other things be seen as being accompanied by light is called Fire What admits the illuminative action of fire and is not seen is called Air What admits the same action and is seen in the rank of Elements is called Water And what through the density of it admits not that action but absolutely reflects it is called Earth And out of all we said of these four Elements it is manifest there cannot be a fifth as is to be seen at large in every Aristotelian Philosopher that writes of this matter I am not ignorant that there are sundry objections used to be made both against these notions of the First Qualities and against the division of the Elements but because they and their solotions are to be found in every ordinary Philosopher and not of any great difficulty and that the handling them is too particular for the design of this discourse and would make it too prolix I refer the Reader to seek them for his satisfaction in those Authors that treat Physick professedly and have deliver'd a compleat body of Phylosophy And I will end this Chapter with advertising him lest I should be misunderstood that though my disquisition here has pitch'd on the four bodies of Fire Air Water and Earth yet it is not my intention to affirme that those which we ordinary call so and fall daily within our use are such as I have here express'd them or that these Phlosophicall ones which arise purely out of the combination of the first qualities have their residence or consistence in great bulks in any places of the World be they never so remote as Fire in the hollow of the Moons Orb Water in the bottom of the Sea Air above the Clouds and Earth below the Mines But these notions are onely to serve for certain Idea's of Elements by which the forenamed bodies and the compounds of them may be tryed and receive their doom of more or lesse pure and approaching to the nature from whence they have their denomination And yet I will not deny but that such perfect Elements may be foumd in some very little quantities in mixed bodies and the greatest abundance of them in these four known bodies that we call in ordinary practise by the names of the pure ones for they are least compounded and approach most to the simpleness of the Elements But to determine absolutely their existence or not existence either in bulk or in little parts depends of the manner of action among bodies which as yet we have not medled with CHAP. V. Of the operations of the Elements in general And of their activities compared with one another HAving by our former discourse inquired out what degrees and proportions of rarity and density compounded with gravity are necessary for the production of the Elements and first qualities whose combinations frame the Elements our next consideration in that orderly progress we have proposed to our selves in this Treatise wherein our aim is to follow successively the steps which nature has printed out to us will be to examine the operations of the Elements by which they work upon one another To which end let us propose to our selves a rare and a dense body encountring one another by the impulse of some exterior agent In this case 't is evident that since rarity implyes a greater proportion of quantity and quantity is nothing but divisibility rare bodies must needs be more divisible then dense ones and consequently when two such bodies are press'd one against another the rare body not being able to resist division so strongly as the dense one is and being not permitted to retire back by reason of the extern violence impelling it against the dense body it follows that the parts of the rare body must be sever'd to let the dense one come between them and so the rare body becomes divided and the dense body the divider And by this we see that the notions of divider and divisible immediately follow rare and dense bodies and so much the more properly agree to them as they exceed in the qualities of Rarity and Density Likewise we are to observe in our case that the dense or dividing body must necessarily cut and enter further and further into the rare or divided body and so the sides of it be joyn'd successively to new and new pars of the rare body that gives way to it and forsake others it parts from Now the rare body being in a determinate situation of the Universe which we call being in a place and is a necessary condition belonging to all particular bodies and the dense body comming to be within the rare body whereas formerly it was not so it follows that it loses the place it had and gains another This effect is that which we call local motion And thus we see by explicating the manner of this action that locall motion is nothing else but the change of that respect or relation which the body moved has to the rest of the Universe following out of Division and the name of Locall Motion formerly signifies only the mutation of a respect to other extrinsecall bodies subsequent to that division And this is so evident and agreeable to the notions that all mankind who as we have said is judge and master of language naturally frames of place as I wonder much why any will labour to give other artificall and intricate doctrine of this that in it self is so plain and clear What need is there to introduce an imaginary space or with Johannes Grammaticus a subsistent quantity that must run through all the World and then entail to every body an aiery entity an unconceiveable mood an unintelligible Ubi that by an intrinsecall relation to such a part of the imaginary space must thereto pin and fasten the body it is in It must needs be a ruinous Phylosophy that is grounded upon such a contradiction as is the allotting of parts to that which the Authors themselvs upon the matter acknowledge to be merely nothing and upon so weak a shift to deliver them from the inconveniences that in their course of doctrine other circumstances bring them to as is the voluntary creating of new imaginary Entities in things without any ground in nature for them Learned men should express the advantage and subtilty of their wits by penetrating further into nature then the vulgar not by vexing and wresting it from its own course They should refine and carry higher not contradict and destroy the notions of mankind in those things it is the competent judge of as it undoubtedly is of those primary notions which Aristotle has rank'd under Ten Heads which as we have touched before every one can conceive in gross and the work of Scholars is to explicate them in particular and not to make the Vulgar believe they are mistaken in framing those apprehensions that nature taught them Out of that which hath been hitherto resolvd 't is manifest that Place really and abstracting from
downwards Nor need we fear lest the littlenessof the agents or the feebleness of their stroaks should not be sufficient to work this effect since there is no resistance in the body it self and the air is continually cut in pieces by the Sun-beams and by the motions of little bodies so that the adhesion to air of the body to be moved will be no hind'rance to this motion especially considering the perpetual new percussions and the multitude of them and how no force is so little but that with time and multiplication it will overcome any resistance But if any man desires to look on as it were at one view the whole chain of this doctrine of Gravity let him turn the first cast of his eyes on what we have said of fire when we explicated the nature of it To wit that it begins from a little source and by extreme multiplication and rarefaction extends it self into a great sphere And then hee 's perceive the reason why light is darted from the body of the Sun with that incredible celerity wherewith its beams fly to visit the remotest parts of the world and how of necessity it gives motion to all circumstant bodies since it is violently thrust forward by so extreme rarefaction and the further it goes is still the more rarified and dilated Next let him reflect how infinitely the quickness of lights motion prevents the motion of a moist body such an one as air is and then he wil plainly see that the first motion which light is able to give the air must needs be a swelling of that moist element perpendicularly round about the earth For the ray descendent and the ray reflectent flying with so great a speed that the air between them cannot take a formal pley any way before the beams of light be on both sides of it it followes that according to the nature of humide things it must first only swell for that is the beginning of motion in them when heat enters into and works on them And thus he may confidently resolve himself that the first motion which light causes in the air will be a swelling of it between the two rays towards the middle of them That is perpendicularly from the surface of the earth And out of this he will likewise plainly see that if there be any other little dense bodies floating in the air they must likewise mount a little through this swelling and rising of the air But that mounting will be no more then the immediate parts of the air themselvs move Because this motion is not by way of impulse or stroke that the air gives those denser bodies but by way of containing them in it and carrying them with it so that it gives them no more celerity then to make them go with it self and as parts of it self Then let him consider that light or fire by much beating upon the earth divides some little parts of it from others wherof if any become so small and tractable as not to exceed the strength which the rays have to manage them the returning rays will at their going back carry away with or drive before them such little atomes as they made or met with and so fill the air with little bodies cut out of the earth After this let him consider that when light caries up an atome with it the light and the atome stick together and make one ascending body in such sort as when an empty dish lies upon the water the air in the dish makes one descendent body together with the dish it self so that the density of the whole body of air and dish which in this case are but as one body is to be esteem'd according to the density of the two parts one of them being allay'd by the other as if the whole where thrughout of such a proportion of density as would arise out of the composition and kneading together the several densities of those two parts Now then when these little compounded bodies of light and earth are carryed up to a determinate height the parts of fire or light by little and little break away from them and therby the bulk of the part which is left becoms of a different degree of density quantity for quantity from the bulk of the entire atome when light was part of it and consequently it is denser then it was Besides let him consider that when these bodies ascend they go from a narrow room to a large one