperament I prove it That must be the Form of Mistion which doth immediately result out of or with the union of the elements but a temperament doth immediately result out of or with union of the Elements Ergo. 2. Since there is no deperdition or refraction of the absolute forms of the Elements that must needs be the form of Misture which the union of those absolute forms doth immediately constitute but that can be nothing else but a Temperament Ergo. 3. That is the form of Mistion which chiefly causeth all the operations and effects produced by a mixt body but the chief cause of all the operations and effects of a mixt body is the temperament ergo The Minor is asserted by all ingenious Physitians Hence we may safely infer that a temperament is not a relative only but a positive and real quality for were it only a relation its essence would wholly depend from the mind and be little different from an Ens Rationis II. A Temperament is the union of the forms of the Elements By union apprehend the forms of the Elements united into one quality The name of temperament soundeth a temperating or mixing yet not primarily of Matters but principally of Forms for none doubteth of its being a quality or formal power Kyper in his Medic. contract Lib. 1. Cap. 3. alledgeth this doubt whether a temperament be a simple or manifold quality but before I apply my self to the solution of it observe that simple may either have respect to the Matter materia ex qua out of which a temperament is constituted which are the four first qualities or forms of the Elements or to the form of a temperament which is one quality resulting out of the union of its materials Wherefore if simple be taken in the former respect doubtless a temperament is a manifold quality if in the latter it is simple I prove it simple in the latter respect is equipollent to unity but a temperament is but one quality and not manifold although out of many yet united into one ergo a temperament is a simple quality 2. Were a temperament formally a manifold quality its effects would be equivocal and manifold but to the contrary the effects per se of a temperament are univocal and simple the one not differing in specie from the other The said Kyper proposes the very words of my Solution for a doubt in the next Paragraph whether complexion of qualities may be called one compounded quality which he determines very well In Metaphysicks saith he there is not only allowed of an unity of simplicity but also of an unity of composition wherefore it is not repugnant that there should be an unum compositum of qualities since there is an unum compositum of substances III. This puts me in remembrance of another controversie which I have formerly read in Mercat his works Lib. 1. Part 2. de Elem. Class 2. Quaest. 39. whether a temperament be a fifth quality or rather a Concord or Harmony of the four Elements Avicen defines it a fifth quality to which the said Author subscribes but Fr. Vallesius Lib. 1. Cap. 6. contra Med.
have explained the Elements to move each according to their proportion as in Coction Earth doth as much conduce to it through its contiguous and punctual motion to the Center as the fire doth in moving to the Circumference wherefore the Elements are to be adjudged equal causes of Coction VII Thus far we have spoken concernig Coction in general and as it may be supposed applicable singly to the Elements What remaines is to treat of the Species of Coction depending upon the combination of the Elements to wit upon heat incrassated heat condensed water rarefied and attenuated earth rarefied c. The Objectum circa quod of Coction is Crudity The Species of Coction are accounted to be three Maturation Elixation and Assation Maturation is a Coction performed by a thin and moderately condensed heat together with the co-action of the other Elements whereby immaturity is overcome and its subject perduced to maturity or a temperament ad justitiam This kind of Coction takes place in man who in his younger years is said to be immature and by process of time to be perduced or come to maturity All animals are perduced to their consistent Coction by Maturation Maturation takes its beginning from the Center whence it is that the innermost flesh of Beasts is the sweetest because it is the first soonest and best concocted Maturation renders a mixt body more compact and solid then it was because it consumes and expels the ayry waterish parts which being diminisht the remainder is left more solid and compact Through Maturation a body becomes sweeter as we may observe in all fruits growing sweeter through Maturation whereas they before were acerbous and austere A body through Maturation is exalted to a greater purity Elixation is a coction performed by a rarefied and attenuated moysture that is an ayry and fiery water and the co-action of the other Elements Thus the equality of temperament in Fishes and other waterish bodies proceeds from Elixation Through this thin and rare moysture all the parts of a mixt body are equally laid and through its fluor thick parts are attenuated dense ones diducted and rare ones condensed Assation is a Coction effected from a dense heat acting socially with a just proportion of the other Elements Thus hung Beef and dryed Neats Tongues are concocted All Metals are likewise concocted or purified by Assation I shall not spend more words to shew the manner of the variety of Coction since it is apparent by what hath been said before VIII A Decoction is an equal wasting of a concocted body hapning through the continuation of a concocting alteration Or otherwise it is an overdoing or an overcoction of a mixt body through which it must necessarily be wasted which notwithstanding remaines the same thing or according to Aristotle remanet idem Subjectum sensibile But in putrefaction a body doth not only wast but makes way also for a Dissolution and the subject is sensibly changed 2. Putrefaction derives from an unequal alteration caused by an immoderate and unequal adjunction of an extrinsick influent or adventitious quality to the least parts of one or more of the Elements But Decoction is equal and performed by the same causes that Coction was Or in a word the one is a violent and sudden motion to dissolution of the parts of a mixt body into their first Elements the other is a gradual successive flow durable prolonged and natural dissolution of a mixt body into its Elements As for the manner of Decoction it is thus You must conceive that in Coction the innate heat or whole temperament suffereth but little loss or dislocation because at the formation of any body the heat is so arctly joyned to the central parts that although it is attenuated through the Ayr yet firmly adhering to minima's of earth and surrounded with minima's of water it cannot be entirely loosned from its adherents before it is minutely divided and spread equally through all the body 2. The Minutes of weighty Elements arctly compassing the fire do detain the same fire from exhaling 3. When the Coction is perducted to its height and the Elements are equally laid their forcible alteration ceaseth but nevertheless a smal alteration doth still continue every minim yet pressing against the other whereby the superficial heat doth by little and little exhale whose vacuity the nearer light parts do succeed to fill up and afterwards those of the central parts next following When now the heat is so much dispersed expelled that it is grown invalid to balance the other Elements it is suddenly suppressed in an instant after which instantaneous suppression another form succeeds at the same nick of time and verifieth that Maxime quod Substantia generetur in instanti that a Substance is generated in a moment The reason why a form is so suddenly and in the least time expelled and another received is because when the heavy superficial parts and those next to them are freed from their light elements they move all together with one force which force faâ—â—ing suddenly and violently upon that small part of the remainder of the light Elements doth then violently and suddenly chase and expell them By this it appears that Decoction is natural because it is from an intrinsick Principle IX Putrefaction is a violent alteration of the Elements in a mixt body from too great an irruption of an extrinsick elementary quality which joyning with its like overpowers the mixtum and frees that Element from its nearest alligation to the minimal parts of the other Elements and so do both easily overcome the mixture Wherefore the cause of Putrefaction is an unequal temperature or distemper effected by the superaddition of an extrinsick elementary quality The Causes in particular are four 1. When the intrinsick earth is impowered by the adjunction of external pressing terrene minims which overpressing the innate heat and dividing it from the Ayr first extinguisheth its flame and then presseth it out from its body This Species of Putrefaction may be called a tendence to petrification and terrification I will give you an Example A man who is frozen to death is properly said to have been putrified by a tendency to Terrefaction for the external frosty Minims pressing hard upon him together with the intrinsick earth of his body do at last extinguish his vital flame 2ly and 3ly when external Moysture is adunited to the internal Moysture it doth also cause a putrefaction of that Mixtum through over-relaxing and opening the body whereby the light parts easily procure a vent This may be otherwise signified by a tendency to moulding Those small filaments that do usually adhere to the surface of a moulded body are nothing else but a diduction of the circumjacent Moysture into length and tenuity by the egress of Fire and Ayr. The Greenness or Grayishness of the said filaments is nothing but the fire splending and glistering against the circumjacent Moysture the refraction and reflection of which arising
and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 innate some taking them for one others limiting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heat that is only proper to living creatures and applying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heat that is common to all mixt bodies and is subjected to Putrefaction as if connate heat were not subjected to Putrefaction as well as the innate Doth not the connate heat of man suffer putrefaction in a Hectick Feaver You may further read of a fourfold difference of innate heat in Argenter his Treatise of the innate heat 1. I conclude that the connate heat is elementary and not astral I prove it There was connate heat before the Stars were created ergo its Original was not thence The Antecedence is plain from Scripture Gen. 1. for there it appeares that Herbs which questionless were actuated by connate heat were created the third day whereas the Stars were not created before the fourth day 2. Where the effects and operations are alike there the causes cannot be unlike but the effects and operations of Astral heat are no others then of Elementary ergo although I granted it to be Astral it must also be elementary 2. Innate heat is said to be a spirit because its rarest substance is adunited to the least bodies of the other Elements whereby it is fortified and becomes more potent and is constituted a most subtil moveable body The purest and most potent spirits are about the Center they next to them are not so subtil others yet more remote are grosser 3. The connate heat hath a power of converting influent heat into the same nature it self is of I prove it Hippocrates teacheth that the maternal bloud and the sperm are perfused with innate heat if then advenient bloud can be united to primogeneal bloud ergo influent heat may be united to the innate heat and converted into the same nature 2. Flesh contains a part of connate heat in it but cut off a piece of flesh and Nature will restore it again if restore it again then innate heat must be restored with it if so then this innate heat must be generated out of the bloud by the innate heat of the next adjacent parts 4. Childrens teeth are regenerable but teeth contain innate heat in them ergo innate heat is regenerable 5. That which the fore-quoted Opinion stated a putrefactible innate heat is a volatick and moveable heat which not being subtil enough to be united to the fixt or connate heat is protruded to the external parts and is subjected to putrefaction so that in the body of man the food that is daily ingested its subtilest part serveth to be converted into innate heat and to be substituted into the room of the last consumed innate heat The courser parts are converted into moving and external heats By Heats Calida understand hot Particles 6. How is it possible that so little innate heat as is contained within a Dram or two of Sperm should be sufficient to heat the body of a big man XII Corruption is the dissolution of a mixt body into the Elements or into other bodies more resembling the elements then it The Cause of Corruption as I said before is the greatest putrid alteration whereby the innate heat is violently dissolved In Putrefaction the moving heat alone is altered which is reducible but if it continues to a great putrefaction then the innate heat suffers danger and is yet likewise reducible but if the greatest putrefaction seizeth upon a body then the innate heat is strongly putrified and is rendered irreducible because through it the greatest part of the innate heat is corrupted which to expel the remaining innate heat finds it self too impotent But if only a less part be corrupted and the greater abide in power it may overcome the other and reduce it self Hence a reason may be given why many men having been oft seized upon by Feavers yet have been cured and their innate heat is become more vigorous then ever it was yea some live the longer for it The reason is because in most curable Feavers the moving spirits alone are affected neither doth the Alteration reach so deep as greatly to disturb the innate heat but oft times the body being foul and the bloud altered by peregrine humours the body is cleansed and by its fermenting and expelling heat the bloud is freed from these noxious humours after which the primogenious heat is less oppressed and acts more naturally then before through which life is prolonged Here we may answer fundamentally to that so frequently ventilated doubt whether life may be prolonged to an eval duration Paracelsus and many of his Sectators do maintain it affirmatively to whom three hundred years seemed but a slight and short age and in stead of it promising a Life of Nestor to those as would make use of his Arcana Mysterious Medicines yea a life to endure to the Resurrection But these are but Fables and Flashes for since that a man is unequally mixt and that one Element doth overtop the other questionless the predominant element will prove a necessary cause of the dissolution of that Mixtum but was a man tempered ad pondus equally and as Galen hath it tota per tota his Nature would become eval all the Elements being in him composed to an equal strength in an equal proportion If then otherwise the radical heat and moysture do sensibly diminish certainly old age or gray haires cannot be prevented Possibly you may imagine a Medicine the which having a vertue of retarding the motion of the vital heat must of necessity prolong its life in the same manner as I have read in some Author I cannot call to mind which a Candle hath been preserved burning for many years without the adding of Moysture to it by being placed in a close and cold Cave deep under ground Here if true a flame was retarded in its motion by the constringent cold of the earth and thereby the Tallow was saved by being but a very little dissipated through the motion of the fire I say then could the natural heat be retarded by such a constrictive medecine as to catochizate it and hinder its motion life might be protracted to some hundreds of yeares But again then a man could not be suffered to eat or drink in that case because that must necessarily stirre up the heat which excited if it were not then ventilated by the substracting the forementioned constrictive Medecine whereby it might dissipate the acceding moisture must incur into danger of extinction But this prolongation of life pretended by Theophrast Par. is attempted by hot Medecines such as they say do comfort and restore the natural Balsom of man which is so far from retarding old Age that it rather doth accelerate it for if the heat is augmented then certainly it must acquire a stronger force whereby it procures a swifter declination as hath been shewed Besides Experience confirms this to us Many having accustomed themselves to take a Dram
only obducted in its extent according to the force of the flame and when it is so stretcht as it were through the fires obduction it receives the force of the flame partly only because it is contracted by expelling the extrinsick bodies contained within it so yields to the fires obduction The clearer the ayr is the greater light it makes because it containing no extraneous bodies cannot contract it self from the obtension of the fire by expelling such bodies but being totally continuous it is obtended so far as the said ayr is continuous and according to the force of the fire The reason then why a light is terminated is through the contraction of the ayr and oft times through the density of an intermediate body as of thick vapours and exhalations According to the diminution of the flame the ayr relaxes and so the light diminisheth V. The cause why a dense body is uncapable of generating a light is by reason it is contiguous and cannot be obducted or stretcht as it were I have said That that is light which moves our eye-sight even hence I wil sensibly prove to you that light is nothing but a continuous obduction of ayr Suppose that the optick spirits are for the greatest part an ayr to which the external ayr when the Eye-lids are open is joyned in continuity and becomes one continuous body with the optick ayr in a manner as when one float of water toucheth another they become continuately one Wherefore then when the ayr is continuously obducted as far as where it is continuated to our optick ayr it must necessarily also obduct and stretch the same optick ayr because it is continuous to it That light moves the sight by stretching the optick ayr is evident in that when we look against the light although its origin is far off we feel a stretching in our eyes 2. VVhen we have wearied our selves by seeing we complain that we feel a stretching in our eyes In case the ayr is not obducted so far as to reach our eyes then we do not see it as when a thing is out of sight the reason why we cannot see it although nothing is interposed to hinder is because its stretching doth not reach as far as our Eyes Hence you may observe that visus non fit emittendo sed recipiendo motum flammae sight is not actuated through the emission of beams from our sight but through the receiving of the motion of a flame and more through suffering patiendo non agendo than acting VI. The fire of a Flame is to some extent dispersed through the Ayr and so far it heats the Ayr nevertheless its enlightning is much further extended The Sun which is the greatest Flame its heat in the Summer reaches to us in a very intense quality its light would reach a hundred or more times further then it were the tract of the Ayr extended to a larger quantity but because it is not therefore its heat in the torrid Zone and in the temperate ones in the Summer reaches as far as its light which although it doth is not therefore to be accounted the essence of Light as some have simply imagined So that it was no less Mistake to believe that the Sun's light could be precipitated in a Glass and some to have collected of it no less then two Ounces and half a day The vertue of this Precipitate is described to penetrate into the substance of the hardest Metal I do believe that it is very possible to precipitate such small bodies constituted out of the fiery emissions of the Sun whose vertue cannot but be very penetrative through the predominance of fire in them but nevertheless it is not the light which is precipitated but fiery substances neither is fire the light it self but the cause of it Light is a property following the union of a flame with the Ayr wherefore the Ayr is rather to be taken for the principal Subject VII Light is not the primar cause of all the effects produced by the Stars but their temperament and exsuperating heat Accidentally or privatively their remoteness and remission of heat may be a cause of coldness and incrassation of the Ayr and consequently of its obscurity The light of the Sun doth not comfort the vital Spirits neither doth it act immediately upon them at all although through its heat it may help and excite the vital heat of some frigid temperatures The light hath only a power of acting immediately and per se upon the Optick spirits and through altering them may prove a mediate cause of Vital and Animal Alterations I prove it If you go forth out of the dark into the light you feel a distention or rather an obtension of your visive spirits return again out of the light into the dark and you will first perceive a relaxation and afterwards a contraction of your sight The mediated effect of light is a quickning of the Vital and Animal Spirits which are moved by continuation from the obtension of the Optick Ayr. A sudden great light causes a bursting of the Air which happens when the Air is so much obtended that it can stretch no more and then of a necessity it must burst A bursting is a sudden breaking of a body throughout all its dimensions and parts as it were The air is bursted through a great lightning or a flash before a thunder which if the same bursting do reach diametrically to the optick air of an open eye it will certainly blind yea sometime kill a man because the same bursting is continued unto and upon the optick spirits and sometimes is also further continuated that it bursteth the whole Treasure of the Animal spirits which necessarily must effect an Apoplexy A man coming forth suddenly out of the dark into a great light is often struck blind because his optick Spirits are bursted through the sudden and strong obtention or if it obtends the optick Air to the next lower degree so as it may not cause a bursting it then produceth a dazling of the sight that is an over-stretching of the optick spirits VIII How light renders all things visible is a matter worthy of Enquiry The air being thus obtended and made visible through light is terminated every where about by the surfaces of terminated bodies These terminated surfaces resist the obtended air and according to their several degrees of mixture or of fundamental light and darkness do attenuate refract diminish contract or condensate the obtension If the surface of the resisting object is continuous and weighty it attenuates and refracts or reflects the light of the air and of that nature is water for water being adunited to air in continuity doth not only sustain the obtension of the air but also through its reflexion obtends the obtended air yet more and so the obtension upon the water must be greater by reason it stops the obducted air more then any thing else wherefore its light is thinner but withal greater