that is from the centrewards to the circumference but when they come down again they go from a larger part to a narrower Whence it followes that as they descend they draw closer and closer together and by consequence are subject to meet and fall in one with another and therby to increase their bulk and become more powerful in density not only by the loss of their fire but also by the encrease of their quantity And so 't is evident that they are denser coming down then going up Lastly let him consider that those atoms which went up first and are parted from their volative companions of fire or light must begin to come down apace when other new atoms which still have their light incorporated with them ascend to where they are and go beyond them by reason of their greater levity And as the latter atoms come up with a violence and great celerity so must the first go down with a smart impulse and by consequence being more dense then the air in which they are carryed must of necessity cut their way through that liquid and rare Medium and go the next way to supply the defect and room of the atoms which ascend that is perpendicularly to the earth and give the like motion to any body they find in their way if it be susceptible of such a motion Which 't is evident that all bodies are unless they be strucken by some contrary impulse For since a bodies being in a place is nothing else but the continuity of its outside to the inside of the body that contains it and is its place it can have no other repugnance to local motion which is nothing else but a successive changing of place besides this continuity Now the nature of density being the power of dividing and every least power having some force efficacy as we have shew'd above it follows that the stroke of every atome either descending or ascending will work somthing upon any body though never so big it chances to incounter with and strike upon in its way unless there be as strong an impulse the contrary way to oppose it But it being determin'd that the descending atoms are denser then those that ascend it follows that the descending ones will prevail And consequently all dense bodies must necessarily tend downwards to the center which is to be heavy if some other more dense body do not hinder them Out of this discourse we may conclude that there is no such thing among bodies
in bulk but the small ones very hardly Next the smalness and well-working of the parts by means of the airs penetrating every dense one and sticking close to every one of them and consequently joyning them without any unevenness causes that there can be no ruggedness in it and therfore 't is glibb in like manner as we see plaister or starch become smooth when they are well wrought Then the humidity of it causes it to be catching and the shortness of every part makes that where it sticks it is not easily parted thence Now the rarity of air next to fire admits it to be of all the other Elements most easily brought to the height of fire by the operation of fire upon it And therfore oyls are the proper food of that Element And accordingly we see if a drop of oyl be spill'd upon a sheet of paper and the paper set on fire at a corner as the fire comes near the oyl the oyl will disperse and spread it self upon the paper to a broader compass then it had because the heat rarifies it and so in Oyl it self the fire rarifying the air makes it penetrate the earthy parts adjoynd to it more then it did and so subtilizes them till they be reduced to such a height as they are within the power of fire to communicate its own nature to them and thus it turns them into fire and carries them up in its flame But if fire be predominant over earth and air in a watry compound it makes the body so proportion'd to be subtile rare penetrative hot in operation light in weight and subject to burn Of this kind are all sorts of wines and distil'd Spirits commonly called strong waters or Aquavites in Latine Aquaeardentes These will lose their virtues meerly by remaining uncover'd in the air for fire doth not incorporate strongly with water but if it find means raises it self into the air As we see in the smoke of boyling water which is nothing else but little bodies of fire that entring into the water rarifie some parts of it but have no inclination to stay there and therefore as fast as they can get out fly away but the humide parts of the water which they have rarified being of a sticking nature joyn themselves to them and ascend in the air as high as the fiery atomes have strength to carry them which when it fails them that smoke falls down in a dew and so becomes water again as it was All which one may easily discern in a glasse-vessel of water set over the fire in which one may observe the fire come in at the bottome and presently swim up to the top like a little bubble and immediately rise from thence in smoke and that will at last convert it self into drops and settle upon some solid substance thereabouts Of these fiery spirits some are so subtile as of themselves they will vanish and leave no residue of a body behind them and Alchymists profess to make them so etherial and volatile that being pour'd out of a glass from some reasonable height they shall never reach the ground but before they come thither be so rarified by that little motion as they shall grow invisible like the air and dispersing themselves all about in it fill the chamber with the smell of that body which can no longer be seen The last excess in watery bodies must be of water it self which is when so little a proportion of any of the other is mingled with it as is hardly perceptible Out of this composition arise all those several sorts of juices or liquors we commonly call Waters which by their mixture with the other three Elements have peculiar properties beyond simple Elemental water The general quality whereof we shall not need any further to express because by what we have already said of water in common they are sufficiently known In our next survey we will take Earth for our ground to work upon as hitherto we have done water which if in any body it be in the utmost excess beyond all the other three then rocks and stones will grow out of it whose driness and hardness may assure us that Earth sways in their composition with the least allay that may be Nor doth their lightness in respect of some other earthy compositions impeach this resolution for that proceeds from the greatness and multiplicity of pores wherwith their driness causes them to aboundâ— and hinders not but that their real solid parts may be very heavy Now if we mingle a considerable proportion of water with earth so as to exceed the fire and air but still inferiour to the earth we shall poduce metals whose great weight with their ductility and malleability plainly tells us that the smallest of waters gross parts are the glew that holds the earthy dense ones together such weight belonging to earth and that easie changing of parts being most proper to water Quick-silver that is the general matter wherof all the metals are immediately composed gives us evidence hereof for fire works upon it with the same effect as upon water And the calcination of most of the metals proves that fire can easily part and consume the glew by which they were closed and held together which therfore must be rather of a watry then of an aiery substance Likewise the glibness of Mercury and of melted metals without catching or sticking to other substances gives us to understand that this great temper of a moist Element with earth is water and not air and that the watry parts are comprised and as it were shut up within the earthy ones for air catches and sticks notably to all things it touches and will not be imprisoned the divisibility of it being excceeding great though in never so short parts Now if air mingles it self with earth and be prodominant over water and fire it makes such an oily and fat soil as Husbandmen account their best mould which receiving a betterment from the Sun temperate heat assures us of the concourse of the aire for wherever such heat is air cannot fail of accompanying or being effected by it and the richest of such earth as pot-earth and marl will with much fire grow more compacted and stick closer together then it did as we see in baking them into pots or fine bricks Whereas if water were the glew between the dense parts fire would consume it and crumble them asunder as it doth in those bodies it calcines And excesse of fire will bring them to vitrification which still confirms that air abounds in them for it is the nature of air to stick so close where once it is kneaded in as it cannot be separated without extreme difficulty And to this purpose the viscuous holding together of the parts of glass when it is melted shews evidently that air abounds in vitrified bodies The last mixture we are to meddle with is of fire with earth in an over-ruling
man that seeing the Divider is the agent in division and in Local motion and dense bodies are by their nature dividers the Earth must in that regard be the most active among the Elements since it is the most dense of them all But this seems to be against the Common judgment of all the searchers of nature who unamimously agree that Fire is the most active Element As also it seems to impugne what we our selves have determin'd when we said there were two active qualities heat and cold whereof the first was in its greatest excess in Fire and the latter in water To reconcile these we are to consider that the action of Cold in its greatest height is composed of two parts the one is a kind of pressing and the other is penetration which requires applicability Of which two the former arises out of density but the latter out of moderation of density as I have declared in the precedent Chapter Wherefore the former will exceed more in Earth though the whole be more eminent in Water For though considering only the force of moving which is a a more simple and abstracted notion then the determination and particularization of the Elements and is precedent to it therein Earth hath a precedency over water yet taking the action as it is determin'd to be the action of a particular Element and as it concurs to the composition or dissolution of mixed bodies in that consideration which is the chief work of Elements and requires an intime application of the Agents Water hath the principality and excess over Earth As for Fire it is more active then either of them as will appear clearly if we consider how when Fire is applyed to fewel and the violence of blowing is added to its own motion it incorporates it self with the fewel and in a small time converts a great part of it into its own nature and shatters the rest into smoak and ashes All which proceeds from the exceeding smallness and dryness of the parts of fire which being