makes all bodies therein contained shew greater Besides water containing much air in her body suffereth also an obtension of that whereby bodies must necessarily appear bigger then they are The reason why a piece of Money in a Bason with water appears bigger then it is is because the water through impregnation with peregrine air proper thickness and continuity doth reflect and admit much obtended air or light which being altered by the colour of the money doth appear much bigger then if seen through thin air alone Light is diminisht because the air is condensed so that whatever doth condense the air must diminish its light and obduction Whatever body light appulses against it is thereby darkned because the body which it strikes against condenses the air According to this degree of condensation the light is gradually diminisht and darkned if it be terminated in a most dense earthy body then it appears black if against a body that hath less earth or density it appears brown that is to say at the point of reflection against an Object and so gradually in all other This change being wrought upon the terminating obtension by an objected body it is repercussed to a certain distance namely as far as the repercutient action of that object can reach which is as far as until the Air doth recover its proper station If we are far off from an Object it appears less then it is because its action doth diminish gradually like unto the streams of water which about the center of action are greater but the more remote they are the less they grow A Flame is called a Light Lux because it begets light The light begot in the Air is called Lumen an Illumination Wherefore these lights are not really distinguisht but ratione Neither is a flame to be called a light unless when it doth obduct the Air neither is the Air to be termed a light or illumination unless when it is obducted by a flame Radius a Beam is a diducted line of a flame tending directly from the Center to the Circumference A Splendor is the intention of light by a reflection or refraction upon a thick continuous smooth body The Lights begot by the Stars and other flames are not distinguisht specie because they depend upon the same causes namely upon Fire and Air. Their difference consists in consistency purity bigness c. The Coelum Empyreum or Heavens of the Angels are said to be lucid which may be understood tropically or properly If properly possibly it hath a vertue of obducting the air like unto a flame If tropically lucid is equipollent to glorious The Bodies of the risen Saints shall appear glorious and splendid possibly because they shall be more ayry and fiery that is flammy CHAP. XXII Of Colours 1. The Authors Definition of a Colour That Light is a Colour Aristotles Definition of colour examined 2. Scaligers Absurdities touching Colours and Light 3. What colour Light is of and why termed a single Colour That Light doth not efficienter render an Object visible How a mixt Colour worketh upon the sight and how it is conveyed to it 4. The Causes of the variations of Mercury in its colour through each several preparation 5. That Colours are formally relations only to our sight That a mixt colour is not an intentional quality That besides the relation of colours there is an absolute foundation in their original Subjects How the same fundamental colours act 6. That there are no apparent colours but all are true 7. The Differences of colours What colour focal fire is of The fundamental colours of mixt bodies 8. What reflection of light is What refraction of colours is Aristotles Definition of colour rejected The Effects of a double reflection The Reasons of the variations of Colour in Apples held over the water and Looking-glasses The variation of Illumination by various Glasses 9. The Division of Glasses The cause of the variation of colour in a Prism 10. The Nature of Refraction Why colours are not refracted in the Eye I. COlour is a Mode or Quality of a mixt being through which it moves the sight if so then certainly Light is a Colour For 1. It proceeds from a mixt body 2. It moves the sight primarly immediately and per se. I prove it We do distinguish light from darkness and a light body from a dark one by our sight ergo it moves the sight Probably you may deny my Definition of colour wherefore I shall for your further satisfaction compare it with that of Aristotle and prove it to be consentaneous to it differing only in Precision ours being less universal and nearer to sense then his Lumen which is equipollent to colour est actus perspicui quatenus perspicui Light or rather Illumination is the act of a perspicuous body quatenus perspicui is redundant By actus is implied an actuation or motion 2. By perspicuous is intended a body that is capable of receiving or rather of reflecting light And is not the sight capable of receiving or reflecting light and of being actuated by it Or if you will take colour for a quality following the temperament and mistion of the Elements the difference is not great this being a Definition of colour as it is considered in it-self a priori the other described a posteriori relatively and accidentally for it is per accidens to it to move the sight I cannot but reflect at Scaligers boldness who pretending to exceed Cardan in subtility so as he seemed to reprehend and correct him in every Distinction but with more absurdity then he supposed Cardan to be less subtil and particularly about Colours and light Exercit. CCCXXV d. 2. Here he infers a real and formal difference between an Accident and its Subject the contrary hath so plainly been demonstrated 2. That an Accident is constituted out of a Power and Act. The falsity of which is detected in my Disp. of Pow. These Assertions are not exempted from Absurdities 1. An Accident and a Substance being really and formally different and owing their production to one substantial efficient it follows that a Substance produceth effects differing from it self in specie 2. That a Substance is an efficient of a Power and Act. Power and Act being two positive contraries one substancial efficient is inferred to be an efficient secundum idem ad idem of two positive contraries for a power according to Aristotle is not a privation for then it were a non ens reale but a positive 3. Neither is Power or Substance the true matter of colour Not the power for that is like to the matter not the substance that being the sole whole substance Wherefore if neither power or substance be the true matter it cannot be any real thing because whatever is real consists of Matter and Form Wherefore saith he we should say that it hath a substance for its subject wherein it is inherent but in it self it hath a power and act out
dense body wherefore it is ridiculous to opinionate that lumen of the Stars otherwise termed their Influences should be the causes of so great effects upon great bodies as are adscribed to them VI. Colours are generally divided by the Peripateticks into two sorts viz. into true and apparent True Colours are such as do really inhere in their subjects in the same manner as they are represented to the eye Apparent ones are those which are not really inherent in their subjects in the same manner as they seem to be to our sight such are the colours of a Rainbow or of a Peacocks feathers or of the Sea-water because these according to the several distances and position of the eye seem divers The cause they impute to the light Lumen which according to its various aspects renders the said colours various the errour of this Doctrine will appear from these Conclusions 1. All Apparent colours are real and true colours as for their being real colours but few do doubt of it because they do really move the sight That they are true colours I prove hence That which is a real colour must be a true colour because a being and true are convertible ens vernm convertuntur wherefore if it be a colour it must be a true colour or else none for it doth as really and truly move the sight as that which is strictly called a true colour or how should we see it else To this you reply that you do not deny it to be true a colour in one sense namely metaphysically but in another and in respect to a true colour strictly so called it is not true I answer That all the difference I find between them is that the one is more durable or less changeable than the other which doth not make the one more or less true than the other for did an apparent colour move the sight otherwaies than it doth it would be no true colour but it moves the senses as it is and to most mens sight it is the same continuing its duration For when we see a Rainbow its colours do appear the same to all standing in the same place but were they not true they would appear in one shape to one and in another to another As for their different appearances and shapes at several distances and positions is as well incident to those which they call true colours as to apparent ones For a Picture where the colours are all real and true will vary at several distances and positions You will say That a Picture will not vary in colour if you look upon it from the right opposite place where the light is cast in a due proportion I answer Neither will that which you call the apparent colour of a Picture vary keeping the same place and distance And what difference can you then make between them The only difference between them is their more or less durability and changeableness which proceeds from its greater or less compactness of mixture The colour of a Rainbow is as true a colour at that position and distance as of any other object it differing alone in durability for suppose a colour to be altered by a reduplication or over-casting of another colour in substance but the same in appearance as for instance a painted face having its natural colour hid under a painted colour certainly you will say that the latter is only an apparent colour if so wherein is the latter different from the former being a true colour as you call it but in durability To wit the paint wears off and the other abides The same is observable in the clouds whose lasting colour is blewish their fading or painted colours are the rayes of the Sun incorporated with their bodies really and truly altering their lasting colours nevertheless this latter is as true a colour as the paint was upon a painted visage VII The differences and number of colours are various and many for every temperament hath a several colour attending it But as it was not every insensible alteration of temperament that constituted a new temperature saving that alone which is sensible so neither doth every insensible alteration of colour constitute a new colour but only such a one as is sensible Colours are either durable and less mixt mixti è paucioribus non vero minus mixti or changeable and more mixt that is with extrinsick heterogeneous bodies So that a durable colour arises from a compact temperament of the Elements included by extrinsick bodies the other depends upon a less compact union of the Elements Changeable colours are various also according to the lights reflection or refraction and its various incidencies upon objects which causeth them to appear either whiter or blacker or otherwise lighter or darker A changeable colour is sometimes accidental to a persistent colour as appears by the fore-mentioned instance of a painted face Colours are extreme or intermediate Extreme ones are such as cannot be intended or heightned in their action as black I mean that which is blackest cannot be heightned that is it cannot be supposed to pinch and drown the light more than it doth These extreme colours depend upon the extreme or greatest proportion of the superating Element in reference to the whole So that in case fire is the greatest predominant its body is white if the earth its subject is black According to this supposition there are four extreme colours because there are four extreme proportions of the Elements Which are these White Black Crystalline and Pellucid This is made known to us 1. In that Sea-coal consisting of most earth is black 2. A Flame consisting of most fire is white to wit the Sun 3. The Ayr consisting most of ayry parts is Pellucid 4. Ice consisting most of waterish parts is crystalline I will further prove this by reason If blackness be proper to earth and earthy bodies whiteness must be proper to fire and fiery bodies they being opposite correspondents to one another in all qualities The colour which is in water and waterish bodies is neither white or black ergo it must be an extreme colour of it self for since that each Element obtains distinct extreme qualities the same must also be in colours Who would say that water is white or black or partakes of any white or black from fire or earth wherefore Theophrastus was to be blamed for adscribing yellow to fire and white to the three others That which moved him to appropriate yellow to focal fire was because for the most part in flaming or burning it seems yellow and reddish To this I answer That the colour of focal fire is not an extreme colour because fire is not inherent in focal fire in its greatest proportion and predominance it having much earth to obscure its extream whiteness and so it is turned to a yellow or red but where fire is in his greatest predominance and least counterpoised by earth there it seems alwaies white as appears in the colour
it becomes as it were two Bodies and is reflected also in a double Species but were it continued in equality it would be expressed but as one single Species The reason why an inequality in one continuous body causes a refraction is because every protuberance contracts the Species of an object reflected upon it and consequently must represent each of them in a several Species Wherefore a Prism doth represent the same colours of each side of its angle because of the Refraction of the Light arriving through the Inequality of the Angle The ground of the other appearances of a Prism you may easily collect without any further repetition The Sun appears as manifold in the water as the water is rendered unequal through undulation There is no Refraction without a Reflection wherefore Refraction is erroneously divided into simple and mixt supposing simple to be a Refraction without a Reflection which is scarce imaginable The eye of man consisting of continuated equal crystalline parts as Membranes and Humours doth not refract Objects reflected upon it because of the said continuous equality but in case any of the Humours are discontinuated by an interjacent Body Objects appear double because of the Refraction in the eye happening through the inequality of the said interjacent Body A Scheme representing the Derivation of Colours CHAP. XXIII Of Sounds 1. The Definition of a Sound That the Collision of two solid Bodies is not alwaies necessary for to raise a Sound 2. Whether a Sound be inherent in the Air or in the body sounding The manner of Production of a Sound 3. Whether a Sound is propagated through the water intentionally only That a Sound may be made and heard under water 4. That a Sound is a real pluffing up of the Air. How a Sound is propagated through the Air and how far Why a small Sound raised at one end of a Mast or Beam may be easily heard at the other end Why the Noyse of the treading of a Troop of Horse may be heard at a far distance 5. The difference between a Sound and a Light or Colour That it is possible for a man to hear with his eyes and see with his ears likewise for other Creatures to hear and see by means of their feeling 6. The difference of Sounds Why the Sound of a Bell or Drum ceaseth assoon as you touch them with your finger Why an empty Glass causes a greater Sound then if filled with water 7. The Reasons of Concords in Musick 8. The Causes of the variation of Sounds Why celestial bodies Rain and Hail do make but little noyse in the Air. 9. How Sounds are restected How Sounds are intended and remitted 10. The manner of Refraction of Sounds What an undulating Sound is 11. How a Voyce is formed I. SOund is a Quality whereby a natural body moves the Hearing This is a Formal and Relative Definition of a Sound because we call that a Sound which moves the auditory Spirits or internal air of our hearing Besides this it hath a fundamental Essence which is nothing else but a Concussion and Conquassation of the air or otherwise it is the air suddenly and violently concussed or conquassated vibrated or rather pluft up by an extrinsick continuous body be it hard or sof liquid or solid single or double that is between two In the first place I might here question whether a soft or liquid body is apt to make a Sound since Aristotle in his 26. T. de Anim. Chap. 8. states a Sound to be the percussion or collision of two solid hard bodies and particularly that soft bodies as a Sponge or wool do make no sound Notwithstanding this Assertion of Arist. which afterwards I shall make appear to be false I prove that liquid and soft bodies make a sound Poure water to water and hearken whether they make no sound beat one Sponge against another and listen to their sound throw one Pack of woollen cloath upon the other and hearken whether they make no sound II. Next let us enquire whether a sound be a quality inherent in the solid bodies or in the air Not in the solid bodies because they give very little sound in a small compass of air and consequently none without air Wherefore it must rather inhere in the air I prove it a sound is a Passion but it is the air that receives this Passion ergo the sound is in the air The passion is to be krutcht pluft up or shaked 2. A sound sometimes is made when the air is immediately pluft up by one body as when we make a noise by switching the air we hear a sound is made in the air The Definition of a sound asserts it to be a violent and sudden concussion for if you do concuss the air although pent between two hard bodies softly and retortedly it will make no sensible sound because the air gets out from between them by pressing gradually upon its adjacent parts without being pluft up or being kept in by them and so escapes making a noyse But when it is suddenly and violently pressed upon by one or two bodies it is forced to pluffe up because the adjacent air doth not give way fast enough The air being pluft up or concussed is continuated to the ear by reason that one part pluffes up another so the parts of air lying close in continuation one upon the other are soon pluft up continuated to the auditory air within the ears which it moves likewise with the same degree and property of pluffing as the degree of percussion was first made upon it by the property of the percutient How air is pluft up may easily be aprehended viz. by two bodies suddenly violently squeezing out the air which was between them by their sudden collision against one another For instance clap your hands hard together you may by the subtil feeling of your face perceive the air pluft up from between them Or else a pluffing may also be caused by a smart impulsion of the parts of air upon one another by a Stick Board or any other single continuous body The Reason of a sounds celerity and extent of motion to such an improportionable distance you may apprehend from the cause of the swiftness of the lights diffusion treated of in the foregoing Chapt. But withal mark that Light and diffusion of colours are by far swifter then sounds because a Flame being a most subtil and forcible body doth much swifter obtend the air besides the air doth rather accur in an obtension to prevent its disruption then recede whereas in making a sound the air is longer in being obtruded or pluft away from the percutients because it retrocedes and the force percussing doth not compass it circularly from all sides but adversly only Hence it is that at a distance we see a Hatchet driven into Wood long before we hear the sound of it or that we see Lightning before we hear the Thunder III. I remember it is an
I. A Tast Sapor is a quality whereby a mixt being moveth the tasting faculty The tasting Faculty is inherent immediately in the fixt animal spirits and mediately in the influent ones of the Tongue and Palat. These Spirits are in two degrees thicker then the auditory spirits there being the olfactive spirits intercedent differing but one degree in thickness from the said auditory spirits The object of this faculty is required to be respondent to it in consistency wherefore the faculty viz. the Spirits being dense and thick the Objects of the tast do move the same faculty by a greater density and thickness then those of visibles and audibles Otherwise if the Object be thinner and rarer then is requisite it is uncapable of moving the tast hence it is that we cannot tast air or warmth proceeding from fire That which is thick moves the tast by a kind of continuous compression of the spirits in the tongue thus fair water affects the tast which the more ayry and thin it is affects the tongue the more Water being tempered with Spirits makes a kind of a sharp and brisk tast for instance Wine Dense bodies move the Palat by a contiguous compression and therefore make a more distinct and forcible tast Summarily tast is nothing else but the discerning of the several temperatures of mixt bodies effecting several passions in the tongue and upon its gustative faculty which several passions are said to be several tasts Hence it is also obvious that the quality whereby a tast moves the gustative faculty is nothing but its action whereby it acteth distinctly in several Subjects wherein a different gustable quality is inherent Since the Gustative Spirits are deeply latent within a porous and Spongie body nothing can move the tast unless it be of that thinness or small quantity as that it may pass the pores of the tongue the passing of which subtilities waterish Moysture doth very much facilitate which proves in stead of a Vehicle to them and makes those passages slippery Hence it is that no great bodies have any tast unless they be first attrited and diminisht by the teeth and the more they be diminisht the more their tast becomes perceptible Dry bodies are not so gustable as when they are a little moistened whereby they reserate the pores of the tongue and procure a passage to the seat of the taste II. As many different waies as objects move the taste or cause severall passions in it so many different tasts there be That which doth only gently shake the taste and as it were doth but tickle it is sweet and deriving from a temperateness yet so as that water is abounding in it That which doth sensibly alterate the taste is an intermediate sapour that which doth most alterate it so as it may not pervert the faculty is an extream sapour Extreme sapours depend upon the greatest predominance of each Element in a several mixt body which being four do also constitute four extreme tastes 1. A fiery hot taste as in Pepper Ginger c. 2. An earthy taste 3. A waterish taste 4. An ayry tast not such as Theophrastus cals a fat taste like there is in oyl The rest are intermediate as bitter acerbe acid and salt for that is a tast mixt out of a waterish and ayry tast Peripateticks assert that tastes for to move the gustable faculty are to be immediately applyed to it and there they assert that tastes are only real among all the sensible qualities But this doth not alwaies hold true for tasts may be communicable through a medium and if the air is at any time to be allowed to be a medium it is sometimes in tasts and alwaies in odors to wit the air as Apothecaries do all testifie for when they are powdering or a peeling of Colocynthis its bitter taste doth very sensibly reach their tongue III. A smell or scent is a quality or action whereby a mixt body moves the olfactive faculty The difference between this and the gustable faculty is none other but that the one consists in a degree of a finer and thinner consistency of spirituous air and the same difference is between their objects viz. a taste is of a thicker body than a scent in manner that the scent is too subtil to strike the gustable faculty and a sapour is too thick to strike the olfactive faculty wherefore that which through its subtility passeth the sence of taste doth thereby reach to the sense of smelling moving its faculty withal It is thâ—n apparent That the objects of both these senses are the same differing only in subtilty of body and that they are nothing but temperaments of bodies comminuted and moving the said powers immediately yet not so but that the subtiler parts for to move the sense are requisite to be separated from the courser and more then that each needs a Vehicle or a medium for to be carried and directed through the subtil passages to the deep latent sensory The vehicle of tasts is water to which spittle and drink are equipollent as being through its thickness respondable to receive so thick and course an object a thinner vehicle as the air could not receive it because it is too thin to support it The vehicle of scents is air as being through its thinness proportionated to receive and convey such subtil bodies were this vehicle thicker it would through its gravity expel or express bodies of that subtility that smells are of You may here observe the depravate Judgments of the Peripateticks concerning the mediums of sensible objects where they ought to grant a medium as to scents and tastes they withhold it where they should allow no medium there they grant it as to audibles and visibles I stated temperaments of bodies to be the objects of sense by which you are to understand the subtiller and volatick parts of substances reduced to a certain degree of temperament and obtaining certain vertues of acting So that hereby I do not intend any quality distinct from a substance for the objects of sense but real bodies so qualified as to move sense where mark qualities are not really distinguished from their bodies but really identificated with them in the concrete although in the abstract they are distinguisht ratione for what is a quality in a body else but a body qualified Wherefore the action performed through the quality of a body is not to be taken as if the body were one thing and the quality another but as one and that action proceeds from the body qualified of this I have discoursed more at large in my Metaphysicks IV. Smels do nourish no more than tastes nourish the animal spirits none doubts but that neither nourishes the solid or humoral parts because of their unsutableness in consistency and temperament Wherefore although some are said to have sustained their life for a long time through smels alone as it is recorded of Democritus who sustained his life three daies through the
rendred of a very unequal temperature where the extraneous Elements uniting together do raise a hollowness in the earth and infinuate into one anothers substance or body to which the coldness of the earth is very much conducing thereby gathering or coagmenting the said Elements together and impelling them into one anothers body and then closing them firmly all which it performs through its coldness Through coldness understand its compressing weighty minima's Wherefore do not still abide in your obstinate conceit that it is the Sun which is the efficient cause of Minerals and Stones For that is absurd I prove it That which is the main efficient of Stones and Metals must be a contracting condensing and indurating substance but the Sun is no contracting condensing or indurating substance Ergo the Sun cannot be the efficient of Stones and Metals The Major is undeniable I confirm the Minor by proving the contrary namely that the Sun doth mollifie because its flame is soft and all heat is soft for softning is nothing else but to dispose a body to bend easily into its self if pressed from without But earth rarefied by fire doth easily bend into it self if pressed from without Ergo The Minor is evident because whatever is throughly hot fiery is soft as we see in red-hot Iron in alive flesh and all Vegetables So that by how much the more heat a body hath by so much the softer it is provided quod caetera sint paria Further What heat is there under the Earth I confess there is more and less coldness under it but no predominating heat What heat can there be in Greenland especially under the earth and yet it is certain that many rocks and stones are generated there They may as well say that fire is the efficient cause of all those Islands of Ice Again so much as a substance consisteth of coldness and earth by so much it participates of hardness or by how much the less heat a body consisteth of so much the lesse hardnesse it partakes of The matter of a stone in the kidneys or in the bladder was sofe when it fluctuated within the vessals but being detained in the kidneys its heat is diminished either through the intense heat of the Kidneys which doth dissipate and attract the lesser heat from the matter retained in the cavity of the kidneys through which ecess of heat the terrestrial and thick waterish parts are coagulated and are closed together through the depressing coldness of the intrinsick earth and water The same matter being retained in kidneys of a cold temperament doth immediately through that degree of coldness coagulate and grow hard The stone in the bladder is generally harder than the stone in the kidneys because the one is of a far colder that is less hot temperament than the other That in the kidneys is more friable whereas the stone in the bladder is affected with a continuous firm thick waterish hardness This I can witness by a stone being taken from a Patient by section which that most learned and expert Physitian Dr. George Bate shewed me six or seven years ago This stone was perduced to that hardness that I am confident an ordinary smart stroak of a hammer could scarce break it Yet when it was within the bladder it was far distant from such a hardness for a piece of the Catheter was unawares run into the body of the stone and broke in it which was afterwards taken out with it but after it had been exposed a little while to the air it grew immediately to that hardness What could be the cause of this but the hotter parts of the stone exhaling into the air whereby the cold parts fell closer and thereby arrived to a greater hardness The errour of Fernelius is obvious in that he stated the intense heat of the kidneys to be the cause of a Lithiasis for it happens as freqently in kidneys of a cold temperament neither is it an insita renum arenosa calculosaque dispositio a parentibus contracta hereditary fixt fabulous and calculous disposition as the same Author conceives which doth consist in a degree of temperament of the solid parts of the kidneys for stones have been generated in kidneys of all kinds of temperaments neither can it be said to be hereditary for many a man hath been troubled with the stone whose Issue never was so much as disposed to it and on the other side many a man hath been miserably tormented with the stone or Duelech as Paracelsus terms it whose Parents never discerned the least symptom of a stone within their bodies Nevertheless as I said before the temperature of the kidneys adds much to the accelerating of a Lithiasis It is then certain that the greatest cause of lapidation or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is internal depending upon the predominance of earth or coldness over the other Elements in a mixture The Focus or Uterus as Van Helmont terms it that is the place where a stone or gravel is generated must be a close hollow place wherefore nothing can arrive to this close hollow place unless it be liquid for a thick or course body will be intercepted before it can reach thither This liquid matter being now lodged within this cavity the hot parts do exhale because now through the hollowness of the place they have got liberty to dislate and free themselves from the heavy terrestrial and thick aqueous parts whereas before when they were kept close together through channels and lodges shutting close upon them the hot parts were firmly contained within and bound up This is necessarily and certainly demonstrative and infers that where ever close hollownesses are groved and that liquid matter containing terrestrial and aqueous parts in it may reach to them there certainly stones and metals can and may be generated By vertue of this position I shall prove and shew by and by that stones and metals may be generated in most hollow parts of the body of man But to persue my discourse The hot parts being now freed from the terrestrial parts and inhering in subtil ayry serosiries do with more ease and force procure their passage through this close and hollow prison than they made their way thither leaving the terrestrial and aqueous parts behind them for a Ransom which by degrees are coagulated more and more according to the expulsion of the fiery and ayry parts Understand also the reasons of the qualification of the Focus or womb of stones and Metals 1. It must be hollow the reason of this is set down already 2. It must be close for were it not close but open the terrestrial and aqueous matter could not be detained there but would have as free a passage as the thin parts Besides closeness conduceth to keep out extrinsick heat which otherwise would again dissolve and mollifie the work wherefore the hardest stones and metals are found some degrees below the Surface of the earth and I dare confidently assert that if metals
Iron Sory is a Mineral hard and thick like to a Stone glistering with yellowish Sparks These three are of a causting quality thereby burning Scars and Crusts into the Flesh besides they are somewhat adstringent Misy is the strongest and Sory is the next to it in strength Antimony is a Mineral of a blewish colour shining throughout its Body like Streeks of Silver its mixture is out of course earth and dense fire yet less dense then any of the foregoing It s vertue is internally vomitive and purgative externally it is discutient detergent and adstringent All these are natural recrements of Metals yet not recrements alone as I said before Bombast and his Sectators analyze all Metals and Minerals into Sal Sulphur and Mercury as if they were all generated out of these as their first Principles for say they our Art instructs us to reduce every Metal or Mineral into each of those foresaid Principles Either this is to be understood that it is possible to reduce all Minerals really into Sal Sulphur Mercury or into some certain more concected beings analogal to them Generally they seem to pretend to educe real Mercury out of all Minerals but as for the others they are only analogal Why should they more expect to extract real Mercury then real Salt or Sulphur Wherefore it will be more consisting with Reason to conclude them all equally analogal that is like in consistency to ordinary Mercury Sal and Sulphur but not in effects It is a Madness for any one to imagine that Gold is constituted by the same Mercury but more concocted that is usually digged out of Mines and that Mercury is convertible into Gold if thereunto intended by a strong concocting preparation They might as well say that Gut-Excrements were convertible into Flesh and that flesh consisted out of the said real Excrements The Case is thus Mercury is by them accounted to be an Excrement of Metals wherefore as an Excrement is a Body really different from those bodies from which it is rejected and in no wise convertible unless it be some of the purest parts of it that have escaped natures Diligence so neither is Mercury any part of Metals nor convertible into them unless it be the smallest purest parts which had fled the earths Metalliferous quality Possibly you will Object that Gold feeds upon Mercury and Mercury upon it wherefore they are convertible into one anothers Nature I deny the Antecedence for Gold is dissolved and destroyed by it as appears in Amalgamation or dissolving Gold by the fume of Mercury ergo it is not fed by it Mercury effects no less in the Body of man for it dissolves his humid parts yea his solid parts too as Mercurial Salivations testifie All which is a sufficient Argument to induce us to forbear from explaining the Causes of Natural Beings by Sal Sulphur Mercury Probably you reply That this is not the meaning of Bombast who intended these Names only to be analogal to those things vulgarly so called Wherefore by Mercury is understood a thin pure liquor by Sulphur a subtil Spirit by Salt the gross substance of a Body I Answer Either you must take these for first Principles or for mixt bodies they cannot be the first because his Mercury is constituted out of water reduced from its greatest hardness into a subtil fluor through admixture of Air and Fire His Sulphur consists of fire condensed by Earth and of Air ergo they must be mixt Bodies if so they are no first Principles of Metals because even these are reducible into more simple bodies viz. his Mercury into thick water a thin air and a rare fire Sulphur into air fire c. This I will grant them that all Metals are dissolveable into such kinds of analogal Substances which are not bodies less mixt but only changed into bodies of several consistencies viz. thick and thin course and fine CHAP. II. Of Stones and Earths 1. A Description of the most Precious Stones 2. A Description of the less Precious Stones that are engendred within Living Creatures 3. A Description of the less Precious Stones that are engendred without the Bodies of Living Creatures 4. An Enumeration of common stones 5. A Disquisition upon the vertues of the forementioned stones An Observation on the Effects of Powders composed out of Precious stones Whether the Tincture of an Emerald is so admirable in a bloudy Flux 6. A particular Examination of the vertues of a Bezoar stone Piedra de Puerco Pearles c. 7. The Kinds of Earth and their Vertues I. OUr Method hath led us to propose the Demonstration of universal Natures before that of particulars and that of Metals before the other of imperfect Minerals and Stones as being more excellent through their perfection of mixture wherefore we have next allotted this Chapter for the treatise of the particular natures of Stones Stones are either known under the name of most Precious less Precious or Common The most Precious Stones are ordinarily called Jewels being 18 in number 1. An Agathe 2. An Amethist 3. An Asterites 4. A Beril 5. A Carbuncle 6. A Chalcedonie 7. A Chrysolite 8. A Diamond 9. An Emerald 10. A Jaspis 11. An Jacinth 12. An Onyx 13. A Ruby 14. A Sarda 15. A Saphir 16 A Sardonix 17. A Topaze 18. A Turcois An Agathe is a stone of divers mixt colours and in no wise transparent An Asterites is a stone somewhat resembling Crystal and within the Moon when she is at full An Amethist is a stone of a Violet colour A Beril is of a Sea-green colour and sometimes is found to have other colours mixt with it A Prase is not unlike to it only that it is not of so deep a green neither so hard for it wears away by much usage A Carbuncle is esteemed for the most precious of all Stones and is of a Gold or Flaming colour It is said that there is a kind of a Carbuncle called a Pyrope to be found in the East-Indies which shines as bright in the Night as the Sun doth in the Day A Chalcedonie is a stone of a Purple colour A Chrysolite is of a Golden colour hard and transparent A Chrysoprase is hard and of a greenish colour A Diamond is thought to be the hardest of all Stones An Emerald is hard and of a perfect green colour A Jaspis is of a greenish colour sported here and there with bloudy Spots An Jacinth is of a Gold or flaming colour Some of them decline from a Yellow to a deep Saffron red or sometimes to a blewish colour They are neither perspicuous or opake but between both An Onyx is of a brownish white but of a dull transparency An Opale stone is by Pliny Lib. 37. c. 6 accounted for the best and rarest of Stones as participating of the rarest Colours of the rarest Stones its fire is more subtil then of a Carbuncle shining with a Purple of an Amethist greenish like to the Sea-green of an
separated by our weak heat if Aq. Regia is too inferiour to separate their spirits from their earth much less our mild Ferment But supposing an impossibility to be possible viz. that by length of time this might be effected yet it cannot answer to the cause of so immediate an effect neither must we fly to that worn out Sanctuary of ignorance Ocoult Qualities for it is denied to these also to act at a distance But to keep you nolonger in suspence the truth of the matter is this the Heart the Brain and the Liver do alwaies sympathize with the Stomack the one through commonness of Membranes and Nerves of the sixth pair the other through the Branches of the Coeliacal Artery the last through the Mesenterical and other Branches of the Vena Portae especially in extream weaknesses This is evident Drink but a Glass of Wine and immediately your vital spirits will pulsate more vigorously your Animal motion will be rendered stronger and your Veins will swell upon it Wherefore the Stomach being much relaxed in most weaknesses and filled with Damps and Vapours and sometimes partaking of a Malignancy doth through the same Relaxation by continuation relaxe the Arteries Nerves and Veines inserted into her body whence their spirits are necessarily rendered feeble and moist Now then the Stomack being somewhat cleared of these moist evaporations doth recover a little strength which in like manner the foresaid Channels and Spirits do immediately grow sensible of which if so the case is plain to wit that the benefit which the noble parts receive doth derive from the depression of these damps through the weight of those precious Powders the same sinking to the bottom to conglomerate and contract the stomach by which contraction they expel the aforesaid Vapours Exhibite any weighty Powders as of Coral Crystal Bole Armen c. they will refocillate the Spirits and prove as suddenly cordial although ex accidenti as others of the most precious Carbuncles or Magistery of Pearl which is an undoubted sign that it is nothing else but their dense weight whereby they operate those Effects Neither must you infer hence that I assert that all weighty bodies are cordial no but only such as are densely weighty and have no noxious quality accompanying of them provided also their weight be not so excessive as to overpress the stomach By all this it appears how far Jewels may be said to be Cordial as for any other effects that are adscribed to them they are fictitious and deceitful You may Object that the Tincture or rather Magistery of Emeralds is commended for its miraculous vertue of stopping a Looseness I Answer That it is not the Emerald which is the sole cause of this Effect but its being impregnated with Spirits and volatil Salt of Urine which being very detergent and almost as adstringent as Alume do principally work that Miracle as you call it for digest its Powder with any other Menstruum and its Operation will vary Or abstract the Tinctures of any other Stone or Mineral Earth provided they partake of no noxious quality with the same Menstruum of Spir of Urin and you will assuredly find the vertue to be the same Thus much touching their Intrinsick vertue As for their External Effects they are more certain and evident 1. They do clarifie the sight through their Lustre and splendor by obtending the optick air They do cheer the visive spirits by moving them gently and as it were quavering upon them through their flashes and glisterings of Light This is very true for when you look suddenly upon a great Jewel the sparkling of it will immediately quicken your eye-spirits and as it were by consent cheer you The same effect we do plainly perceive in our selves when wecome suddenly out of a dark Room into the Sun-shiny Light wherefore I say the production of stones are ordained by God for to remain entire and to please the eye by being lookt upon and not to be broken into pieces and spoiled when they are become scarce worth a Bodel whereas before their value was of a great price Before I leave this Subject I will only insert a word touching the cause of their glistering and splendor A Carbuncle and particularly a Pyrope is alone said to shine in the dark although Sennert in his Phys. doth ignorantly deny it The cause of its actual light in the dark is an actual flame kindled within the body of the stone and there remaining Catochizated whose Light is further intended by a Reflection upon the thick waterish parts of the stone and glisters through its refraction by angles adherent to the matter and dividing the intrinsick Light The same to wit reflection and refraction is also the cause of the shining and glistering light of the other most precious stones VI. Among the less precious stones the Bezoar or as the Persians call it Pa Zahar a word compounded out of Pa against and Zahar Venom that is a stone against all kinds of Venom or Poysons But we here in these parts have a way of commending a thing far above what it is esteemed beyond Sea and Quack-like of extolling it against all putrid and malignant Feavers the Plague Small Pox Measles malignant Dysenteries and what not There are many of these Goat-Stags in Persia which are fed in Fields near a place called Stabanon two or three daies journey from Laza a great City of that Countrey These Fields protrude a great quantity of an Herb very like to Saffron or Hermodactyls whereon those Beasts do feed out of the subsidence and faeces of whose juyce remaining in the stomach the foresaid stone concreaseth which doth very miserably torment their bodies But if the same beasts seed upon other mountainous herbs this stone doth happen to dissolve and comes away from them in small pieces Now that a stone engendred out of an unwholsom and poysonous herb should work such Miracles doth by far exceed the Extent of my Belief Moreover Physitians are very conscientious in dispensing the dose of it imagining that 5 or 6 Graines must be sufficient to expel all Malignancy out of the humoral Vessels through a great sweat but I have taken a whole Scruple of it my self to try its vertues and found it only to lye heavy at my stomach and that was all Besides I have several times prescribed it to Patients in whom I never could observe the least Effect of it Supposing this stone were exalted to such faculties there is scarce one amongst a hundred is right for those Mahometical Cheats have a Trick of adulterating them and so thrusting two or three one after another down a Goats throat they soon after kill him and take the same stones out before witness who shall swear they are true ones for they saw them taken out The Tair of a Stagge doth expel sweat extreamly and may be used against poysons and all contagious Diseases Horstius commends it besides to facilitate hard Labour in Women