moved with violence against the fewel and thronging in multitudes upon it easily pierce the porous substance of it like so many extreme sharp Needles And that the force of Fire is as great and greater then of Earth we may gather out of our former discourse where having resolved that density is the virtue by which a body is moved and cuts the medium and again considering that celerity of motion is a kind of density as we shall by and by declare 't is evident that since blowing must of necessity press violently and with a rapid motion the parts of fire against the fewel and so condense them exceedingly there both by their celerity by bringing very many parts together there it must needs also give them activity and vertue to pierce the body they are beaten against New that Celerity is a kind of Density will appear by comparing their natures For if we consider that a dense body may be dilated so as to possess and fill the place of a rare body that exceeded it in bigness and by that dilatation may be divided into as many and as great parts as the rare body was divisible into we may conceive that the substance of those parts was by a secret power of nature folded up in that little extension in which it was before And even so if we reflect upon two Rivers of equal channels and depths whereof the one goes swifter then the other and determine a certain length of each channel and a common measure of Time we shall see that in the same measure of time there passes a greater bulk of water in the designed part of the channel of the swifter stream then in the designed part of the flower though those parts be equal Nor imports it that in Velocity we take a part of time whereas in Density it seems that an instant is sufficient and consequently there would be no proportion between them For knowing Philosophers all agree that there are no Instants in time and that the apprehension of them proceeds meerly from the manner of our understanding And as for parts in time there cannot be assumed any so little in which the comparison is not true and so in this regard it is absolutely good And if the Reader have difficulty at the disparity of the things which are pressed together in Density and in Celerity for that in Density there is only Substance in Celerity there is also Quantity crowded up with the substence he will soon receive satisfaction when he shall consider that this disparity is to the advantage of what we say and makes the nature of density more perfect in celerity and consequently more powerful in fire then in earth Besides if there were no disparity it would be a distinct species of density but the very same By what we have spoken above it appears how fire gets into fewel now let us consider how it comes out for the activity of that fierce body will not let it lie still and rest as long as it has so many enemies round about it to rouse it up We see then that as soon as it has incoporated it self with the fewel and is grown master of it by introducing into it so many of its own parts like so many Souldiers into an Enemies Town they break out again on every side with as much violence as they came in For by reason of the former resistance of the fewel their continual streaming of new parts upon it and one overtaking another there where their journey was stop'd all which is increas'd by the blowing doth so exceedingly condense them into a narrower room then their nature effects that as soon as they get liberty and grow masters of the fewel which at the first was their prison they enlarge their place and consequently come out and flie abroad ever aiming right forwards from the point where they begin their journey for the violence wherewith they seek to extend themselves into a larger room when they have liberty to do so will admit no motion but the shortest which is by a straight line So that if in our phantasie we frame an image of a round body all of fire we must withall presently conceive that the flame proceeding from it would diffuse it self every way indifferently in straight lines so that the source serving for the Center there would be round about it an huge Sphere and of fire and light unless some accidental and extern cause should determine its motion more to one part then to another Which compass because it is round and has the figure of a Sphere is by Philosophers term'd the Sphere of its activity So that it is evident the most simple and primary motition of fire is a flux in a direct line from the center of it to its circumference taking the fewel for its center as also that when 't is beaten against a harder body it may be able to destroy it though that
conceive let us go on to the fourth which requires that we satisfie their inquisition who ask what becomes of that vast body of shining light if it be a body that fills all the distance between heaven and earth and vanishes in a moment assoon as a cloud or the Moon interposes it self between the Sun and us or that the Sun quits our Hemisphere No sign at all remains of it after its extinction as doth of all other substances whose destruction is the birth of some new thing Whither then is it flown we may be perswaded that a mist is a corporeal substance because it turns to drops of water upon the twigs that it invirons and so we might believe light to be fire if after the burning of it out we found any ashes remaing but experience assures us that after it is extinguished it leaves not the least vestigium behind it of having been there Now before we answer this objection we will intreat our Adversary to call to mind how we have in our solution of the former declared and proved that the light which for example shines from a candle is no more then the flame is from whence it springs the one being condensed and the other dilated and that the flame is in a perpetual flux of consumption about the circumference and of restauration at the center where it sucks in the fewell and then we will enquire of him what becomes of the bodie of flame which so continually dies and is renewed and leaves no remainder behind it as well as he doth of us what becomes of our body of light which in like manner is alwaies dying and alwaies springing fresh And when he hath well considered it he will find that one answer will serve for both Which is That as the fire streams out from the fountain of it and growes more subtile by its dilatation it sinks the more easily into those bodies it meets withall the first of which and that environs it round about is aire With air then it mingles and incorporates it self and by consequence with the other little bodies that are mingled with the aire and in them it receives the changes which nature works by which it may be turn'd into the other Elements if there be occasion or be still conserv'd in bodies that require heat Upon this occasion I remember a rare experiment that a Noble-Man of much sincerity and a singular friend of mine told me he had seen which was That by meanes of glasses made in a very particular manner and artificially placed one by another he had seen the Sun-beams gather'd together and precipitated down into a brownish or purplish red powder There could be no fallacy in this operation for nothing whatever was in the glasses when they were placed and disposed for this intent and it must be in the hot time of the year else the effect would not follow And of this Magistry he could gather some dayes near two ounces in a day And it was of a strange volative nature and would pierce and imprint his spiritual quality into gold it self the heaviest and most fixed body we converse withall in a very short time If this be plainly so without any mistaking then mens eyes and hands may tell them what becomes of light when it dies if a great deal of it were swept together But from what cause soever this experience had its effect our reason may be satisfied with what we have said above for I confesse for my part I beleeve the appearing body might be something that came along with the Sun-beams and was gather'd by them but not ther pure substance Some peradventure will object those lamps which both ancient and modern writers have reported to have been found in Tombes and Urns long time before closed up from mens repair to them to supply them with new fewel and therefore they believe such fires to feed upon nothing and consequently to be inconsumptible and perpetual Which if they be then our doctrine that will have light to be nothing but the body of fire perpetually flowing from his center and perpetual dying cannot be sound for in time such fires would necessarily spend themselves in light although light be so subtile a substance that an exceeding little quantity of fewel may be dilated into a vast quantity of light However there would be some consumption which how imperceptible soever in a short time yet after a multitude of revolutions of years must needs discover it self To this I answer That for the most part the witnesses who testifie originally the stories of these lights are such as a rational man cannot expect from them that exactness or nicitie of observation which is requisite for our purpose For they are usually gross labouring people who as they dig the ground for other intentions Stumble upon these Lamps by chance before they are aware and commonly they break them in the finding and imagine they see a glimpse of light which vanishes before they can in a manner take notice of it and is peradventure but the glistering of the broken glass or glazed pot which reflects the outward light assoon as by rummaging in the ground and discovering the Glass the light strikes upon it in such manner as sometimes a Diamond by a certain incountring of light in a dusky place may in the first twinkling of the motion seem to sparkle like fire And afterwards when they shew their broken Lamp and tell their tale to some man of a pitch of wit above them who is curious to inform himself of all the circumstances that may concern such lights they strain their memory to answer him satisfactorily unto all his demands and thus for his sake they perswade themselves to remember what they never saw and he again on his side is willing to help out the story a little And so after a while a very formal and particular relation is made of it As happens in like sort in reporting of all strange and unusual things when even those that in their nature abhor from lying are naturally apt to strain a little and fashion up in a handsome mould and almost to perswade themselves they saw more then they did so innate it is to every man to desire the having of some preeminence beyond his neighbours be it but in pretending to have seen something which they have not Therefore before I engage my self in giving any particular answer to this objection of pretended inconsumptible lights I would gladly see the effect certainly averred and undoubtedly proved For the testemonies which Fortunius Licetus produces who has been very diligent in gathering them and very sub 〈◊〉 in discoursing upon them and as the exactest Author that has written upon this subject do not seem to me to make that certainty which is required for the establishing of a ground in Philosophy Nevertheless if there be any certain experience in this particular I should think there might be some Art by circulation
by descending so that as long as it boyls 't is in a perpetual confused motion up and down Now having formerly concluded that fire is light and light is fire it cannot be doubted but that the Sun serves instead of fire to our Globe of Earth and water which may be fitly compared to the boyling pot and all the day long draws vapours from those bodies that his beams strike upon For he shooting his little darts of fire in multitudes and in continued streams from his own center against the Python the earth we live on they there overtake one another and cause some degrees of heat as far as they sink in But not being able by reason of their great expansion in their long journey to convert it into their own nature and set it on fire which requires a high degree of condensation of the beams they but pierce and divide it very subtilly and cut some of the outwardparts of it into extreme little atomes To which sticking very close and being in a manner incorporated with them by reason of the moisture that is in them they in their rebound back from the earth carry them along with them like a ball that struck against a moist wall in its return from it brings back some of the mortar sticking upon it For the distance of the Earth from the Sun is not the utmost period of these nimble bodie 's flight so that when by this solid body they are stop'd in their course forwards on they leap back from it and carry some little parts of it with them som of them a farther some of them a shorter journey according to their littleness and rarity make them fit to ascend As is manifest by the consent of all Authors that write of the Regions of the Air who determine the Lower Region to reach as far as the reflection of the Sun and conclude this Region to be very hot For if we mark how the heat of fire is greatest when it is incorporated in some dense body as in Iron or in Sea-coal we shall easily conceive that the heat of this Region proceeds mainly out of the incorporation of light with those little bodies which stick to it in its reflection And experience testifies the same both in our soultry days which we see are of a gross temper and ordinarily go before rain as also in the hot Springs of extreme cold countrys where the first heats are unsufferable which proceed out of the resolution of humidity congeal'd in hot winds which the Spaniards call Bochornos from Boca de horno by allusion to the breathing stream of an Oven when it is open'd which manifestly shew that the heat of the Sun is incorporated in the little bodies which compose the steam of that wind And by the principles we have already laid the same would be evident though we had no experience to instruct us for seeing that the body of fire is dry the wet parts which are easiest resolved by fire must needs stick to them and accompany them in their return from the earth Now whiles these ascend the air must needs cause others that are of a grosser complexion to descend as fast to make room for the former and to fill the places they left that there may be no vacuity in nature And to find what parts they are and from whence they come that succeed in the room of light and atomes glew'd together that thus ascend we may take a hint from the Maxime of the Opticks that Light reflecting makes equal angles whence supposing the Superficies of the earth to be circular it will follow that a Perpendicular to the center passes just in the middle between the two rayes the incident and the reflected Wherefore the air between these two rayes and such bodies as are in it being equally pressed on both sides those bodies which are just in the middle are nearest and likeliest to succeed immediately in the room of the light and atomes which ascend from the Superficies of the earth and their motion to that point is upon the Perpendicular Hence 't is evident that the Air and all such bodies as descend to supply the place of light and atomes which ascend from the Earth descend perpendicularly towards the center of the earth And again such bodies as by the force of light being cut from the earth or water do not ascend in form of light but incorporate a hidden light and heat within them and thereby are rarer then these descending bodies must of necessity be lifted up by the descent of those denser bodies that go downwards because they by reason of their density are moved with a greater force And this lifting up must be in a perpendicular line because the others descending on all sides perpendicularly must needs raise those that are between them equally from all sides that is perpendicularly from the center of the earth And thus we see a motion set on foot of some bodies continually descending and others continually ascending all in perpendicular lines excepting those which follow the course of lights reflexion Again as soon as the declining Sun grows weaker or leaves our Horizon and his beams vanishing leave the little hors-men which rode upon them to their own temper and nature from whence they forced them they finding themselvs surrounded by a smart descending stream tumble down again in the night as fast as in the day they were carried up and crowding into their former habitations exclude those they find had usurped them in their absence And thus all bodies within reach of the Suns power but especially our air are in perpetual motion the more rarified ones ascending and the dense ones descending Now then because no bodies wherever they be as we have already shew'd have any inclination to move towards a particular place otherwise then as they are directed and impel'd by extrinsecal Agents let us suppose that a body were placed at liberty in the open air And then casting whether it would be moved from the place we suppose it in and which way it would be moved we shall find it must of necessity happen that it shall descend and fall down till it meet with some other gross body to stay and support it For though of it self it would move no way yet if we find that any other body strikes efficaciously enough upon it we cannot doubt but it will move that way which the striking body impels it Now it is strucken upon on both sides above and below by the ascending and the descending atoms the rare ones striking upon the bottome of it and driving it upwards and the denser ones pressing upon the top of it and bearing it downwards But if you compare the the impressions the denser atoms make with those that proceed from the rare ones 't is evident the dense ones must be the more powerful and therfore will assuredly determine the motion of the body in the air that way they go which is
same point of incidence in a shorter line and a greater angle than another does In both these wayes 't is apparent that a body composed of greater parts and greater pores exceeds bodies of the opposite kind for by reason that in the first kind more light may beat against one part a body in which that happens will wake an appearance from a further part of its superficies wheras in a body of the other sort the light that beats against one of the little parts of it will be so little as 't will presently vanish Again because in the first the part at the incidence is greater the surface from which the reflection is made inwards has more of a plain and straight superficies and consequently reflects at a greater angle than that whose superficies hath more of inclining But we must not pass from this question without looking a little into the nature of those bodies in which refraction is made for if they as well as the immediate causes of refraction likewise favour us it will not a little advance the certainty of our determination To this purpose we may call to mind how experience shews us that great refractions are made in smoke and mists and glasses and thick-bodied waters and Monsir des Cartes adds certain Oyls and Spirits or strong Waters Now most of these we see are composed of little consistent bodies swimming in another liquid body As is plain in smoke and mists for the little bubbles which rise in the water before they get out of it and that are smoke when they get into the air assure us that smoke is nothing else but a company of little round bodies swimming in the air and the round consistence of water upon herbs leavs twigs in a rind or dew gives us also to understand that a Mist is likewise a company of little round bodies that sometimes stand sometimes float in the air as the wind drives them Our very eyes bear witness to us that the thicker sort of waters are full of little bodies which is the cause of their not being clear As for Glass the blowing of it convinces that the little darts of fire which pierce it every way do naturally in the melting of it convert it into little round hollow bodies which in their cooling must settle into parts of the like figure Then for Chrystal and other transparent stones which are found in cold places it cannot be otherwise but that the nature of cold piercing into the main body and contracting every little part in it self this contraction must needs leave vacant pores between part and part And that such transparent stones as are made by heat have the like effect and property may be judg'd out of what we see in Bricks and Tiles which are left full of holes by the operation of the fire And I have seen in bones that have lain a long time in the Sun a multitude of sensible little pores close to one another as if they had been formerly stack all over with subtile sharp needles as close as they could be thrust in by one another The Chymical Oyles and Spirits which Monsir des Cartes speaks of are likely to be of the same composition since such use to be extracted by violent fires for a violent fire is made by the conjunction of many rayes together and that must needs cause great pores in the body it works on and the sticking nature of these spirits is capable of conserving them Out of all these observations it follows that the bodies in which greatest refractions happen are compounded as we have said of great parts and great pores and therfore by only taking light to be such a body as we have described it where we treated of its nature 't is evident the effect we have exprest must necessarily follow by way of reflection and refraction is nothing else but a certain kind of reflection Which last assertion is likewise convinced out of this that the same effects proceed from reflection as from refraction for by reflection a thing may be seen greater