hold of their Iron Pins II. Before we apply our selves to the enumeration of the properties of the Loadstone let us in the first place search into its internal principles The Loadstone is as it were imperfect Iron but not so neer resembling it as Iron resembles Steel It is between a Stone and a Metal and therefore in a manner is not perfectly concocted It s material principle is a loose earth rarefied by dense fire and incrassated air being unequally mixt and tempered It s forma ultima is sometimes a compleat Metal like to Iron other times like to a hard reddish blew stone Both these have been found by many not knowing what to make of them which in all probability were concocted Loadstones That they were Loadstones is evidenced by the remaining vertues although but very weak of attracting Iron It s body being throughout porous that is loose and not very solid its intrinsick parts must of necessity partake of a certain figure as all porous bodies do although in some more in others less Iron it self as also a Lyzzard stone consists of intrinsick parts Cuspidally or Pyramidally formed that is with streaks transcurring as it were into Pyramidal points In Alume likewise we see its parts are Hexagonal in Crystal the same and so in all bodies although it is not alwaies visible however appearing in our present subject The cause you know is from the manner of exhalation proruption of the ayry and fiery parts that have left it and minutely do still leave it Between these triangular pointings we do imagine insensible cavities or pores through which those emanations do continually pass and by whose figure they are directed to their passages outward those I say are continuous and very potent III. Now we have declared enough to demonstrate most of its properties which I shall instantly enumerate They are either Mechanical Nautical Medicinal or fabulous It s Mechanical property is of attracting Iron Nautical of inclining or moving towards the North Pole and thereby of directing Mariners in steering their course of which more anon Medicinal of adstriction and strenching blood AEtius lib. 2. tetrabl cap. 25. gives us this account of its medicinal vertues The Magnete or Herculean stone hath the same vertues which a blood stone hath They say that it doth asswage the pains of the Gout in the feet and in the wrist if held in the hand This is fabulous but if applied being mixt with other ingredients in a plaster it doth really give ease in some kinds of Gouts Serapio lib. de simpl part 2. cap. 384. commends the Magnete for curing wounds befaln by a venomous weapon it is to be powdered and mixt with other Oyntments and applied to the part affected besides the Patient is for some daies to take a Dose of it internally untill the venom is purged away by stool Parey lib. 7. Chir. cap. 15 attributes a very memorable cure of a bursted belly to it Fabr. Hildan Cent. 5. Observ. Chir. 31. obs rehearses a famous cure luckily done by it by the advice of his Wife at a dead lift I suppose upon a Merchant who was tormented with a miserable pain in one of his eyes caused by a little piece of steel that was accidentally peirced into it All kind of Anonynes were applied but to no purpose at last the Loadstone was thought upon which he caused to be held near to the eye whereby it was soon drawn out The fabulous properties of this stone are of losing its attractive vertue by the apposition of a Diamond of curing wounds at a distance for which purpose it is added to Bombasts sympathetical oyntment and of preserving youth for which end they say the King of Zeylan causes his victuals to be dressed in Magnete Dishes I return to its Mechanical property about which Authors are very various some as Nicander Pliny Anton. Mercat lib. 2. de occult prop. cap. 1. Matthiol in Dios. lib. 5. cap. 105. Encel. de re Metal lib. 3. cap. 8. fabr Hildan in the late quoted observ asserting it to attract Iron at one end and to repel it at another Others affirming the contrary viz. That it attracts Iron from all parts but by several impulses as it were moving in several Figures some being direct others oblique It is true in an oblique motion the Steel at the first impulse seems to recede because of its changing its position towards the Loadstone besides this change the Steel also varies according to its diverse position towards the stone we need not confirm the truth of this by arguments the experiment it self viz. placing small pieces of filings of Steel round about the stone will gâ—ve you a further proof of it Wherefore these forementioned Authors imagining the North part of this stone to be alone properly the Loadstone accused Pliny of an errour for affirming the Theamede stone to reject Iron which they affirmed was no other but the South part of the Magnete Whether the Theamedes doth repel Iron or no I know not only thus much I know that the description of it is altogether differing from that of the Loadstone neither can I believe that Pliny being so well versed in stones should so easily mistake in this Letting this pass it is certain 1. That in the North hemisphere it doth attract Iron most at its North part and more directly at the other sides its attractive vertue upon Iron is less potent and draws more oblique 2. One Loadstone doth not draw the other unless the one be more concocted than the other and then it doth 3. That a Loadstone capped with Steel attracts more vigorously than when naked 4. That it draweth Iron stronger at some places than at others at some seasons than at others 5. That it attracts Steel more potently than Iron 6. That it doth also attract Copper although but weakly 7. That its Mechanick and nautical vertue is communicable to Iron 8. That the Magnete loseth its vertue by rust by lying open in the air by moisture by lying near to hot Spices as the Indian Mariners who transport Pepper and other Spices do testifie by fire by being touched with the juyce of Garlick or Onions That in length of time its vertue doth intirely exhale leaving only a course rusty stone behind it 9. That a Loadstone being intersected by a section almost perpendicularly incident upon the supposed axeltree of the said stone and its pieces placed one against the other so that the faces of each section may constitute a side of an acute angle terminated by a common point of their South or North Pole doth attract Iron more potently by far than otherwise IV. I should now begin to demonstrate the first effect of the Loadstone through its proper cause but before I can arrive to its solution it will be requisite for you to know what is ordinarily meant by its North part The said Part is otherwise by Authors termed the North Pole of the Loadstone because it doth look or
lye towards the North Pole of the Heavens or of the Earth because it tends downwards withall Poles are vulgarly described to be the two extremities of an axis axeltree about which a Globe or Wheel moves round If so then properly a Loadstone cannot be said to have either Axis or Poles because according to the vulgar opinion it doth not move round Wherefore the former denomination is improperly attributed to it viz. the extreme central point of its tendency towards the Arctick Pole is termed the North Pole of the stone and the opposite extremity is called the South Pole of it Next remember out of the Ch. of Coct that all bodies in their decoction do run off their temperament through streams or small mixtures of the Elements gradually deserting the decocting bodies and taking their egress or fuming through their pores These pores tend most from the transcurrent Axis towards the North. That its pores tend most towards the North is evident by its intrinsick parts within as you may see when it is cut through running variously intorted towards the North in streaks these streaks are distinguisht from one another through interjacent porosities otherwise they would be continuously one That the Loadstone emits fumes is testified from its looseness and inequality of mixture For all parts as I have shewed before that are unequally mixt suffer a discontinuation of their mixture because one Element being predominant and having its force united through the said unequal mixture must needs make way for its effumation and afterwards break through by egressing fumes but such is the Loadstone Ergo. 2. That these fumes or effluvia do effumate through their Northerly pores the experiment it self doth confirm to us For we see that they attract Steel most at the North side besides they usually rub the cross wires of Sea-Compasses at the North side as being most effumous there Thus much for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and part of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now for the manner of its attraction and here it is disputed whether the Loadstone attracts Iron or Iron the Loadstone Hereunto I answer That neither the Loadstone doth properly attract Iron or Iron it However since Iron is moved toward the Loadstone but accidentally by means of his effluvia or steames therefore the Loadstone is said to draw Iron to it 2. Iron doth improperly move it self to the Loadstone being incited to the same motion through the steames of the Loadstone entring through its pores into its substance The streams of the Loadstone are through their particular form and external shape or figure fitted to enter into the pores of Iron which are in like manner fitted to receive the streams of the Loadstone they being admitted do reserate the substance of Iron or through their specifick penetrability do free the volatil parts of that Iron from the fixt ones whence they do immediately through their fiery principle dilate and diffuse themselves towards that part of the Circumference where they feel the continual effumations of the Loadstone yet more to unite them which reeking out and being further diducted by a continuation of succeeding parts do draw the course parts along with it as being still continuatly united to them Or plainer the said fumes of the Loadstone having entered the pores of Iron do immediately loosen the spirits of the Iron which being dilated and united to the fumes of the Loadstone must needs covet a greater place the want of which causeth them both to spout out at those holes which are most patent which must necessarily be those through which the Magnetical fumes entered This sudden spouting out must cause an attraction of the Iron because the extrinsick air doth suddenly enter its pores on the opposite side for to recover a place within the Iron which it had lost without by being driven back out of its place by the prorupting fumes This sudden irruption of the air on the opposite side drives the Iron forwards to that place whence it was first repelled This you will the better understand if you compare it with our discourse set down in the Chapter of Local motion and of a Vacuum These steams of the Iron do effumate through all the pores where the vertue of the Loadstone hath touched it especially at the Center of opposition to the stone whence they breaking out in great quantity do draw the body of Iron directly towards the Loadstone But if the objected Iron be defended by being besmeared with Oil or any other greasie substance or by being dipt into water it puts by and obtuses the Fumes of Loadstone That the Loadstone doth effuse Fumes from it is further made known to us 1. Through its inequality of mixture and looseness of Substance as I hinted before 2. Either it must act that is attract at a distance or else operate through steams it cannot at a distance that being only proper to supernatural Agents and denied to all natural ones ergo the last 3. If you burn it it will cast a visible blew sulphurecus smoaky Flame 4. It is not the Iron doth primarily effuse steams towards the Loadstone because it is more compact and less exhalable Hence Scaliger might now have resolved his Doubt whether the Loadstone drew Iron or Iron it Why these Fumes do exhale most towards the North we have told you already Do not let it seem strange to you that the emanations of this stone should reserate the mixture and Temperament of Iron it being common to many other bodies although Authors are not pleased to take notice of it The fumes of Mercury do open the body of Gold The heat of the Sun opens the body of water and attracts Vapours thence Amber through its Emissives attracts Dust Paper c. But of these elsewhere Why the stone moves steel variously according to its diverse position happens through the variety and obliquity of its Pores variously and obliquely directing its steames and variously withal entring the Pores of the objected Steel V. The Reason of the second Property is because two Loadstones being alike in mixture of body and in Effumations cannot act upon one another for all actions are upon Contraries But in case the one be more concocted then the other and in some wise dissembling in their mixtures then doubtless the one will act upon the other and the more concocted will attract the less The cause of the third is that the Emanations of the Loadstone being appelled and harboured in an extraneous body as that of Steel do with more ease and in greater smoakes as I have said before exhale out of it and consequently attract Iron stronger and work with a greater Bent towards the Northern Pole Besides steel collects all the egressing steames of the stone which being concentrated in the body of the said steel and consequently received in greater quantity must prove more forcible The solution of the fourth is containned in the first The Reason of the fifth is
because steel is purified from its grosser parts which did before somewhat hinder the ingress of the Influence of the Loadstone and cohibite the Effluvia of the affected body Sixthly It attracts Copper or Brass because of the likeness of its Pores and mixture to Iron whence it doth aptly receive the Energy of the Loadstone The Reason of the Seventh may be drawn from the Third 8. The Magnete happens to lose its strength through Rust because its decoction is thereby stayed and its temperament subverted Moysture and its being exposed to the air do lessen its vertue because the latter doth so much disperse its emanations and accelerate its decoction the former dissolves its temperament Spices weaken its attraction because through their heat they disperse and discontinuate the emanating spirits the like may be said of the juyce of Garlick and Onions Mercury doth also destroy the temperament of the stone It s vertue happens at last to relinquish it through the natural course of Decoction The Reason of the Eighth is because the emanations do in that position easily joyn together slowing in like course and figure from their bodies Many more Conclusions might be deduced from the Experiments of the Loadstone whose solution may easily be stated from what hath been already proposed VI. It s Nautical Vertue is the great wonder of Nature to all Naturalists to whom the Cause is no less stupendious This Property is whereby one part of the stone moveth towards the South the other to the North. Bodintu Lib. 2. Theat Nat. proposeth an Experiment relating to this Property somewhat different to what others have observed An Iron Needle saith he being gently rubbed against that part of the Magnete where it lookt towards the North whill◠it stuck to the Rock and placed in a Balance doth place that extremity which was rubbed against the stone towards the North. The same vertue it exerciseth towards the South if the Needle be rubbed against the South part of the Loadstone Neither is the strength of the Magnete less in its Eastern and Western part although the stone cannot turn it self towards the Regions of the world yet the Iron Needle can What we have said cannot be understood unless it be experimented for if you lay a piece of the Magnete upon a Board swimming in the water and lay that side of the Magnete which looked towards the South before it was removed out of its natural Seat against the side of another Loadstone which before it was cut out lookt likewise towards the South then will the swimming stone flee to the other side of the Vessel in the water If you should turn the North part of the Magnete to the South part of the other Magnete swimming in the water the swimming part would suddenly come near and through a wonderful consent be both joyned to one another although the wood of the Vessel be between The same will also happen if you put an Iron Needle into a Glass full of water being run through a piece of a Reed and hold a piece of a Magnete in your other hand one side of the Magnete will attract the Needle the other will repel it Thus far Bodinus The last Property of attraction doth not appertain to this place the cause of which may nevertheless be made clear to you by what is foregoing The former touching its Vergency is observable if it be true but I doubt he hath not made tryal of it Besides none else do make mention of it which were it real they would not omit the Observation That which may next be disputed upon is whether the Loadstone turns to the South or North Pole of the earth or to the said Poles of the Heavens or to neither In the first place I wonder what they intend by a North and South Pole of the Earth Those that agree to Copernicus hold that they are the extream points of the Axeltree whereon the Earth doth move Others who deny Earth a motion affirm them to be those points of the Earth that are responding to the Poles of the Heavens that is which do lie perpendicularly or diametrically under the said Poles The former Opinion states the Poles of the Earth different from those of the Heavens Among the latter some have consented to believe the Poles of the Earth to be where the extremities of the Compass-Needles do diametrically point to the arctick and antarctick Poles that is where the length of the Needle is according to a right Line coincident with the imaginary axletree of the Poles of the world The onely place of coincidence is concluded to be near the tenth degree beyond the Fortunate Islands but that is false since the same coincidence is also observed in other places from whence for that reason most do continue their mensuration of the Earths Longitude But grant the Poles of the Earth be at the points forementioned why shall we apprehend the Loadstone rather to move towards the Poles of the Earth then of the Heavens What the Earth say they attracts the points of the Loadstone to her Poles An Absurdity why should not the Earth through the same principle of attraction draw other terrestrial bodies to it or what is it they intend by a principle of attraction I had thought that among the wandering Philosophers nothing but Fire and Air had been attractive Moreover did the Magnete alwaies incline towards the Poles of the Earth then it must be exempted from all deviation which it is not for in divers Meridians it hath divers respects to the Poles of the World and consequently to those of the Earth In Nova Zembla it deflects 17 degrees towards the East In Norway 16. About Neurenburgh 10. So in the Southwest Climates its deviation is no less various Wherefore after all this we must be constrained to assert the Magnete not to incline directly either to the South or North Pole of the Heavens or of the Earth although as I said before its Vergency is towards the North and South The points of the Magnets Vergency are directly tending to the Poles of the Air That is The Poles of the Loadstone are directly coincident with those of the Air. You see its Poles are primarily neither perpendicular to those of the Heavens or of the Earth Ergo its Poles do appropriate a particular situation But before I prove their seat it will not be improper to prefer the probation of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of their Poles The emanations of the Loadstone move circularly ergo they must have real Poles or immoveable points for a Body is uncapable of a circular motion in all its parts A real Axis is no less necessary It being impossible to conceive two extream immoveable points in a globous body without being fastned or continuated to other fixt points which must likewise remain void of the same circular motion and so on from one extream point to the opposite extream point That the steames of the said stone affect a