than it is in a different place from the true one where it is colours may be made by reflection as also gloating light and fire likewise and peradventure all other effects which are caused by refraction may as well as these be perform'd by reflection And therfore 't is evident they must be of the same nature since children are the resemblances of their parents CHAP. XIV Of the composition qualities and generation of mixed bodies HAving now declar'd the vertues by which Fire and Earth work upon one another and upon the rest of the Elements which is by Light and the motions we have discours'd of Our task shall be in this Chapter first to observe what will result out of such action of theirs and next to search into the ways and manner of compassing and performing it Which latter we shall the more easily attain to when we first know the end that their operation levels at In this pursuit we shall find that the effect of the Elements combinations by means of the motions that happen among them is a long pedegree of compounded qualities and bodies wherein the first combinations like marriages are the breeders of the next more-composed substances and they again are the parents of others in greater variety and so are multiplied without end for the further this work proceeds the more subjects it makes for new business of the like kind To descend in particular to all these is impossible And to look further then the general heads of them were superfluous and troublesome in this discourse wherin I aim only at shewing what sorts of things in common may be done by Bodies that if hereafter we meet with things of another nature and strain we may be sure they are not the off-spring of bodies and quantity which is the main scope of what I have design'd here And to do this with confidence certainty requires of necessity this leisurely and orderly proceeding we have hitherto used and shall continue to the end For walking thus softly we have always one foot upon the ground so as the other may be sure of firm footing before it settle Wheras they that for more hast will leap over rugged passages and broken ground when both their feet are in the air cannot help themselvs but must light as chance throws them To this purpose then we may consider that the qualities of bodies in common are of three sorts For they are belonging either to the Constitution of a compounded body or else to the Operation of it and the Operation of a body is of two kinds one upon Other Bodies the other upon Sense The last of these three sorts of qualities shall be handled in a peculiar Chapter by themselvs Those of the second sort wherby they work upon Other bodies have been partly declar'd in the former chapters and will be further discours'd of in the rest of this first
bodies are framed Out of which discourse we may ballance the degrees of solidity in bodies For all bodies being composed of humide and dry parts we may conceive either kind of those parts to be bigger or lesser or to be more rare or more dense Now if the dry parts of any body be extreme little and dense and the moist parts that joyn the dry ones together be very great and rare then that body will be very easie to be dissolv'd But if the moist parts which glew together such extreme little and dense dry parts be either lesser in bulk or not so rare then the body composed of them will be in a stronger degree of consistence And if the moist parts which serve for this effect be in an excess of littleness and withal dense then the body they compose will be in the highest degree of consistence that nature can frame On the other side if you glew together great dry parts which are moderately dense great by the admixtion of humid parts that are of the least size in bulk and dense withal then the consistence will decrease from its height by how much the parts are greater and the density less But if to dry parts of the greatest size and in the greatest remisness of density you add humid parts both very great and very rare then the composed body will prove the most easily dissolveable of all that nature affords After this casting our eyes a little further towards the composition of particular bodies we shall find still greater mixtures the further we go for as the first and simplest compounded bodies are made of the four Elements so others are made of these and again a third sort of them and so on-wards according as by motion the parts of every one are broken in sunder and mingled with others Those of the first order must be of various tempers according to the proportions of the Elements whereof they are immediatly made As for example such a proportion of Fire to the other three Elements will make one kind of simple body and another proportion will make another kind and so throughout by various combinations and proportions among all the Elements In the effecting of which work it will not be amiss to look a little upon nature and observe how she mingles and tempers different bodies one with another wherby she begets that great variety of creatures we see in the World But because the degrees of composition are infinite according to the encrease of number we will contain our selves within the common notions of excess in the four primary components for if we should descend once to specifie any determinate proportions we should endanger losing our selvs in a wood of particular natures which belong not to us at present to examin Then taking the four Elements as materials to work upon let us first consider how they may be varied that differing compositions may result out of their mixtures I conceive that all the ways of varying the Elements in this regard may be reduced to the several sizes of Bigness of the Parts of each Element that enter into the composition of any body and to the Number of those Parts for certainly no other can be imagin'd unless it were variety of Figure But that cannot be admited to belong in any constant manner to those least particulars wherof bodies are framed as if determinate figures were in every degree of quantity due to the natures of Elements and therfore the Elements would conserve themselves in those figures as well in their least atoms as massie bulk For seeing how these little parts are shuffled together without any order and that all liquids easily joyn and take the figures which the dense ones give them and that they again justling one another crush themselves into new shapes to which their mixture with the liquid ones makes them yield the more easily t is impossible the elements should have any other natural figure in these their least parts then such as chance gives them But that one part must be bigger then another is evident for the nature of rarity and density gives it the first of them causing divisibility into little parts and the latter hindring it Having then settled in what manner the Elements may be varied in the composition of bodies let us now begin our mixture In which our ground to work upon must be Earth and Water For only these two are the Basis of permanent bodies that suffer our senses to take hold of them and submit themselvs to trial Wheras if we should make the predominant Element to be Air or Fire and bring in the other two solid ones under their jurisdiction only to make up the mixture the compound resulting out of them would be either in continual consumption as ordinary fire is or else through too much subtlety imperceptible to our eyes or touch therfore not a fit subject for us to discourse of especially since the other two Elements afford us enough to speculate on Peradventure our Smel might take some cognisance of a body so composed or the effect of it taken in by respiration might in time shew it self upon our health but it concerns not us now to look so far our design requires more maniable substances Of these then let Water be the first and with it we will mingle the other three elements in excess over one another by turns but stil all of them oversway'd by a predominant quantity of water and then let us see what kind of bodies will result out of such proportions First if earth prevail above fire and air and arrive next in proportion to the water a body of such a composition must needs prove hardly liquid and not easie to let its parts run a sunder by reason of the great proportion of so dense a body as earth that holds it together Yet some inclination it will have to fluidness by reason the water is predominant over all which also will make it be easily divisible and give every little resistance to any hard thing that shall be apply'd to make way through it In a word this mixture makes the constitution of Mud Dirt Honey Butter and such like things where the main parts are great ones And such are the parts of earth and water in themselvs Let the next proportion of excess in a watry compound be of air which when it prevails incorporates it self chiefly with earth for the other Elements would not so well retain it Now because its parts are subtile by reason of the rarity it hath and sticking because of its humidity it drives the earth and water likewise into lesser parts The result of such a mixture is that the parts of a body compounded by it are close catching flowing slowly glibb and generally it will burn and be easily converted into flame Of this kind are those we call Oyly or unctuous bodies whose great parts are easily separated that is easily divisible
a strong bituminous smel in them All which circumstances shew that this electrical virtue consists in a certain degree of rarity or density of the bodies unctuous emanations Now if these refined and viscuous thrids of Jet or Amber in their streaming abroad meet with a piece of straw or hay or dried leaf or some such light and spungy body 't is no marvel if they glew themselvs to it like birdlime and that in their shrinking back by being condens'd again and repuls'd through the coldness of the air they carry it along with them to their entire body Which they that only see the effect and cannot penetrate into a possibility of a natural cause therof are much troubled withal And this seems to me to bear a fairer semblance of truth then what Cabeus delivers for the cause of Electrical attractions whose speculation herein though I cannot allow for solid yet I must for ingenious And certainly even errours are to be commended when they are witty ones and proceed from a casting-further-about then the beaten Tract of verbal learning or rather terms which explicate not the nature of the thing in question He sayes that the coming of straws and such other light bodies to Amber Jet and the like proceeds from a wind raised by the forcible breaking out of subtile emanations from the Electrical bodies into the air which brings those light bodies along with it to the Electrical ones But this discourse cannot hold For First 't is not the nature of unctuous emanation generally speaking to cause smart motions singly of themselvs Secondly although they should raise a wind I do not comprehend how this wind should drive bodies directly back to the source that raised it but rather any other way and so consequently should drive the light bodies it meets with in its way rather from then towards the Electrical body Thirdly if there should be such a wind raised and it should bring light bodies to the Electrical ones yet it could not make them stick therto which we see they do turn them which way you will as though they were glew'd together Neither do his experiences convince any thing For what he saies that the light bodies are somtimes brought to the Electrical body with such a violence that they rebound back from it and then return again to it makes rather against him for if wind were the cause of their motion they would not return again after they had leaped back from the Electrical body no more then we can imagine that the wind it self doth The like is of his other experience when he observ'd that some little grains of Saw-dust hanging at an Electrical body the furthermost of them not only fell off but seem'd to be driven away forcibly for they did not fall directly down but side-wayes and besides flew away with a violence and smartness that argued some strong impulse The reason wherof might be that new emanations might smite them which not sticking and fast'ning upon them wherby to draw them nearer must needs push them further or it might be that the emanations to which they were glew'd shrinking back to their main body the later grains were shoulder'd off by others that already besieg'd the Superficies and then the emanations retiring swiftly the grains must break off with a force or else we may conceive it was the force of the air that bore them up a little which made an appearance of their being driven away as we see feathers and other light things descend not straight down CHAP. XX. Of the Loadstones generation and its particular motions THere is yet remaining the great Mystery of the Loadstone to discourse of Which all Authors both ancient and modern have agreed upon as an undeniable example and evidence of the shortness of mans reach in comprehending and of the impossibility of his reason in penetrating into and explicating such secrets as nature hath a mind to hide from us Wherfore our Reader I am sure will not in this subject expect clear satisfaction or plain demonstrations at our hands but will judg we have fairly acquitted our selves if what we say be any whit plausible Therefore to use our best indeavours to content him let us reflect upon the disposition of parts of this habitable Globe wherof we are Tenants for life And we shall find that the Sun by his constant course under the Zodiack heats a great part of it unmeasurably more then he doth the rest And consequently that this Zodiack being in the mid'st between two as it were ends which we call the Poles these Poles must necessarily be extremely cold in respect of the Torrid Zone for so we call that part of the earth which lies under the Zodiack Now looking into the consequence of this we find that the Sun or the Suns heat which reflects from the earth in the Torrid Zone must rarifie the air extremely and according to the nature of all heat and fire must needs carry away from thence many parts of the air and earth sticking to that heat in such sort as we have formerly declared Whence it follows that other air must necessarily come from the Regions towards both the Poles to supply what is carried away from the middle as is the course in other fires and as we have explicated above Especially considering that the air which comes from the Polewards is heavier then the air of the Torrid Zone and therfore must naturally press to be still nearer the earth and so as it were shoulders on the air of the Torrid Zone towards the circumference by rolling into its place and this in great quantities and consequently the polar air must draw a great train after it Which if we consider the great extent of the Torrid Zone we shall easily perswade our selvs must reach on each side to the very Pole For taking from Archimedes that the Spherical Superficies of a portion of a Sphere is to the Superficies of the whole Sphere according as the parts of the axis of that Sphere comprised within the said portion is to the whole axis and considering that in our case the part of the axis comprised within the Torrid Zone is to the whole axis of the earth in about the proportion of 4. to 10 it must of necessity follow that a fire or great heat reigning in so vast an extent will draw air very powerfully from the rest of the world Neither let any man apprehend that this course of the Sun 's elevating so great quantities of Atoms in the Torrid Zone should hinder the course of gravity there For first the medium is much rarer in thâ— Torrid Zone then in other parts of the earth and therfore the force of the descending Atoms needs not be so great there as in other places to make bodies descend there as fast as they do elsewhere Secondly there being a perpetual supply of fresh air from the Polar parts streaming continually into the Torrid Zone it must of
and so of every thing that either passes in our body or is apply'd for remedy And the meaner sort of Physicians know no more but that such faculties are though indeed they that are truly Physicians know also in what they consist without which knowledg it is much to be fear'd Physicians will do more harm than good But to return to our subject This course of doctrine in the Schools hath forced me to a great deal of pains in seeking to discover the nature of all such actions or of the main part of them as were famed for incomprehensible For what hope could I have out of the Actions of the Soul to convince the nature of it to be incorporeal If I could give no other account of Bodies Operations than that they were perform'd by qualities occult specifical or incomprehensible Would not my Adversary presently answer that any operation out of which I should press the Souls being spiritual was perform'd by a corporeal occult quality and that as he must acknowledg it to be incomprehensible so must I likewise acknowledg other qualities of Bodies to be as incomprehensible and therfore could not with reason press him to shew how a Body was able to do such an operation as I should infer must of necessity proceed from a spirit since that neither could I give account how the Loadstone drew Iron or looked to the North how a stone and other heavy things were carried downwards how sight or fantasie was made how Digestion or purging were effected and many other such questions which are so slightly resolv'd in the Schools Besides this Reason the very desire of knowledge in my self and a willingness to be available to others at the least so far as to set them on seeking for it without having a prejudice of impossibility to attain it was to me a sufficient motive to inlarge my discourse to the Bulk it is risen to For what a misery is it that the Flower and best Wits of Christendom which flock to the Universities under pretence and upon hope of gaining knowledge should be there deluded and after many years of toyl and expence be sent home again with nothing acquired more than a faculty and readiness to talk like Parrats of many things but not to understand so much as any one and withal with a perswasion that in truth nothing can be known For setting knowledge aside what can it avail a man to be able to talk of any thing What are those wranglings where the discovery of Truth is neither sought nor hoped for but meerly Vanity and Ostentation Doth not all tend to make one seem and appear that which indeed he is not Nor let any body take it ill at my hands that I speak thâ— of the Modern Schools for indeed it is rather themselvs than I that say it Excepting Mathematicks let all the other Schools pronounce their own minds and say ingenuosly whether they themselvs believe they have so much as any one Demonstration from the beginning to the end of the whole course of their Learning And if all or the most part will agree that any one position is demonstrated perfectly and as it ought to be and as thousands of conclusions are demonstrated in Mathematicks I am ready to undergo the blame of having calumniated them and will as readily make them amends But if they neither will nor can then their own Verdict clears me and it is not so much I as they that make this profession of the shallowness of their Doctrine And to this purpose I have often heard the Lamentations of divers as great wits as any that converse in the Shools complaining of this defect But in so great an evidence of the effect proofs are superfluous Wherfore I will leave this Subject to declare what I have here design'd and gone about towards the Remedy of this inconvenience Which is that whereas in the Schools there is a loose method or rather none but that it is lawful by the liberty of a Commentator to handle any Question in any place which is the cause of the slightness of their doctrine and can never be the way to any Science or Certitude I have taken my beginnings from the commonest things that are in Nature Namely from the Notions of Quantity and its first Differences which are the most simple and radical Notions that are and in which all the rest are to be grounded From them I endeavour byimmediate composition of them and derivation from them to bring down my discouse to the Elements which are the primary and most simple bodies in nature From these I proceed to Compounded Bodies first to those that are call'd Mixed and then to living bodies declaring in common the Proprieties and operations that belong to them And by occasion as I pass along I light here and there on those operations which seem most admirable in nature to shew how they are or at least may be performed that though I miss in particular of the industry of Nature yet I may nevertheless hit my intent which is to trace out a way how these and such like Operations may be effected by an Exact disposition and ordering though intricate of Quantitative and Corporeal parts and to shew that they oblige us not to recur to hidden and unexplicable qualities And if I have declared so many of these as may beget a probable perswasion in my Reader that the rest which I have not touched may likewise be display'd and shew'd to spring out of the same grounds if curious and constant searchers into Nature will make it their task to penetrate into them I have therein obtain'd my desire and intent Which is only to shew from what principles all kinds of corporeal operations proceed and what kind of operations all these must be which may issue out of these principles to the end that I may from thence make a step to raise my discourse to the contemplation of the Soul and shew that her Operations are such as cannot proceed from those principles which being adequate and common to all Bodies we may rest assured that what cannot issue from them cannot have a Body for its source I will therefore end this Preface with entreating my Reader to consider that in a discourse proceeding in such order as I have declared he must not expect to understand and be satisfied with what is said in any middle or latter part unless he first have read and understood what goes before Wherefore if he cannot resolve with himself to take it along orderly as it lyes from the begining he shall do himself as well as me right not to meddle at all with this Book But if he will employ any time upon it to receive advantage by it he must be content to take the pains to understand throughly every particular as it is set down And if his memory will not serve him to carry every one along with him yet at least let him be sure to remember the Place where