the cause and a false one too by the effect A notion by far inferiour to those of the wanderers and that which adds to this absurdity is to imagine that these streaks should retain their shape notwithstanding their continual and long grinding against the air in their descent and not change their shape a hundred times over Doth not a cloud which must be supposed to be of a firmer consistency than those particles make choice of a new shape every moment But how much the more these small tender bodies And that which is most absurd is to propose that such a vast number or troops of these particles should arrive hither into our North Hemisphere from the South so obliquely without changing their shape further he supposeth them to come bearing down directly through the Earth and through the Magnete which is impossible unless it be in a right sphaere whereas we here are situated in a very oblique sphere and consequently the Magnet is also obliquely seated here wherefore it is requisite that these streakes should alwaies beat against the Magnet in these Regions obliquely and change their shape very oft But how monstrous is it to maintain these particles to flie through the Diameter of the Earth and water being bodies most dense close thick in many places shutting out fire and air being substances by a Million of degrees exceeding Des-Cartes in subtility or how is it possible they should pass the most Icy and deep thick body of water well and yet through all this difficulty they should retain their shape this is an absurdum absurdissimorum absurdissimum The earth is pervious in such a manner as to fit the shape of the Coelestial streakes and were it so certainly it moving about the Sun according to his assent must change its passages and so thwart the entrance of the Coelestial subtilities As for the passages of the Magnete we grant them to be numerously seminated through its body but their shape is quite different My time doth even weary me in making disquisition upon so dishering and monstrous a Chimera I should easier give credit to Rablais his Pantagruel or the Fables of AEsope than to so obtuse a phantasm XIII There remains yet a word or two touching the fabulous property of this Stone which you have described by Famianus de Strada Libavius and others viz. that two Loadstones although at a great distance do so sympathize with one another that they move at one anothers passive impulsion and that towards the same place as for two friends residing in different Countries and intending to signifie their meaning or desires to each other they are only to make use of two steel needles of an equal size to rub them both against the same side of the Magnete and afterwards to place them in a Compass Box and so turning either of the Needles to any Point of the Compass the other is thought to obey to the same motion whereby they come to know one anothers meaning as having mutually at their last meeting agreed to impose a certain signification upon each point of the said Compass Hence they deduce a Magnetical or like to it sympathy in curing of wounds a sympathy in the affinity of bloud a sympathy between the guts and their excrements between superlunary sublunary bodies between men and men men and beasts men and parts of beasts men and plants beasts and beasts beasts and plants some natural bodies and others So that whereas formerly Philosophers used to excuse their ignorance by occult qualities now having worn them out they accur to Magnetical sympathies There is not a Surgeon or Apothecary so ignorant but he will as cunningly find out a cause whereby to explain the most abstruse effect of nature and instantly tell you such or such an effect happens through a Magnetical sympathy as the most learned Mr. Doctor But is this the great advancement of Learning and Philosophy which our Age doth so much boast of Is it not rather a grand piece of impudence to propose such absurdities and much more to give credit to them If Loadstones are subjected to such a necessary sympathy then one Magnet being retracted to a certain point of the Compass all must yield to the same point But the consequence is ridiculous ergo the Antecedence is no less 2. This sympathy is either communicable through means of the air or through it self without any intermediate body and consequently a natural action must agere in distans not the first for it is impossible that its steames should be conveighed to such a distance in their full vigour not the second that sounding absurd in the ears of all Naturalists The other kind of sympathies I intend to treat of elsewhere CHAP. IV. Of Life and living Bodies 1. What Life is 2. The Form of Life Why Vegetables are generated no where but near to the Surface of the Earth 3. The properties of a Vital Form 4. The definiton of Nutrition and the manner of it Whether food is required to be like to the dissipated parts 5. What Accretion is and the manner of it 6. The manner of the generation of a Plant. 7. The manner of the germination of a Plant. A delineation of all the parts of a Plant. 8. What the Propagation of a Plant is and the manner of it 1. HItherto we have proposed to you the nature of Earths Minerals and Stones which are the lowest degree of natural bodies and therefore do most of all resemble their predominating Element in nature and properties the next degree to this is wherein Vegetables or Plants are constituted and through whose prerogative a more noble Essence and dignities are allotted to them consisting in Life Accretion and Propagation The life of a Plant is its singular nature through which it is nourished and accreased and doth propagate As Generation and Corruption in a strict sense are only appropriated to in animated naturals so are Life and Death restrained to animated ones namely to Plants Animals and Men. Peripateticks seem to observe a twofold difference of life viz. Substantial and Accidental The former is taken for the principle of the vital operations The latter for the actions of life as Nutrition Accretion and Propagation We here intend neither abstractly but define the life of a Plant concretely that is a living body substance or plant to be a being composed out of a Physical matter specified by a distinct form from pure naturals and through its Essence to be qualified to nourish it self accrease and to generate Wherefore Aristotles Followers do justly condemn Cardan lib. 7. de subtil and Cornel. Valer. Cap. 44. instit Phys. for maintaining life it self to be an action that is a quality or property really distinct from its subject But withall stumble into no small an inconvenience in defining it to be an Actus which is no otherwise distinguished from an action than a concrete from an abstract So that in inserting actus they must mean an
1. That the disburdening of the Eastern Rivers into the Ocean is not the cause of its Circulation neither are the Sun or Moon the principal causes of this motion 2. The periodical course of the Ocean The causes of the high and low waters of the Ocean 3. How it is possible that the Ocean should move so swiftly as in 24 hours and somewhat more to flow about the terrestrial Globe 4. A further Explanation of the causes of the intumescence and detumescence of the Ocean The causes of the anticipation of the floud of the Ocean 5. That the Suns intense heat in the torrid Zone is a potent adjuvant cause of the Oceans Circulation and likewise the minima's descending from the Moon and the Polar Regions I. HAving in one of the Chapt. of the precedent Book posed a demonstrative and evident ground of the universal course of the great Ocean and the straitness of that Chapt. not permitting the finishing of the fabrick intended by us upon it Therefore this present plain shall serve for to compleat the delineation thereof but encountring with some rocky stones thereon it is requisite they should be rowled aside before the said Atlantick waves may procure a necessary assent of the true cause of their dayly circular floating The conceit of some Philosophers hath induced them to state the copious irreption of many large and deep Rivers into the Eoan Sea for the principal cause of its circulation the which tumefying its body do thereby press it westward This solution seems void of all reason the evacuation of the presupposed Rivers having no proportion to the replenishing of so extended a body as the Ocean scarce of a Lake or an inland Sea as we have observed of the lake Haneygaban and the Euxian Sea Besides many great Rivers disburdening themselves into the Occiduan Sea might upon the same ground return the course of the Ocean Eastward But imagine it was so why should not the said tumefaction rather incline the sea westward than further eastward Others rejecting the former opinion have in their fansie groven the ground whereon the sea beats deeper and deeper towards the west and so the ground being situated higher in the East shelving down gradually to the west the sea doth through its natural gravity rowl it self to the deeper lower Plane but then the eastern waters being arrived to the west how shall they return to the east again for to continue the said motion Wherefore this opinion may take its place among the Castles in the air Shall we then ascribe the cause of this motion to the rarefaction of the sea through the beams of the Sun which as it is successively rarefied doth swell and press its preceding parts forward As touching the Moon she cannot come into consideration here as being rather noted for condensation than rarefaction First I deny that the Sun doth any whit rarifie the Eastern Ocean because according to their Tenent the rarefaction of the sea happens through the commotion of the subsidencies and terrestrial exhalations contained within the bowels of the sea and scattered through its substance whereby it becomes tumefied which I grant in case the Sun casts its beams obliquely into the depth of the Ocean but I prove the contrary supposing the Sun doth cast its beams directly into the Eastern waters In AEgypt it seldom rains because the Sun casting its beams directly into the waters doth through the same degree of heat through which it might raise vapours dissolve them again likewise in the East Ocean the Sun subtilizing the waters doth doubtless through its heat commove exhalations and subsidencies but the waters being through the same heat attenuated are rendred uncapable of sustaining those terrestrial bodies wherefore they sinking deeper to the ground rather cause a detumescence of the sea I have alwaies observed that waters swell more through the cold than heat and that inundations happen for the most part after a frost besides it is obvious that Rivers are much tumefied when they are frozen and that by reason of the foresaid tumefaction inundations happen more frequently in the winter than at any other time of the year Des-Cartes imagineth the compression of the Moon together with the Earths motion about her own Axis to be the cause of the waters circular motion pressing it from East to West and the variation of this pressure to depend upon the various removal of the Moon from the Center of the Earth effecting the anticipation and various celerity of the waters motion So that where the Earth is obverted to the face of the Moon there the waters must be at their lowest being pressed towards the next quarter of the Surface where they are at their highest whence they are carried about through the Earths proper motion c. 1. I deny his supposition of the Earths motion as being fabulous which we have confuted elsewhere He might as well assert that there be as many Neptunes under water moving it circularly as Aristotle stated intelligencies to drive the Heavens for even this he might excuse by saying it was but an Assumption to prove a Phaenomenon of the water 2. What needs he to affirm a tumour of the water for since he assumes the Earth to move circularly we cannot but grant that the water must also move with it as constituting one Globe together 5. Why doth he in vain reassume in the 55 Sect. that out-worn Doctr. of Aristotle touching the Moons driving of the water which argues him to be very unconstant with himself 4. His stating the air to be so complicable and soft a body renders it very unfit for compressing and driving so vast and weighty a body as the Ocean 5. Can any one rationally or probably conceive that the Sun much less the Moon being so remore and whose forcible effects are so little felt by sublunary bodies should be capable of driving so deep so large and so heavy a body as the Ocean which is as powerful to resist through its extream gravity as all the Celestial bodies are potent to move through their extream lightness What because the Ocean and the Moon move one way therefore the one must either follow or move the other What can a passion so durable and constant and so equal depend upon a violent cause Since then such phansies are ridiculous and not to be proposed by any Philosopher let us now proceed in the unfolding of so difficult and admirable a matter as the course of the Ocean which we have formerly demonstrated to flow about the earth once in 12 hours and somewhat more II. Moreover besides this single motion making a sharper inspection into the drift of the Ocean it will appear to us to absolve a compounded periodical course in a perfixt time namely in 15 daies which space may be called a marinal or nautical month The meaning hereof is imagining a part of the Ocean to flow circularly from a certain point or more plainly a Bowle to rowl circularly
to my apprehension all that Country must necessarily be subjected to such deluges since it swims upon the water Touching Inland Inundations as that which befell Friesland in the year 1218 where near 100000 persons were buried in the water and that of Holland and Zealand in the Reign of Charles the fifth Emperour of Germany in the year 1531. and several times since as that of the last year when a great part of the Country all about Gorcum was seized upon by Inland waters Their causes are to be attributed to torrents streaming down out of the melted snow as also to the swelling of the Inland waters through receiving a great quantity of frosty minima's pouring down from the North in a cold Winter The River of Nile proves yearly extravagant in AEgypt for two months and ten daies because being situated very low it is obliged to receive the superfluity of water falling from above out of severall great Rivers and Lakes as the Lakes Zembre Saslan Nuba and the Rivers Cabella Tagazi Ancona Coror and many others besides the water which it draweth from the hills and other grounds These Rivers and Lakes do constantly swell every year by reason of the great rains that fall there at certain times of the year Besides the heat of the Sun exercising its power very vigorously near the latter end of May doth very much subtilize and rarefie those waters whereby they are rendred more fluid penetrating and copious and lastly the Sun conversing in the northern declination doth impell the Ocean stronger against the Northern shores whereby the waters are also much increased Hence it is that the waters of the Nile are so subtill that they deceive the air in carrying of them up in vapours viz. because they are so subtilly strained No wonder then if they prove so healthy The same causes are appliâ—ble to the excessive increase of the Rivers Ganges Padus Arrius Danow Tiber and Athesis CHAP. X. Of the causes of the before-mentioned properties of Lakes 1. Whence the Lake Asphaltites is so strong for sustaining of weighty bodies and why it breeds no Fish The cause of qualities contrary to these in other Lakes The cause of the effects of the Lake Lerna 2. Whence the vertues of the Lake Eaug of Thrace Gerasa the Lake among the Troglodites Clitorius Laumond Vadimon and Benaco are derived 3. Whence the properties of the Lake Larius Pilats Pool and the Lake of Laubach emanate I. VVHat the cause of those effects of the Lake Asphaltites should be the name seems to contain viz. The water glued together by an incrassated air and condensed fire constituting the body of a certain Bitumen called Asphaltos whence the said Lake doth also derive its name It is uncapable of breeding fish because through its sulphureous thickness it suffocates all vitall flames On the contrary the Lakes Avernum although deep 360 fathom and that of AEthiopia are so much subtilized through the passing of rarefied air that they are uncapable of sustaining the least weight Touching their pernicious quality to fowl it must be attributed to the venomous spirits permixt with that rarefied air infecting the whole Element of air as far as it covers them The Lake Lorna and the other in Portugal cause their effects through the permixture of a quantity of crude nitrous bodies which prove very depressing That Lake of AEthiopia is unctious through the admixture of incrassated air II. The Lake Eaug in Ireland acquires a sideropoetick vertue under water from the imbibition of crude Aluminous juyces by means of their indurating and constrictive vertue changing wood sticking in the mud into an Iron-like substance that part which is under water into a stone-like substance because of the diminution of the said Aluminous Juyces which through their weight are more copious in the mud the part of the wood that sticks out of the water remains wood as being beyond the reach of the said heavy juyces The Lakes of Thrace and Gerasa prove pernicious through admixture of crude arsenical exhalations The Lake among the Troglodites being Mercurial is infestuous to the brain The Lake Clitorius through its nitrosity disturbs the stomach and attracts a great quantity of moisture to it and infecting it with an offensive quality causes a loathing of all Liquors The sudden tempests befalling the Lake Laumond and Vadimon are caused through winds breaking out of the earth through the water Lakes resist induration by frost through igneous expirations pervading them The Lake Benacus shews its fury when its internal winds are excited by external ones causing a Concussion and a Rage in the water like unto an aguish body which is disposed to a shaking fit by every sharp wind raising the sharp winds within III. The River Abda passeth freely through the Lake Larius without any commotion of its body because the waters of the Lake through their extream crassitude are depressed downwards and so are constituted atop in a rigid posture whereas the River is impelled forwards and very little downwards But were it to flow through a shallow water whose quantity doth not bear any proportion to receive the pressure of the air downwards against the earth they would soon communicate in streams 2. The waters of a Lake differ much in crassitude and density from those of a River and therefore do exclude its streams The Lake Haneygaban doth not visibly disburden it self of those waters but thrusting Caverns underneath into the earth raises all those hills through the intumescence of the said waters that are near to her out of which some Rivers do take their rice Pilats Pool is stirred into a vehement fermentation by flinging any pressing body into it because thereby those heterogeneous mineral juyces viz. Vitriolat and Sulphureous substances are raised mixt together and brought to a fermentation and working Through this fermentation the water swells and exceeds its borders but the water being clarified the commotion ceaseth Neither needs any one wonder that so small a matter should be the cause of so great an exestuation since one part of the water doth stir up the other and so successively the whole pool comes to be stirred Pools owe their rice to great rains or torrents which sometime do slow visibly over the meadows or through Rivers causing inundations Sometimes through Caverns of the Earth as that near Laubach CHAP. XI Of the rice of Fountains Rivers and Hills 1. That Fountains are not supplied by rain 2. Aristotles opinion touching the rice of Fountains examined 3. The Authors assertion concerning the rice of Fountains The rice of many principal Fountains of the world 4. Why Holland is not mountainous 5. That the first deluge was not the cause of Hills 6. Whence that great quantity of water contained within the bowels of the Earth is derived 7. Whence it is that most shores are Mountainous Why the Island Ferro is not irrigated with any Rivers Why the earth is depressed under the torrid Zone and elevated towards the polars The
particles in the Winter That Fountain of Arcadia exerciseth such a penetrable concentrating force upon Gold and Silver through the quantity and strength of its nitrous spirits which are only obtused by a Mules hoof through the Lentor and obtuseness of its body and therefore may easily be contained in it The Fountain of the Holy Cross appears red through the admixture of red bole The overflowing of Fountains for a certain space depends upon the pressure of a greater quantity of water thither which in the Summer time may prove more copious through the attenuation of the water and rarefaction of the earth The reason of their detumescence after their repletion is the waters further impression towards other parts or repression thither whence they came through the expiration of the air flatuosities out the mouths of the Fount whence the earths gravity depresseth them back again Those that increase and decrease with the course of the Moon or rather of the Ocean vary through the change of the universal Tides of which hath been sufficiently treated above Touching the Lithopoetick vertue of waters it is much agreeing with that of the earth of which above The Sibaris causeth sneezing through its acre and vitriolat spirits Some waters are apt to change the temperament of the body into a cold or phlegmatick disposition causing the hair of Cattel to be protruded with a faire colour others into a cholerick habit causing the hair to be of a reddish colour The Fountain Lycos is unctious and therefore serveth to burn in a Lamp Whether to adscribe the egurgitation of that oyly Spring discovered near the Incarnation of our Saviour to the collection of unctious exhalations permisted with water or to a miracle both being possible I leave to the inclination of your belief But the disclosing of a false swearer if there be a Fountain of that vertue is an extraordinary impression of God upon the waters Jacobs Fountain changeth in colour and motion through the fermentation of various heteregeneous bodies contained within it II. Wells are distinguished from Fountains in that the former do oft appear in a plain or valley as the foot of a hill are subject to fill up and after to be dried up again Neither do they spout out water with a force like unto Fountains Ipsum and Barnet Wells operate their effects through a thick Chalchantous or Vitriolat juyce which through its sulphureous particles irritates the belly to excretion and through its subtiller spirits to urine By the way you must not imagine that their admixture is right and true Vitriol for in distillation by the colour of the subsidence it doth appear otherwise Neither is the taste a perfect vitriolat taste or their operation so nauseous as Vitriol dissolved in water Besides those juyces are indisposed to concretion into Vitriol since these are more sulphureous and less digested Nevertheless they are somwhat like to Vitriol in taste operation and grayness of colour as being nearest to green Although the main effect is adscribed to a Vitriolat like juyce it hinders not but that some Ferrugineous and Aluminous juyces may be commixt with them Tunbridge waters are impregnated with a thin chalchantous spirit wherby they are usually pierced through with the urine except in some delicate fine bodies whose bellies partake likewise of their effect III. Among the Spaw waters as Pouhont and Savenier agree in vertue with those of Tunbridge so likewise in their causes And Geronster with Ipsum Nevertheless Hendricus van Heer doth not forbear lib. de Acid. Spadan cap. 5. imputing their effects to red Chalck which he found together with some Oker and a little Vitriol upon the bottom of the body of the Still after distillation of the waters I wonder how he guessed those substances so readily which had nothing in them like to the said bodies but their colour Besides the red chalck he named the mother of Iron A wise saying In effect those subsidences were nothing else but the caput mortuum of the forementioned chalchantous juyces whose subtiller parts being abstracted and exhaled left the courser insipid like to what the caput mortuum of Vitriol useth to be But pray who ever knew â—ed Chalck or Oket to be eccoprotick or diuretick Particularly he found Geronster to leave dregs which being cast upon a red hot Iron would not yield to liquefaction Ergo it must be steel he concluded Neither would his Oker or Chalk have melted presently because they were deprived of their Sulphur But will the infusion of Steel purge by stool and urine like those waters Certainly no. Ergo their purgative ingredient must have been a crude chalchantous juyce Fallopius beyond him attests to have found Alume Salt green Vitriol Plaister Marble and chalk in those waters which they cal Physical waters a meer guess these partaking in nothing but colour and scarce that with the forenamed Minerals Doubtless nature had never intended them for such bodies Touching the commistions of these juyces with the waters they do immediately mix with them as soon as they are exhaled out of the earth which had they been intended for those pretended kind of Minerals nature would have lockt them up in a matrix IV. Baths derive their natures from the actual hidden flames of a thick and dense sulphureous and chalky matter the proportion of which do cause a greater or lesser ebullition The waters of the Rivers descending out of the Alpes breed such congestions under the throat through a permixture of coagulating and incrassating particles to wit of nitrous juyces Touching the other properties of Rivers we have already treated of them and therefore judge their repetition needless CHAP. XIII Of the various Tastes Smells Congelation and Choice of Water 1. Various tastes of several Lakes Fountain and River waters 2. The divers sents of waters 3. The causes of the said tastes That the saltness of the Sea is not generated by the broyling heat of the Sun The Authors opinion 4. The causes of the sents of Waters 5. What Ice is the cause of it and manner of its generation Why some Countries are less exposed to frosts than others that are nearer to the Line 6. The differences of frosts Why a frost doth usually begin and end with the change of the Moon 7. The original or rice of frosty minims Why fresh waters are aptest to be frozen How it is possible for the Sea to be frozen 8. What waters are the best and the worst the reasons of their excellency and badness I. VVAter besides its own natural taste of which we have spoken above is distinguished by the variety of adventicious tasts viz. some are sharp and sowre as the Savenier Tunbridge waters and those near Gopingen in Suevia and others near Lyncestus in Macedonia Others are of a sweet taste as the water of the River Himera in Sicily Those of the River Liparis have a fat taste Some waters in the Isles Andros Naxos and Paphlagonia do taste like wine The
waters of the Fountain Campeius are bitter and flowing into the river Hipanis in Pontus infects it with the same taste There are other fountains between the Nile and the red Sea that agree with the former in taste likewise those of Silicia near Corycius The pit waters of Galniceus are acerbous The salt taste of waters is unknown to none since the Ocean is pregnant enough with it Some inland Lakes and Fountains are of the same taste viz. Three in Sicilia the Concanican Agrigentinian Lakes and another near Gela. There is another called Myrtuntius of the same relish between Leucades and the Ambracian Gulph The Taus in Phrygia Thopetis in Babylonia Asphaltites in Judaea Sputa in Media Atropacia Mantianus in Armenia one in Cyprus near Citium another between Laodicea and Apamia two in Bactria another near the Lake Moeotis and that of Yaogan Forrien besides many more are all of a saltish taste Touching Fountains there is one in Narbone exceeding the Sea in saltness There are six more of the same taste near the Adriatick gulph where it bends towards Aquileia besides several other salt pits in Italy Illyris Cappadocia c. II. Waters vary no less in their sent Some stinking as the Lake between Laodicea and Apamia the Fountain among the Phalisci another near Leuca in Calabria and those rivulets near the Lake Asphaltites c. Others give a sweet sent as the Fountain of Cabara in Mesopotamia The Pit Methone in Peloponesus smells like a Salve III. Next let me make address to the causes of these qualities A sharp taste is derived from those acute and Vitriolate particles immixt in the water A sweet taste is produced in water through an exact aerial mixtion or percoction with it The waters of Paphlagonia afford a vinous taste through the admixture of tartareous exhalations or such as are like to the mixture of Tartar of wine Bitterness flows from adust terrestrial particles admixt to waters Aluminous exhalations dispersed through water render it acerbous The saltness of the Sea and other Inland waters is communicated to them from the admixture of saltish particles exhaling out of the mud Touching the generation of salt and its mixtion I have inserted my opinion above I shall here only have a word or two with those that state the Sun the efficient cause of the said saltish particles broyling and aduring those exhalations contained with the body of the waters whence they assert the superficial parts of the Sea to be more saltish than the lower parts of it because the Suns heat is more vigorous there If the broyling Sun be the efficient whence is it then that some Lakes and Fountains are very salt where the Sun doth not cast its aduring beams 2. It is very improbable that so vast a number of saltish partiticles should be generated in the torrid Zone where the Sun doth only broyle as to infect the waters within the polars that are so remote thence How then is it that the waters prove as saltish there where the cold is as potent as the heat elsewhere as in Greenland Or absurdly supposing the Sea to be so far communicative of its savour why doth it not obtain a power of changing those sweet waters which it is constrained to harbour within it self As those which Columbus relates to have found in the American Sea near to the road of the Drakes head Moreover he attests to have sailed through fresh water a hundred and four Leagues far in the North Sea Pliny lib. 2. c. 103. affirms the same viz. to have discovered fresh water near Aradus in the Mediterranean and others by the Chaledonian Islands And in lib. 6. c. 17. he reports that Alexander Magnus had drank a draught of Sea water that was fresh and that Pompey when he was employed against Mithridates should have tasted of the same 3. The Ocean being alwaies in such an agitation cannot be a fit matrix to concrease or unite such mixtures 4. The broyling Sun doth rather render salt waters fresh as hath been experienced among Seamen by exposing pails of Sea water upon the deck to the torrid Sun under the Line which after a while standing do become much fresher An open heat doubtless sooner dissolves a mixture than it generates one for boyl Sea-water long upon the fire and it will grow fresh or distill it and you will find the same effect Beyond all scruple these saltish particles must be united into such mixtures out of earth proportioned to the other Elements in a close place or matrix yet not so close as to concrease them into a fixed subterraneous body or mineral whose coldness doth adact impact and bind the said Elements into an union and mixture which through defect of an entire closeness do soon exhale or transpire In a word the saltness of the Sea is generated within its mud whose closeness impacts and coagulates the exhalations of the earth into salin particles whence they are soon disturbed through the motion of the Sea and the attracting heat of the Sun Hence it is that old mud clay and such like bodies prove generally saltish so that the Sun adds little excepting in the stirring up of the said exhalations And touching the foregoing instance of the waters greater saltness atop than below it is fictitious for the Sea is much fuller of salt below than above because of its weight Nevertheless the Sea doth taste more saltish atop than below because the subtiller parts of the Salt are attracted or forced by the heat of the Sun towards the top which meeting there are apt to strike the tongue more piercing than otherwaies But whence these fresh waters do burst up into the Sea is worth our inquiry To resolve you you must know that the earth in many places under water is raised up into hills or shallows analogal to them whose earth atop lying very close doth hinder the water above it from passing especially in the Northern Climate where the Sea is somewhat thicker than under the Line but is nevertheless bursted through propulsion of the waters underneath which evacuated into the body of the Sea do cause that extent of fresh water without suffering themselves to be infected with the Saltness of the Sea because the Sea-water is so thick and closs that it excepts the fresh water from making an irruption into its continuity Hence it is that the River of the Amazons besides many others although irrupting into the Sea many Leagues far yet is maintained impolluted and fresh But why those salin particles should be generated near to those fresh springs and not close about them may seem strange It is because one ground is muddy and disposed to generate salt the other about the said spring is sandy dry as it were and close and not at all masht through as mud is The Sea-water deposeth its saltness in being percolated through the earth suffering the subtiller parts alone of the waters to pass but keeping back the grosser and
of Thunder Fulguration and Fulmination and of their effects Of a thunder stone 3. Of Comets Of their production I. THose vapours that are elevated into the air oft contain no small proportion of sulphureous particles within them which if concreasing through their own positive coldness and privative coldness of the night into a low cloud Nebula in the lowermost parts of the lower Region do compress those sulphureous particles otherwise termed exhalations and distinguisht from vapours because in these water and air are predominant in the others condensed fire and incrassated air towards the Center where uniting are converted into a flame by extending the incrassated air through their condensed fire This flame possibly appears like unto a Candle playing and moving to and fro the air and thence is also called a fools fire or Ignis Fatuus seu erraticus because it proves sometimes an occasion of leading Travellers that are belated out of their Road for by their coming near to it the air is propelled which again protrudes the flame forwards and so by continuing to follow it imagining the same to be some Candle in a Town or Village are oft misled into a ditch or hole Or if they go from it when they are once come near the light will follow them because in receding they make a cavity which the next succeeding air accurs to fill up The generation of these lights is more frequent near muddy Pools Church-yards and other putrid places that abound with such sulphureous bodies The said sulphureous parts if being of a less density condensed and united by the dense wool of a mans cloathes or hair or the hairs of a Horse or Oxe and the foresaid coldnesses it takes fire at the forementioned places but flames so subtilly that it is uncapable of burning This sort of Meteor is called an Ignis lambens a licking fire because it slakes then here then there like to spirits of Wine flaming Helens fire sidus Helenae so called because as Helen occasioned the ruine of Greece and Asia so this kind of flaming fire adhering to the shrowds or Yards of a Ship is usually a messenger of the Ships perishing If this flame appears double it is distinguisht by a double name of Castor and Pollux which are generally construed to bring good tidings of fair weather But these kinds of prognostications are very uncertain They may precede storms and may appear without the consequence of tempests For there is no necessity for either This generation depends upon exhalations condensed and united between the Ropes and the Masts or the Yards A flying Drake Draco volans is a flame appearing by night in the lowest Region of the air with a broad belly a small head and tail like unto a Drake Its matter is the same with the former differing in quantity alone and figure so framed through the figure of its containing cloud In the upper part of the lower Region of the air are produced 1. A falling Star representing a Star falling down from the Heavens 2. A burning Lance expressing the Image of a flaming Lance. 3. A burning Candle fax 4. A Perpendicular fire or fiery pillar trabs seu ignis perpendicularis seu pyramis representing a flaming beam or pillar 5. A flaming Arrow bolis 6. A skipping Goat Caprasaltans is a flame more long than broad glistering and flaking about its sides and variously agitated in the air like the skipping of a Goat 7. Flying sparks moving through the air like the sparks of a Furnace 8. Flamma ardens seu stipulae ardentes or a great burning fire suddenly flaming in the air like those fires that are kindled out of a great heap of straw All these depend upon a grosser material cause being somewhat more condensed and united than the former through a greater privative coldness and therefore they are also more durable A falling Star obtains its production near the permanent clouds and being somewhat weighty through earthy minims and rarefying the air through its heat breaks through and falls down lower untill it is arrived to a thicker cloud where nevertheless it doth not abide long in its flame The others procure their figure from their proportion of mixture and shape of the ambient cloud II. Thunder is a great rebounding noise in the air caused through the violent bursting out of incrassated air and condensed fire being suddenly kindled into a flame the manner cause of this eruption you may easily collect from the manner of the eruption of winds How a sound is produced I have set down before The differences of Thunders are various Some are only murmuring without a multiplication of sounds caused through a less proportion of fire and air bursting through a less dense and thick cloud Others raise a great cracking noise hapning through the acuteness of the sound smartly dividing the air and clouds wherever it reaches Lastly some are great hollow sounds variously multiplied hapning through the reflection and refraction of other dense and thick clouds driving in the way Besides these there might be accounted many more differences of Thunders raised through the proportion of air and fire that burst out and the various mixtures of clouds Fulguration or a flashing is fire condensed raised into a flame through incrassated air within a cloud and breaking out from it This scarce effects any great noise because of its subtility although in some it doth Fulmination or Lightning differs from the former only in intention in that it is much more forcible reaching to the ground and piercing into it and other terrestrial thick dense bodies and is more augmented in matter It is ordinarily a concomitant of Thunder both being produced at once although not perceived by us together we seeing the Lightning before we hear the Thunder because a visible object is much swifter communicated to the eye than a sound to the ear as appears in spying a man a far off chopping of wood we seeing His Axe go down before we hear the noise the reason of this I have inserted above A Lightning is either vibrating and is next to Fulguration in intention passing more subtilly Or discutient consisting somewhat of a denser fire and causing a greater Thunder 3. Or burning consisting of the densest fire causing the greatest Thunder and oft melting a Sword in the Scabberd or Moneys in a Bag and the Scabberd and Bag remaining undamaged The reason is because the rarity of these gave a free passage to the Lightning whereas the crassitude and density of the others did stay and unite the passing aduting flame Strong men and beasts are oft killed through an aduring Lightning whereas women and children do escape because the bodies of these latter being laxe and porous suffer the said flame to pass without any great resistance whereas the crassitude of the other bodies do unite and collect it through which their vital heat is quite dispersed having no other apparent sign either within or without their bodies of so
or through it without taking its first impulse from against a body whence through reflection it might pass through This premitted I answer that according to the first intention a Vacuum is capable of giving a passage to a body locally moving through it provided it takes its progress from without upon an immoveable center I prove it Air Fire and the other Elements move through a Vacuum for otherwise did they move through another body it would infer a penetration of bodies If then the Elements obtain such a power ergo consequently their mixt bodies 2. This Maxim Omne mobile sit super immobili i. e. All moveables move upon an immoveable body is alone to be understood of the foundation of motion viz. That all moveables must move from an immoveable Center that is take their beginning thence either by impulse reflection refraction or continuated protrusion 3. That Motion whereby a moveable passeth through a Vacuum is continuated upon its own Center or upon another body instead of a Center for all motions must take their beginning upon an immoveable or at least upon that which is not inclined to the same motion in the same swiftness that the body which moves upon it doth 4. A single body can neither press through not move that is out of its place locally in a Vacuum because it enjoying its Center and not being violently detained would rest upon that Center 5. Neither can a mixt body move locally that is change its ubi in a Vacuum because the reason of a bodies changing of its ubi is the impulsion of another body striving for its center upon it For example water moves upwards because the air striving for its Center protrudes it out of its seat upwards as hath been mentioned air being compressed within the body of water is moved out of it because of the waters compression downwards whereby it is squeezed upwards But not through its own motion Now in a Vacuum there is no external body to strive or to impell upon it 6. A body would not cease to move locally internally because of the violent detentions of the Elements contained within pressing one another away from the Center 7. Suppose there were a confusion of the four Elements as big as a fist cast without the Universe they would change their internal places as the Elements changed theirs in the Chaos viz. The weighty Elements being less in extent would sooner gain the Center than the others and as for the rest they would move in the same manner as the Elements move here but of this more in the next Chapter And now you may easily comprehend that the present world doth not at all change it s Ubi but is immoveably fixed although continually changing its internal places 8. Angels if conceited to be pure spirits may move in and through a Vacuum but if apprehended to be of a circumscriptive quantity they cannot CHAP. XIX Of Physical Motion 1. What a Physical Motion is The kinds of it The definition of Alteration Local Motion and quantitative motions The subdivision of Local Motion 2. That all alterative and quantitative motions are direct 3. That all externall motions are violent 4. That all weighty mixt bodies being removed from their Element are disposed to be detruded downwards from without but do not move from any internal inclination or appetite they have to their universal Center 5. The causes of swiftness and slowness of external Local Motion 6. That light bodies are disposed to be moved upwards 7. That ayry bodies being seated in the fiery Region are disposed to be moved downwards 1. THe same reason that perswaded me to treate of a Vacuum and Antiperistasis in the preceding Chapter is also a motive why I deferred the Treatise of Physical motions hither Physical motions are so called in opposition to Hyperphysical or Metaphysical and are proper to natural bodies A Physical motion then is a change of a natural body in any one or more of its Physical modes or in all A change is a transitus passing from that which is not to that which is to be Whence we may plainly collect the differences of it to be as many as it may vary in its Modes and intirely in its Essence viz. Physical motion is either to quantity quality action passion relation situation duration to a new Essence c. and particularly to a greater or less quantity to colour figure heat coldness c. This infers that there are many more universal differences or kinds of motion than Aristotle stated However I shall only insist upon these three as being most taken notice of viz. Alteration which is a change of a quality of a Physical being External Local motion which is a change of the external place wherein a natural being is seated And Auction and Diminution which are changes of the quantity of a natural being Alteration as I said before in the Chapter of Coct is nothing else but the change of internal places of the Elements in a mixt body Thus a body grows hot when the intrinsick fire of a mixt body begins to be more united and condensed and is nothing else but the change of internal places which by this fire were dispersed and now are reduced in o a lesser number or into places more united and less remote So a mixt body happens to grow colder when the earthy minims within it change their places and are reduced to nearer places and so grow more piercing to the center apprehend the same of the other qualities External Local Motion is either understood in a large sense as it comprehends alteration or change of internal places or as it denotes a single internal motion from an internal place to an internal place and in this acception we have made use of the word above in assigning the forms of the Elements or strictly it is restrained to external Local Motion which is the change of an external place in natural bodies That is whereby natural bodies are moved out of one external place into another The universal Elements naturally and strictly are not subjected to Local Motion since their change of place is only internal to wit within one another Whereas external Local motion is restricted to the change of an external place however we may improperly or in a large sence conceive them to move locally Neither are the Elements capable of auction or diminution because their quantity and forms are definite wherefore they are only apt to undergo alteration or change of their internal places like we have hitherto demonstrated Mixt bodies are disposed to the change of their external and internal places Of their internal it is apparent since they are never exempted from alteration their external is no less obvious Auction or Diminution are changes of the Elements in a mixt body both of internal and external places That is do comprehend a local motion and alteration The subdivisions of these three are various but for brevities sake we shall here only appose that