it is handled and on occasion return a look back upon it when it may stand him in stead If he thinks this diligence too burthensom let him consider that the writing hereof has cost the Author much more pains Who as he will esteem them exceedingly well employ'd if they may contribute ought to the content or advantage of any free and ingenuous mind so if any others shall express a neglect of what he has with so much labour hew'd out of the hard Rock of Nature or shall discourteously cavil at the Notions he so freely imparts to them all the resentment he shall make therof will be to desire the first to consider that their slight esteem of his Work obliges them to entertain their thoughts with some more noble and more profitable subject and better treated than this is and the Later sort to justifie their dislike of his doctrine by delivering a fairer and more complete body of Philosphy of their own Which if hereupon they do his being the occasion of the ones bettering themselvs and of the others bettering the world will be the best success he can wish his Book To Sir KENELME DIGBY ON His two Incomparable Treatises OF PHILOSOPHY TRuth 's numerous Proselytes in such pompous state With captiv'd judgments on your Triumph wait And mov'd by your clear Copy Wits so rare Blot out their former notions to write fair That 't were a needless duty to set forth In paper-gageants your soul-conquering worth Nor may Truth 's Champion admit a Muse Who feigns his commendation 's but abuse Unless Lucretius had bequeath'd to me His the sworn Maid to Dame Philosophy Yet ther 's a Law of gratitude which says He must pay thanks who may not offer praise When with your work you entertain'd my mind I was your Guest there I at once did find A Banquet and a Meal solid and sweet The rarely mingled in one dish did meet Such diet sure had Mankind scap't offence Had bin his meat i th' State of Ignorance And now I here give thanks which who 'll not give Who your perpetual Boarder means to live The reading your expressions forc't me speak A fancy thus charg'd needs must silence break Wherefore as Brooks to th' Sea return their streams I only here reflect your borrow'd beams Clear-faced Truth that rare unbodied light Sun to our souls wrap't in a sin-caus'd night Of ignorance who from her radiant face Darted forth nought but day had found no place In Nature's Lordships had not you in fine Plac't th' obscur'd Goddess in a Chrystal shrine We stood like men ere they begin the Mask Whose wit doth only serve to doubt and ask Untill your courteous hand remov'd the Screen Withdrew the curtains and reveal'd Truth 's Scene Some quite despairing in her quest did say She in Astraea's Coach was flown away Some said that Nature's work on purpose ti'd Like to the Gordian knot did â—ub'tly hide It's causes and effects none could unty't As if contriv'd to puzzle not delight But most avouch 't Truth in her old pit lay And our Cleantheses did oft assay With huge-long-Cart-rope Arguments to draw Her upwards with their Logick-clunched paw Bur ah their Syllogistick links all brake Yet th' obstinate peece would not her hole forsake Until your Silken Linos or deep Wit whether Reason'd not brawl'd her thence woo'd her hither Trim'd up thus natively she scorns the nighr Nor fears t'intrust her beauty to the light She through your Amber words doth brighter shine Like those in Heav'n at once both nak't and fine Clad in such Tiffany-language she grows proud To see her self in Cloathing without Cloud The Schools drest her in Linsy-Woolsy words A stile not spun of threds but writh'd of cords Expressive barbarisms fancy-woven air Whose uncouth moustrousness would make one stare An antick weed patch't up as they shall please Of Unionss Moods and Senoreities Who if they do not Priscian the disgrace To break his head they fouly scratch his face Tor'tring poor innocent Grammar to confess The truth they hide by their dark wordishness But no such stuff your noble Treatise wears It neither injures Languages nor ears Yours is a Flower-pot pav'd by Truth 's rich Gold While they in Dunghils rake for th' precious mold Your Stile 's both pure and gallant in such sort Iâ— makes the Schools speak finer than the Court With such enlihtning Metaphor as teach What sense-deluded fancy could not reach Such moving Rhetorick needs no Truth desire Such conquering Truths no Rhetorick's aid require Yet here both joyntl ' embrace as if it was Truth 's Legend writ by Sun-beams on clear Glass So that your Work all points of art affords Where equally are learn'd neat Truths true Words Fancy our Moon as Reason is our Sun Which wax't and wan'd still as she wandring run Whose visage with unconstant Aspects shone Now shuffling many things now cutting one Is taught at once 'to acknowledge and correct Her fault which gull'd the credulous Intellect And now at length is shown her double errour In the smooth steady Glass of Reason's mirrour Here Words whose whistle call'd us oft awry Are taught their Origin true sense and why Blind Prejudice cur'd by a blest amaze Opes wide her sullen eyes and stands at gaze All what the Universal Womb doth spawn Is by your Pen thence to the Life out-drawn Your Grounds are firm and sure who stirs the same May shake the World's or stronger Reason's frame Nature asserts them whose Daedalean hand Changing Particulars makes your Generals stand Here we may learn the antientest Descents And the cross Marriage of the Elements Whence Nature's numerous Family is bred In Kindred's different lines distinguished You show the secret gins the springs and wires Which the vast Engine 's motion requires You nought suppose but start your early quest Where Phoenix Nature first doth build her Nest Thence trace her laying hatching until she Brings her raw Embryo to maturity The sprouting Sap we without fiction see Creepingly metamorphos'd to a Tree We see how Eggs yield Flesh and Bone and Blood Like creatures peece-meal shap't in Nile's fat mud Our quivering grounds might have driv'n some perforce To believe A sop and grant beasts discourse Had not your Art the pretty Knack unscrew'd And it's wheeles driv'n by bloud in order shew'd Now their strange actions we may freel admire Yet not about an hidden Soul enquire No more than once Architas ' wooden Dove Ask't an Intelligence to make it move Imaginary Uacuums which are New terms for nothings emptier than air With Moods and Qualities now pack away To lurk at home in Terr' Incognita Crab'd Aristotle who did make 't his sporr Industrious wits should his obscureness court Whom like a darksome Cave none durst adventure Without a Lantern and a Guide to enter Your grounds enlightning him doth easier sound As Hebrew Conso'nants when the Points were found The Soul of Man that intellectual All Whose recreation is the World 's great Ball
which made little parts of bodies naturally heavie descend slowly in regard of the velocity of greater parts of the same bodies descending the Doctrine of which we intend to deliver hereafter Others therfore perceiving this rule to fall short have indeavour'd to piece it out by the mixtion of Vacuitie among bodies believing it is that which makes one rarer then another Which mixtion they do not put always immediate to the main body they consider but if it have other rarer and lighter bodies mingled with it they conceive this mixtion immediate only to the rarest or lightest As for example a Crystal being lighter and consequently rarer then a Diamond they will not say there is more vacuity in a Crystal then in a Diamond but that the pores of a Crystal are greater and consequently there is more aire in a Crystal to fil the pores of it then is in a Diamond and the vacuities are in the aire which abounding in a Crystal more then in a Diamond makes that lighter and rarer then this by the more vacuites that are in the greater Quantity of aire which is mingled with it But against this suppsition a powerful adversary is urged for Aristotle in his 4. Book of Physicks hath demonstrated that there can be no motion in vacuity 'T is true they indeavour to evade his demonstration as not reaching home to their supposition by acknowledging it to be an evident one in such a vacuity as he there speaks of which he supposed so great that a body may swim in it as in an Ocean and not touch or be near any other body whereas this opinion exclude all such vast inanity admit no vacuities but so little ones as no body whatever can come to but wil be biger than they and consequently must on some side orother touch the corporal parts which those vacuities divide for they are the separations of the least parts that are or can be actually divided from one another which parts must of necessity touch one another on some side or else they could not hang together to compose one substance and and therefore the dividing vacuities must be less then the divided parts And thus no body will ever be in danger of floating up and down without touching any thing which is the difficulty that Aristotle chiefly impugns I confess I should be very glad that this supposition might serve our turne and save the Phenomena that appear among bodies through their variety of Rarity and Density Which if it might be then would I straight go on to the inquiring after what follow'd out of this ground as Astronomers to use our former similitude calculate the future appearances of the Celestial bodies out of those motions and orbs they assign to the Heavens For as this apprehension of vacuity in bodies is very easie and intelligible so the other which I conceive to be the truth of the case is exceedingly abstracted and one of the most difficult points in all the Metaphysicks and therefore I would if it were possible avoid touching upon it in this discourse which I desire should be as plain and easie and as much removed from Scholastick terms as may be But indeed the inconveniences that follow out of this supposition of