are disposed to be moved downwards because they cannot move themselves thither but concur to that motion only by their disposition V. This disposition is nothing else but the renitency or stubbornness of the weighty mixt body discontinuating the air or fire and resisting their motion to the center-wards the intension and remission of the said renitency depends upon the greater or lesser density or crassitude whence it is also that some bodies are moved swifter downwards because they consist of a greater density sustaining a more violent impulse of the air which were they less dense would be moved slower because of a less renitency 2. Or thus the air being discontinuated by an interposed weighty mixt body doth primarily strive from all parts to a reunion by its expansive vertue especially from above because of its greater strength there as being less discontinuated and weakened by exhalations and vapours whence the greatest force descending doth also direct the impulsion downwards Wherefore a weighty body as Mercury or any other Mineral is moved much swifter downwards or according to the ordinary Ideom of speech weighs much heavier on the top of high hills than below But you shall read more in the next Chapt. VI. All light bodies being seated in a weighty Element are disposed to be moved upwards whence it is that subterraneous air is oft forced upwards by the earths compressing vertue Likewise a piece of Cork depressed under water is by the waters gravity closing underneath in the same manner as we have explained it in the 2. Part. the 1. Book Chap. 16. 2. Par. squeezed upwards without any intrinsick propensity for otherwise the same Cork being also disposed to be pressed downwards in the air must be supposed to have two internal propensities which is absurd A flame burning in the ayry Regions is forced upwards by its disposition of levity tenuity and rarity Thus The air sinding it self injured by the discontinuating flame presses upon her and strives from all sides to squeeze her away The flame being over-powered is forced to slip or slide away whether its disposition may best yield downwards it cannot tend because there it is resisted by the courser air infested with weighty peregrin Elements Ergo upwards because there it finds the way most open to give free passage to its light rarity and tenuity On the contrary a weighty body because of its density and crassitude finds the passage clearer downwards by reason it is most driven from the tenuity of the air atop but supposing the air to enjoy its center doubtless those weighty bodies would be cast forth upwards to the Circumference VII Ayry bodies that are seated in a fiery Element are moved downwards because the rarity of the fire sinking downwards for a center doth impell them also thither whose disposition being continuous and thin are the better disposed to slide away from the fire compressing them all about downwards because upwards the said bodies striving to maintain their particular Centers would be more discontinuated where the force of fire must also be strongest Whence you may observe that weighty bodies and light bodies are both moved to one terminus ad quem in the fiery regions Touching the causes of refraction and reflection you shall read them in the next Chapter Hence a great part of the first Book of the second Part will be rendred much plainer which I did forbear to illustrate further because of avoiding needless repetitions intending to treat of these by themselves viz. why water or any other weighty body being violently detained is much intended in its strength or why water is more depressing atop or when it is most remote from her Center than underneath namely because of the depression of the air adding much to the drowning of a man as we have mentioned in 12th and 16th Chapters and so many other passages CHAP. XX. Of Attraction Expulsion Projection Disruption Undulation and Recurrent Motion 1. How air is attracted by a water-spout or Siphon 2. The manner of another kind of Attraction by a sucking Leather 3. How two flat Marble stones clapt close together draw one another up 4. How a Wine-Coopers Pipe attracts Wine out of a Cask 5. How sucking with ones mouth attracts water 6. How a Sucker attracts the water 7. The manner of Attraction by Filtration 8. The manner of Electrical attraction 9. How fire and fiery bodies are said to attract 10. What Projection is and the manner of it 11. What Disruption Undulation and Recurrent motion are 1. I Thought fit to subject these remaining kinds of motion to the preceding and to treat of them in a distinct Chapter viz. Attraction Expulsion Projection Disruption Undulation and Recurrent motion I shall only insist upon some particular kinds of attraction What Attraction is the name doth explain How air is attracted by water and water properly by air hath been proposed in the foregoing Chapters Attraction is further evident 1. In a Siphon or water-spout wherewith they usually cast up water for to quench a fire Here the water is attracted by the drawing up of the Sucker not through a bending for to avoid a Vacuum but through the natural cohesion in continuancy of the air to the Sucker or aerial parts contained within the Sucker Now the air doth cohere more strongly because there is no body to discontinue it within the Siphon but is rather assisted in a continuated cohesion by the continuity of the sides of the Siphon and of the Sucker Or otherwise if the air did strive to separate how could it For suppose it should be discontinuated from the Sucker then through that discontinuation there must be some certain void space effected if so then that air which did before fill up that void space must have been withdrawn into some other place or else it must through penetration have sunk into its own substance besides the air that was expelled up vards must have penetrated into its own body by condensation or into the body of the water all which is impossible since a penetration of bodies is an annihilation But here inquiry may be made whether it is the continuated cohesion of the air with the water causes the succession of the water upon the air or whether the air which through haling up of the Sucker is expelled upwards out of the Siphon doth for to procure a place protrude the air cohering about the external sides of the Siphon downwards into the water through whose insufflation the water is propelled upwards into the Siphon I answer both waies for it is impossible that such a great weight of water should ascend so easily with so little a force as the attraction of the Sucker unless it were assisted by the strong force of the air pomped out out of a necessity and impossibility of shrinking pressing down and protruding the water upwards That this is so the external circular pressure and dent which we see about the outsides of the water about the lower end
of the Siphon and the internal pussing up of the water within the Siphon do testifie II. Another kind of Attraction not unlike to this is observable in boyes their sucking Leathers being wetted and clapt flat upon a stone and afterwards drawn up with a packthread fastned in it attracts the stone with it The cause is alone the continuous cohesion of the water to the stone defending it self from the disruption of the air the which as soon as breaking through occasions the separation of the Leather from the stone III. Two smooth flat equal Marble stones clapt close one upon the other the uppermost attracts the lowermost if equally lifted up from their Center by a ring fastned to it because of the air through its continuity sticking fast to the lowermost and the undermost stones but if disrupted through an unequal lifting the lowermost stone falls In the same manner doth a plain board cast upon the water attract it into a Rising when lifted up by the central part IV. A Wine-Coopers Pipe attracts Wine out of the bung-hole of a Cask The Pipe is somewhat long and narrower towards the bottom and the top but wider in the middle which thrust open at both ends into a Cask full of Wine through the Bung-hole and afterwards applying one 's Thum close to the hole atop may attract a competent quantity of Wine out of the Vessel which with the opening of the upper hole runs out again But methinks that this and the forementioned attractions might rather be termed cohesions or detensions since that which doth attract is the extrinsick attractor viz. ones arm The cause of its attraction is the immission of the Pipe into the Cask to a certain depth where the air being excluded from it and closed with your Thumb you will find a drawing or sucking to your Thumb which is nothing else but the weight of the Wine pressed downwards and notwithstanding cleaving fast to the continuity of your Thumb which being continuous and obtuse doth sustain the liquor continuated to it whereas were it subtil that it could give way as the free air it would not be contained so But suppose you thrusted a Beaker with the mouth downwards under water and stopt a small hole made on the bottom of it with your Thumb the water would not keep in there because the air would enter underneath through which the parts of the water would be disunited and so desert the supposed cohesion of parts why the Wine descends at the opening of the upper hole is through the impulse of the air entring V. The sucking of water through a Reed by the mouth is effected by causing a flat closs cohesion of your Tongue and lips with the continuous parts of water or air for what is contiguous cannot be suckt unless by means of its inherency in continuous bodies because its parts are unapt to cohere To all these kinds of cohesions or adhesions the closeness of sides of those external bodies that cohere together through the internal cohesion of air doth mainly contribute by keeping off the discontinuating air as the closeness of the sucking leather sticking of the two Marble stones of the sides of the Wine-Coopers Pipe of the Lips in sucking c. VI. A Sucker otherwise called a Siphon being a Pipe consisting of two arms of an unequal length meeting in a curvilineal Angle attracts water out of a Vessel untill it be all run out provided it be set running by sucking the water down to the lowermost part of the longer arm being placed without the said Vessel This instance gives us a plain demonstration that attraction is caused by the means of the cohesion of continuous parts to other continuous ones especially if separated through a close Cane from dividing bodies as the air and by the same cause kept close together for water as I said before will alwaies through its weight and continuity cohere and keep close to its next central parts and never separates unless through a disunion by the air or other bodies Hence it is also that water is easily led to any height if impelled by any force through a close Pipe or by a Sucker But why water contained within the shorter arm should yield to water contained within the longer may justly be doubted The reason is because the water contained within the longer Pipe being more in quantity is heavier than the other and therefore prevails and is more disposed for to be pressed downwards But then you might reply That the water of the shorter Pipe is assisted in weight by the other proportion contained within the capacity of the Vessel I answer That the water of the shorter arm is impelled forward through the pressure of the said water contained within the capacity of the Vessel But not through its own gravity pressing downward towards the Center of the world for every proportion of water as I said before retaining the nature of their universal Element only strives for to maintain its own center and therefore water if enjoying a center within its own Circumference wherever it be doth not press or weigh but strives to maintain its nature in rest But that which doth cause a force upon water downwards in the Vessel is the strong sinking down of the air tending downwards for its Center For otherwise water in a Vessel would contain it self in a round figure which it cannot because it is reduced to a flatness by the sinking air VII Attraction by Filtration is performed by causing one end of a piece of Flannell or other wollen cloath to hang into any Liquor over the brim of the containing Vessel and the other end into an empty one whereby the light parts of the water ascend up the cloath and distill into the other Vessel This is effected by separating the thick parts of water and rarefying it through the labels subtil fibres whence the other heavy parts of the water by descending downwards and being pressed by the air do over-press its subtiler and aerial parts upwards the grosser and heavier remaining behind By this it appears that Filtration and other kinds of Attraction already mentioned are not so much Attractions as violent Expulsions As the water of a Sucker will not run out unless the longer arm exceeds the depth of the water in length so neither will water attracted by a filter distill down into the empty vessel unless the distilling Label be lower than the water contained within the other Vessel for the same reason VIII Attraction effected by Amber or other Bituminous bodies otherwise called Electrical attraction depends on emanations or continuous steams emitted from Amber especially if rubbed consisting of incrassated air and fire being impelled circularly untill where they are gathered by a continuous body which if light do return with those emanations upwards for the said emanations being diducted expansive and light are by the weighty comparativè vapourous air of this lower Region striving to keep their nearness to the center squeezed
and propelled upwards which commonly tends to the emitting body because the greater quantity of those steams are gathered perpendicularly under the said emitting body and so do return the same way Hence observe That Amber doth not attract so potently on the top of high Mountains because its steams being weightier than the air is there do spread themselves further whereby they are deprived of a return Neither will Amber attract in a thick vapourous air because its steams are detained from dispersion IX Fire and fiery bodies as Onions Soap c. are said to attract but improperly because their attraction is nothing else but an expulsion of those bodies which they are imagined to attract For instance Fire is said to attract water air c. This is nothing else but fire piercing into the substance of water or air whereby it doth expel them into those places which it leaves or which are near to it Hence vapours are seldom attracted or rather expelled into the places where fire doth continually pass as directly under the AEquator because it fills those places with its own presence but are reflected towards the sides as towards the North and South Pole whose spaces are not filled up with its torrid rayes Now judge a little of that most barbarous practice among Physitians in applying Reddishes Salt leaven yea Epispastick Plasters to the Wrists and Feet of Feaverish Patients What rage what torments are poor men put to how are their Feavers Paraphrensies exacerbated through their diabolical practice These things do not attract without piercing into a mans Veins and Arteries and through their greater force of heat and violence do protrude the less heat of the body and by a short stay do put the whole body into a consuming fire How many men have I seen murthered in that manner 'T is true in malignant and Pestilential Feavers they have their use but not in single putrid ones Now by what hath been proposed in this Paragraph we may easily apprehend the manner of all water-works and of raising water higher than its source as that which is performed by the invention of Archimedes through a brazen or leaden Serpent or by wheels impelling water into Pipes c. Hence we may also conceive the manner of the attraction or rather expulsion of the degrees of water in a Thermometer or invention to measure the degrees of heat and cold and the differences of them in several Rooms Towns Seasons of the year c. The Instrument is nothing but a long glass Pipe towards the end somewhat turning up being left open for to poure in any liquor which according to the rarefaction or condensation of the air contained within the Pipe above will either ascend or descend in so many more or less degrees as the air is altered by rarefaction through the heat of the ambient air or condensation through the cold minims of earth within the said ambient air compressing the water more or less through its increase of quantity Touching the Magdenburg Invention the air is attracted outwards in the same manner as we have explained the attraction of water by a water-spout namely by a continuation cohesion and adhesion to the Sucker The air attracted out of the capacity of the Receiver doth also through the same means attract air and fire inhering in the rarefied and attenuated water without in the koop that again in the koop attracts air from without for to fill up its spaces which is as ready to press in because that air which was pumped out of the capacity wants room without This succession of air is continuated by pumping untill the air within is quite filled up with the incrassated air attracted from without whose thickness will not suffer it self to be pumped out any longer so that as the air within begins to be incrassated so the pumping without falls harder and harder Towards the latter end there seems to be a forcible retraction of the Sucker making a great noise through its return because the capacity of the Receiver being replenisht to the very pores of the glass which being rendred somewhat flexible through the passing and tumefying of the incrassated and rarefied air afterwards beginning to condense through greater access of fire is violently through the great external force of the pumping somewhat forced to bend or yield inwards whose renitency and force to return retracts the Sucker through continuation and cohesion of the incrassated air Next we are to pursue the manner of acceleration of weighty bodies downwards It is certain that a natural mixt weighty body falling directly down from atop without interruption to the bottom doth acquire a greater celerity the further it recedes from the beginning of its descent because the lower or farther it descends through propulsion of the superiour air the more and the greater body viz. of air under it it compresses which for to prevent the penetration of its own body is the more and violenter irritated to run round about the descending weighty body for to recover the place left by the said body where arriving doth as it were rebound against the superiour parts of the air which doth very much intend the celerity of the said bodies motion and the same gradually increasing doth also gradually accelerate the descending body the further it falls Some are of opinion that the acceleration of descending bodies is caused by Atoms falling down from the Celestial Orbs which as they do more and more encrease by being retained by the descending body do likewise more and more accelerate its descent This can scarce be because those Atoms reflecting and returning from the Surface of the Terrestrial Globe are in greater number underneath the body than above ergo according to that manner of reasoning a body falling from on high should rather be gradually retarded 3. A body should also fall swifter in the Winter than in the Summer in cold Countries than in hot because those Atoms are most numerous there but the contrary is true Ergo no true consequence In like manner do light bodies acquire a greater swiftness in ascending the higher they are propelled whence it is that Fowl flying high move much swifter than below Retardation is caused through causes opposite to these now mentioned X. Projection is whereby a body is moved swifter by the forcible impulse of the Projector than it would do otherwise Thus an Arrow is swiftly moved out of a Bow or a stone being cast out of the hand because of the force of the impulse of the Projector The cause of the intention of this impulse is the great swiftness of the said impulse at the beginning whereby the air is swiftly propelled before whose most swift return about the sides of the body projected causes the continuation of the swiftness of the first impulse but gradually diminishing by how much the further it recedes from the beginning A ball projected out of a Canon is propelled with that swiftness because of the swiftness of
the first smart impulse The truth of the foresaid reason and manner is apparent in shooting a pole through the water where we may see the water at the farther end raised into a tumor which running about the sides to the other end causeth its propulsion Whence it is also that when there appears no more of the tumor of the water before the pole its motion doth instantly cease XI Disruption or bursting is a sudden separation of the parts of a body through a violent force moving from within This we see happens oft in Canons when over-charged or in bottels filled with water being frozen in the Winter o. Wine in the Summer being close stopt The cause of these latter must be imputed to frosty or fiery minims entring through the pores of the bottels in greater quantity than their capacity can take in and disrupting them for to avoid a penetration of bodies Bodies are oft said to burst through driness as Instruments c. but very improperly since it is the fiery or frosty minims entring their pores and filling their capacities and afterwards disrupting them because of avoiding a penetration of bodies So Instrument-strings are apt to break in moist weather because their continuation is disrupted through penetration of moist bodies into their pores Undulation is a motion whereby a body is moved to and fro like to water shaken in a basin or to the motion of a Bell. The cause is likewise adscribed to the first motion of the Impulsor which being terminated at the end of its return is beat back through the direct descent of the air impelling it by reason it lieth athwart Recurrent motion being but little different from this I shall therefore say no more of it The cause of reflection is the return of the impulse impressed upon the air or water both being media deferentia perpendicularly or obliquely upwards from a hard and plane reflecting body Of refraction the cause is the shuving off of the impulse downwards by the shelving sides of an angular hard body CHAP. XXI Of Fire being an Introduction to a New Astronomy 1. The Fires division into three Regions 2. The qualification of the inferiour Region What the Sun is What his torrid Rayes are and how generated 3. How the other Planets were generated 4. How the fixed Stars were generated 5. A further explanation of the Stars their Ventilation That there are many Stars within the Planetary Region that are invisible Of the appearance of new Stars or Comets Of the Galaxia or Milk-way 6. That the fiery Regions are much attenuated I. THe ground of the fires tending downwards you may easily collect from what I have set down touching the waters and airs commerce with the other Elements It s profundity we may likewise divide into three Regions The first whereof containing the Planetary bodies the next the fixed Stars and the third consisting most of purefire II. The inferiour Region through its nearer approximation to the air and its immersion into it is cast into a subtil flame whose subtility doth effuge our sight and Tact. The Sun is a great body generated out of the peregrin Elements contained in the inferiour igneous Region consisting most of condensed fire and incrassated air extended and blown up into the greatest flame and conglomerated within the greatest fiery cloud These igneous clouds are like to the windy clouds of the air which as they do daily blast down wind upon the earth so do these cast fiery rayes among which that which surrounds the Sun doth vendicate the greatest power to it selfe The manner of casting of its fiery rayes is the same with that of winds viz. The Region of fire forceth up every day or continually a great quantity of air somewhat incrassated and condensed into its own sphere through its descending force striving for a Center This incrassated and condensed air is impelled violently into the body of the Stars by other subtil flames as being more forcible to drive the said adventitious matter from them because their parts are so closely ingaged that they can scarce slow a minim without a penetration Wherefore they must necessarily be impelled gradually into the bodies of the Stars because these are mixt bodies that give way so much in themselves by expelling fiery or torrid minima's down into the air as to be capacious enough of receiving so many airy particles as the Elementary fire doth force up every moment But before I proceed in unfolding the manner of the Celestial mixt bodies their ventilations I must insist somewhat further upon their constitution III. The Celestial mixt bodies are not only like to clouds in their daily and minutely ventilations but also in their constitutions viz. The inferiour ones as the Planets are constituted out of the courser and more mixt matter of the finer cloudy air in the inferiour Region of the Element of fire like the clouds of the inferiour Region of air are constituted out of the courser part of vapours Their coagulation is effected through the force of the fiery Element crushing their matter from below upwards and again is repelled back from the superiour parts of the said fiery Elements because through its being pressed up are scanted of room and therefore do press downwards not only for room but also because of reuniting where they are divided by the said coagulated bodies Now it may easily appear to you 1. Whence that rotundity or rather globosity doth arrive to them viz. because they are circularly crusht 2. Because the air and fire of the said Planets do naturally spread themselves equally from the Center to the Circumference whence a circular figure must needs follow Also 3. That Stars are nothing else but the thicker and denser part of the Heavens coagulated into fiery mixt bodies to wit flames 3. That as they do decrease by Ventilation every day so they do also increase by the introsusception of new aerial particles 4. That they must necessarily be very durable because of the duration of their causes For as the great force of the inferiour parts of the igneous Heavens never desist from striving for the Center and do every day cast up great proportions of aerial matter so do the superiour parts never cease from compressing them into the bodies of the other condensed flames being disposed as I said before through their ventilation to receive them 2. Because the aerial parts being got into the Center of the flames cease from all external Local motion striving only to maintain their Center in rest IV. Fixed Stars are generated out of the subtiler parts of the forementioned aerial evaporations being through their less resisting gravity redounding from water earth in them rendred capable of being screwed up higher to the second Region where they are coagulated through the same motions of the Heavens that Planetary clouds are These are responding to the permanent clouds of the second Region of the air which as they are spread into more large
her light or shadow that is a lesser light in comparison to that of the Sun doth according to our rule of light extend to a far greater bigness than her self is Whence it appears that for all their Mathematical Demonstrations the Moon may be bigger or lesser than the Earth VIII However the Moon is by far lesser than the Earth because of its small light which it casteth and other reasons produced from the minorating of the Sun which do likewise conclude the Moon to be lesser than the Sun but bigger than any of the other Stars The Moon is the lowest of all the Stars because she is the least lucid of any and consequently must be most terrestrial and aqueous through which principles she must doubtless yield to be lowest depressed by the fiery Region in that manner as I have formerly setdown 2. Because she moves the quickest or in another sense the slowest as you may read before through the Zodiack which must needs suppose the Circumference of her Circuit to be the least 3. Because she cannot be seen unless at a nearer distance than the others may IX The Moon through her diurnal course from East to West absolves no more than 346 deg 49 min. 24 sec. 58 third 52 four 38 fif that is is so much retarded or is moved so much slower than the fiery Region So that in 27 daies 7 hours 43 min. 5 sec. 8 th she is retarded 360 deg or the extent of a whole Circle She is in the same manner as we have proposed concerning the Sun shoved from North to South and from South back to North a degree and some minutes every day her greatest declination being 28. deg 30 min. and her greatest Latitude 5 degrees But you must not apprehend although I say that the Moon is removed from the Ecliptick 5 deg that therefore she is seated 5 degrees beyond the Sun notwithstanding her greatest digression from the Ecliptick yet she is and appears nearer to the Equinoctial bbbb than he Suppose one standing upon the surface of the Earth any where between m and p I say that the Moon existing in the Merid. eq and in her greatest Latitude near e viz. from the Ecliptick is and appears nearer to the Equinoctial bbbb than the Sun doth in o because the Line from o to b is longer than from the Center of the Moon near e o b. Whence you may conceive that the Moon is nearer to the Lquinoctial although seated beyond the Ecliptick 2. That the degrees of the Orb of the Moon are so much less proportionally as the Orb of the Moon is less than the Orb of the Sun But to pursue the Moons Motion into Latitude Star-Gazers do observe her to appear sometimes higher and lowe in her Perigao and Apogaeo Not because of her Epicycle but because of the Aspect of the Sun which doth sometimes reflect its light stronger upon her and so makes her to seem higher besides the medium of the air being by means of that Aspect so attenuated it must needs produce a prolongation of the object like to a thin Glass representing the object to be much farther distant than it is As the said attenuation renders an object more distant so it renders it also less whence it is that the Moon appears lesser in her pro longation That the moveth swifter sometimes than other times is likewise a meer appearance hapning through the extension and prolongation of the object and Medium So on the contrary the incrassation of the air through the remoteness of the Sun causeth the Moon to seem to move slower and to be bigger and nearer as when she is in her Perigaeo The same hapneth when we see through a thick Glass or in looking upon an object through the water seeming nearer and bigger and to move slower I am not to describe you here the meaning of Solar and Lunar Eclipses alone the cause of their variation viz. depending upon the difference of declination in the Sun and of declination and latitude in the Moon for he being constantly in making his progress cannot be ever met or overtaken by the Moon at the same place and time I shall spend no more time in discoursing upon the motion of the three superiour Planets since their motion and manner of it may easily be apprehended by what hath been proposed XI What concerns the constant equal and ranked motion of the fixed Stars it is to be attributed to the cohesion or linking of those equal large clouds of the second Region of fire wherein the said Lights are fixed moving them equally and constantly in that fixation Their Scintillation is nothing else but their flames quavering upon the obtended air hapning through their recurrent motion or quavering accurss to one another AN APPENDIX Of Problems resolved by our Principles CHAP. I. Problems relating to the Earth 1. Why two weighty bodies are not moved downwards in parallel Lines 2. Why a great Stone is more difficultly moved on the top of a high hill than below 3. VVhy a pair of Scales is easier moved empty than ballanced 4. VVhence it is that a man may carry a greater weight upon a VVheel-barrow than upon his back 5. VVhy a weighty body is easier thrust forward with a Pole than immediately by ones arms besides 5 other Probl. more 6. VVhy a stick thrust into a hole if bended is apt to be broke near the hole VVhat the cause of the relaxation of a bowed stick is 7. VVhether Gold doth attract Mercury 8. VVhy the herb of the Sun vulgarly called Chrysanthemum Peruvianum obverteth its leaves and flowers to the Sun wheresoever he be 9. VVhy the Laurel is seldom or never struoken by Lightning I. WHy are not two or more weights depressed down to the Earth in parallel lines but in flead thereof come nearer and nearer to one another the lower they descend II. It is confirmed by many trials that a great stone is more difficultly moved on the plain of the top of a high hill than on the plain of a low level ground And that a great mass of any Mineral may be easier rouled out of its place deep in the Mines by one than by three or four on the Surface of the earth You demand the reason I answer That the air being more forcible as we have shewed before on the tops of hills doth more potently depresse the stone against the plain of the hill and so detains it there no wonder then if it prove so slow in motion Likewise is the air of a greater energy on the Surface than deep under the earth where it is discontinuated by weighty minims forced out of the earths bowels in expelling the perigrin air whose contiguous depression to wit of the air being discontinuated by the said weighty minims doth also contribute much to the rouling of a Mineral because we roul a weighty body by depressing it against the ground in which action our force is not only strengthned but
quieter in the night than in the day Answ. Because in the day the air being fluid and continuous is agitated into waves by the Suns fiery beams whose bodies clashing together cause a small noise in the day which the night season is freed of CHAP. IV. Containing Problems touching the fire 1. Why doth water cast upon unquencht chalk or lime become boyling 2. Why doth common salt make a cracking noise when cast into the fire 3. Who were the first inventers of Gunpowder 4. VVhat are the Ingredients of Gunpowder 5. VVhence arrives all that flaming fire that followeth the kindling of Gunpowder 6. Whence is it that Gunpowder being kindled in Guns erupts with that force and violence I. VVHy doth water cast upon unquencht chalk or lime become boyling Answ. Because fire in lime is detained or imprisoned within a thick glutinous moisture which being attenuated through the thinner moisture of water is forced to suffer the igneous parts before dispersed and imprisoned to unite whence being condensed and incompassed by a thin glutinous air is changed into a hidden flame whereby the water is rendred boyling hot II. Why doth common salt make a cracking noise when cast into the fire Answ. Because the flaming fire exufflating the spirituous air of the salt within its body doth also force it to burst out the report whereof is not unlike to a cracking noise III. Who were the first inventers of Gunpowder Answ. In the first place touching the dispute whether the invention of it is to be adscribed to the Chineses or the Europeans it is very probable the Chineses were the first Authors of Gunpowder because they were found practising upon it at the same time that it was first invented in Europe Next who was the Author of it among the Europeans is uncertain but certain that he was a German whose name some would call Berthold Swarts a Monck of Friburg said to have found it out accidentally by leaving a mixture of Saltpeter and Sulphur in a Mortar covered with a stone whereinto a spark of the candle lighting by chance forced the stone up with no small report from this he was also supposed to have taken the fabrick of a Gun IV. What are the ingredients of Gunpowder Answ. Its materials are ordinarily Saltpeter Sulphur and dust of Charcoal All which being very igneous do very much intend one anothers force in blowing up a fire V. Whence arrives all that flaming fire that followeth the kindling of Gunpowder Ans. The Saltpeter which is the chiefest of the ingredients consisting of very weighty dense and waterish parts contains a great proportion of fiery minims within its body but dispersed through those weighty parts and suppressed by them these being somewhat diducted and opened through the rarefying and expanding vertue of an external actual flaming fire give occasion to the fiery minims interwoven with incrassated air to unite and through the compression of the weighty parts to be condensed whence erupting into the air doth attract other fire latent or rather is forced to it by the accurss of the ambient air and dispersed throughout the air whereby its flame is much amplified and continuated for it seemeth very improbable that so much fire should have been latent in the Gunpowder as the flame requires 2. The dilatation of the said erupting flame is also attenuated by the accurss of the air expanding the thick and course erupting flame gradually into a thinner larger flame whence it is that the flame near where the Powder was kindled appears dusky red and further off light and flashy VI. Whence is it that Gunpowder being kindled in Guns erupts with that force and violence Answ. The Powder being kindled into a flame at the Touch-hole divides or discontinuates the air more than any other body imaginable whereunto the air accurrs from all parts especially from above with the greatest velocity and force for to expell the flame which being propagated further partly by its own force partly by the intrusion of the air causeth a more violent discontinuation of air within being pent up whereunto again a greater power of air accedes from without and attenuates the flame within whereby together with the compression of the sides of the Gun and the great access of air from without the flame is violently expelled effecting a great report through its disrupting and pluffing of the air Here observe 1. How the flame is augmented within the Gun not by a vertual rarefaction as if the parts of the Gunpowder could be augmented without access of other matter from without for that would suppose either a Vacuum and a new creation of parts or a penetration and an annihilation of foregoing parts Wherefore I say it is augmented by attracting fire out of the acceding air and secondly by being attenuated and diducted into a large flame by the parts of the irrupting air 2. That it is the air entring at the touch-hole that doth expell the flame is evident 1. Because the air is shut out before by the bullet and tow 2. The touch-hole being stopt at the next instant after the Powder begins to kindle the flame is immediately suppressed and extinguisht or at least bursleth up behind Whence it doth appear that it is the air entring doth attenuate vulgarly termed rarefie and expand the flame which the advenient fire doth augment and that the said air doth expell the flame out at the muzzel 3. That the air doth make use of the weighty minims of the salt-peter in compressing and expelling the flame outwards 4. Why is a hot glass bursted by casting a drop of cold water upon it Answ. Because the fiery minims contained within its pores are condensed and violently compressed by the gravity of the water whereby they are forced to disrupt the glass Why doth a woodden Arrow being shot out of a Gun pierce deeper than an Iron one Answ. Because the woodden one gives way into it self or shrinks as it makes a hole whence being rendred lesser passeth the easier through whereas an Iron one is stubborn and is rather somewhat flatned against the body aimed at whence being rendred more obtuse and bigger at the point is hindred in penetrating Labore constantia Soli Deo triuni gloria honos in Saecula Saeculorum AMEN Errata PAge 9. line 12. dele that p. 11. l. 3. read into p. 21. l. 20. after Pellines c. must be inserted those words below beginning l. 30. I was much abused c. ending at l. 34. at breathing p. 35. l. 14. r. Fire is rough p. 44. in marg r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fundo p. 135. l. 25. r. a man couragious p. 144. l. 13. r. Medicine p. 145. l. 28. r. procatarctick p. 148. l. 4. r. it s naturall p. 167. l. 18. r. the lumina p. 170. l. 21. for are r. is p. 191. l. 26. r. Cyzicum p. 194. l. 15. r. in oyl for that is a tast mixt out of a waterish and ayry tast The rest are
consequently is the deeper coloured But that which is continuous although very thick yet it gathers nothing near so much as a continuous body because its continuity hinders its pass and so the light reflects upon it and produces a splendor whereas a contiguous body divides the ayr and giveth way for its entrance and so it pinches and next darkneth it Wherefore Gold being continuous that is consisting of much water condensed and ayr incrassated reflects the light and so produces a splendor Now that Gold consisteth of those moist parts I prove it because Gold contains a Lentor in it which is a concomitant of water and ayr as I shewed you before for cast a piece of Gold into the fire and let it lye there for some proportionate time and being taken out you may diduct it into any form or figure and turn or bend it any way Since that Gold consisteth of a proportion of continuous parts it is thereby rendred splendid and yellow from the proportion of contiguous parts contained within it Wherefore if you reduce Gold into a Calx you deprive it of its splendor because you have taken away its continuity of parts IV. Give me leave to demonstrate to you the reasons of all the various colours which Mercury attains to through its various preparations and thence you may collect the reasons of Colours befalling all other bodies whether Mineral or Vegetable through their several preparations Mercury is 1. splendid because of its thick continuity of parts 2. It s Silver-like colour derives from its paucity of contiguous parts which it containing in that small quantity doth render it a little darker than white and is the cause why it is not pellucid like unto water 3. The reason why Mercury becometh white like unto a white frost by being dissolved by Aqua Fort. is because it is diducted and attenuated through all its dimensions and therefore collecting and pinching the light a little only it appears white 4. Mercury changeth into a yellow colour after it hath been dissolved by oyl of Vitriol and being separated from the dissolvent by exhalation it abides white but being cast into water it changeth yellow The whiteness which remains in Mercury after the evaporation of the oyl is the colour of the corosive salt coagulated into an attenuated body by the Mercurial vertue The casting it into water doth deprive it of the forementioned salt which is dissolved into water that which doth remain is the courser part of the salt incorporated with the Mercury whose substance contains such a proportion of earth as to gather somuch of the obtended ayr and to pinch it into a yellowish colour 5. The whiteness of Mercury sublimate corrosive and of Mercury sublimate Dulufied derives more from the attenuated salt than the body the Mercury 6. The same corrosive Mercury sublimate dissolved into fair water and precipitated by oyl of Tartar changeth into a clay red Here you must not imagine that it is the oyl of Tartar in a drop or two doth colour the whole substance of the precipitated body for it self is of another colour besides were it of the same it is improportionate to colour a whole body by a drop or two It happens then through the deprivation of the thinner parts of the corrosive salt swimming in the water That which the oyl of Tartar performed in this preparation is nothing but to free the body from its detaining spirit which it doth by attracting it to its own body and uniting it self with it into a small body the red colour depends upon the quantity of thickned earth of the precipitate I shall not importune you with the relation of colours befalling through other preparations since you may easily infer a reason of them from what hath been proposed concerning the variation of colours in Mercury V. From this discourse I do further infer 1. That the formality of colours doth mainly consist in a respectiveness and relation to our sight and is no hing else but what man by his sight discerns it to be for had man no sight there would be no colours although there would be an alteration upon the ayr extended Likewise light would not be light but ayr obtended So that I say the Absolutum fundamentum Relationis suppositae would be there but not ipsa relatio because the Correlatum is defective The like understand of sounds sents or tasts which as to us are nothing but certain realities moving our animal spirits by certain respective modes which realities moving the senses in certain modes are called such or such sensible qualities what they may be further really in themselves we know not because we perceive no more of them than what we call such and such the others although real yet we suppose them to be non entia because we do not perceive or know them But I prove the Proposition All positive and absolute beings perform their actions responding to their modes But none of these fore-mentioned qualities may be so termed sensible qualities to wit colours sounds unless modifying the senses 2. That a mixt colour is not an intentional quality produced by the coloured object in the ayr but a real quality really inhering or effected in the ayr by the original action of a fundamental colour What shall an intentional quality act really Ergo Quiddam esset in effectu quod prius non fuerit in causa which contradicts that Maxime concluding the contrary Besides colour would be affected with two sorts of accidents one really inherent in the object the other in the ayr 3. It supposeth accidents to migrate è subjecto in subjectum which is impossible Nevertheless Scaliger pretends to prove Light to be a quality produced in the ayr and distinct from the efficient that is that Lumen is really distinguisht from Lux if so then Lumen could exist when Lux is separated and removed from it but that cannot be ergo there is no real distinction between them According to the same rule we might raise a real distinction between the coloured object immediately altering the ayr and the colour or lumen produced in the ayr from that colour being a Lux in comparison to the other This real distinction is rejected by the same Arguments because a colour in the ayr or a Lumen cannot exist when the colour or Lux in the object is removed 3. That notwithstanding the respective formality there is a real foundation in coloured bodies which is a certain degree of temperature whereby they being somewhat contrary to our sense move and act but mediately upon its temperament 4. That through this absolute foundation a colour doth move or act really upon the ayr and through it upon other inanimate bodies yet not as it is a colour but as it is an absolute foundation or a degree of temperament This motion is not very considerable for although it may move a light thin body out its place yet it will hardly move locally a thick or