vacuities are so great as it is impossible by any means to slide them over As for example let us borrow of Gallileus the proportion of weight between water and air He shews us how the one is 400 times heavier then the other And Marinus Ghetaldus teaches us that gold is 19 times heavier then water so that gold must be 7600 times heavier then air Now then considering that nothing in a body can weigh but the solid parts of it it follows that the proportion of the parts of gold in a sphere of an inch Diameter is to the parts of the air of a like dimension as 7600 is to one Therfore in air it self the vacuities that are supposed in it will be to the solid parts of it in the same proportion as 7600 to one Indeed the proportion of difference shal be greater for even in gold many vacuities must be admitted as appears by the heating of it which shews that in every least part it is exceeding porous But according to this rate without pressing the inconvenience any further the air will by this reckoning appear to be like a net whose holes distances are to the lines and threds in the proportion of 7600 to one and so would be lyable to have little parts of its body swim in those greater vacuities contrary to what they strive to avoid Which would be excedingly more if we found on the one side any bodies heavier denser then gold that were so solid as to exclude all vacuities on the other side should balance them withsuch bodies as are lighter and rarer then air as fire is and as some say will have the aether to be But already the disproportion is so great and the vacuity so strangely exceeds the body in which it is as were too great an absurdity to be admitted And besides it would destroy all motion of small bodies in the air if it be true as Aristotle hath demonstrated in the fourth Book of his Physicks that motion cannot be made but among bodies and not in vacuo Again if rarity were made by vacuity rare bodies could not be gather'd together without losing their rarity and becoming dense The contrary of which we learn by constant experience as when the Smith and Glassemender drive their white and fury fires as they term them when aire pierces most in the sharp wind and generally we see that more of the same kind of rare bodies in less place works more efficaciously according to the nature that results out of that degree of rarity Which argues that every little part is as rare as it was before for else it would lose the vertue of working according to the nature but that by their being crowded together they exclude all other bodies that before mediated between the little parts of their main body and so more parts being gotten together in the same place then formerly there were they work more forcibly Thirdly if such vacuities were the cause of rarity it would follow that fluid bodies being rarer then solid ones would be of themselvs standing like nets or cobwebs wheras contrariwise we see their natures are to run together and to fill up every little creek and corner which effect following out of the very nature of the things themselves needs must exclude vacuities out of that nature And lastly if it be true as we have shew'd in the last Chapter that there are no actual parts in Quantity it follows of necessity that all Quantity must of it self be one as Metaphysicks teach us and then no distance can be admitted between one Quantity and another And truely if I understand Aristotle right he hath perfectly demonstrated that no vacuity is possible in nature
compounded one will be gathered into one place and those of divers kinds into divers places which is the notion whereby Aristotle hath express'd the nature of heat and is an effect which daily experience in burning and boiling teaches us to proceed from heat And therefore we cannot doubt but such extreme rare bodies are as well hot as dry On the other side if a Dense thing be apply'd to a compound it will because it is weighty press it together and if that application be continu'd on all sides so that no part of the body that is pressed be free from the siege of the dense body that presses it it will form it into a narrower room and keep in the parts of it not permitting any of them to slip out So that what things soever it finds within its power to master be they light or heavy or of what contrary nature soever it compresses them as much as it can and draws them into a less compass and holds them strongly together making them stick fast to one another Which effect Aristotle took for the proper notion of cold and therefore gave for definition of the nature of it that it gathers things of divers natures and experience shews us in freezing and all great coolings that this effect proceds from cold But if we examine which of the two sorts of dense bodies the fluide or the consistent is most efficacious in this operation we shall find that the less dense one is more capable of being apply'd round about the body it shall besiege and therefore will stop closer every little hole and more easily send subtile parts into every little vein of it and by consequence shrink it up together and coagulate and constringe it more strongly then a body can that is extremely dense which by reason of its great density and the stubbornness of its parts cannot so easily bend and ply them to work this effect And therefore a body that is immoderately dense is colder then another that is so in excess since cold is an active or working power and that which is less dense excells in working On the contrary side rare bodies being hot because their subtile parts environing a compounded body will sink into the pores of it and to their power separate its parts it follows that those wherein the gravity overcomes the rarity are less hot then such others as are in the extremity and highest excess of rarity both because the former are not able to pierce so little parts of the resisting dense body as extreme rare ones are and likewise because they more easily take ply by the obstacle of the solid ones they meet with then these do So that out of this discourse we gather that of such bodies as differ precisely by the proportion of Rarity and Density those which are extremely rare are in the excesse of heat and are dry withall that weighty rare bodies are extremely humid and meanly hot that fluide dense bodies are moist though not in such excess as rare ones that are so but are coldest of any and lastly that extreme dense bodies are less cold then fluide dense ones and that they are dry But whether the extreme dense bodies be more or less dry then such as are extremely rare remains yet to be decided Which we shall easily do if we but reflect that it is density which makes a thing hard to be divided and rarity makes it easie for a facility to yeeld to division is nothing else but a pliableness in the thing that is to be divided wherby it easily receives the figure which the thing that divides it doth cast it into Now this plyablenss belongs more to rare then to dense things and accordingly we see fire more easily bend by the concameration of an oven then a stone can be reduced into due figure by hewing And therfore since dryness is a quality that makes those bodies wherein it reigns conserve themselves in their own figure and limits and resist the receiving of any from another body it is manifest that those are driest wherein these effects are most seen which is in dense dodies and consequently excess of dryness must be allotted to them to keep company with their moderate coldness Thus we see that the number of Elements assign'd by Aristotle is truly and exactly determin'd by him and that there can be neither more nor less of them and their qualities are rightly allotted to them Which to settle more firmly in our minds it will not be mis-spent time to sum up in short the effect of what we have hitherto said to bring us to this Conclusion First we shew'd that a body is made and constituted a Body by Quantity Next that the first division of Bodies is into Rare and Dense ones as differing only by having more less Quantity And lastly that the conjunction of Gravity with these two breeds two other sorts of combinations each of which is also twofold the first sort concerning Rarity out of which arises one extremely hot and moderately dry and another extremely humide and moderately hot the second sort concerning Density out of which is produced one that is extremely cold and moderately wet and another extremely dry and moderately cold And these are the combinations whereby are constituted Fire Air Water and Earth So that we have thus the proper notions of the Four Elements and both them and their qualities driven up and resolv'd into their most simple Principles which are the notions of Quantity and of the two most simple differences of quantitive things Rarity and Density Beyond which mans wit cannot penetrate nor can his wishes aim at more in this particular seeing he has attain'd to the knowledge of what they are and of what makes them be so and that it is impossible they should be otherwise and this by the most simple and first principles which enter into the composition of their nature Out of which it is evident these Four bodies are Elements since they cannot be resolv'd into any others by way of physicall composition themselves being constituted by the most simple Differences of a Body And again all other bodies whatever must of necessity be resolv'd into them for the same reason because no bodies can be exempt from the First defferences of a Body Since then we mean by the name of an Element a Body not composed of any former bodies and of which all other bodies are composed we may rest satisfied that these are rightly so named But whether every one of these four Elements comprehend under its name one only lowest Species or mady as whether there be one only Species of fire or several and the like of the rest we intend not here to determine Yet we note that there is a great latitude in every kind since Rarity and Density as we have said before are as divisible as Quantity Which Latitudes in the bodies we converse with are so limited that What makes it self and
body be in its own nature more dense then fire For the body against which it presses either has pores or has none as the Elements have none if it has pores then the fire by reason of the violent motion of the impellent drives out the little bodies which fill up those pores succeeding in their room and being multiply'd there causes those effects which in our discourse of the Elements we assign'd to heat But if it hath no pores it will be either rare or dense if it be rare then if the force of the impellant be greater than the resistance of the rare body it will force the fire to divide the rare body But if it be dense as some atome of earth then though at the first it cannot divide it yet by length of time and continual beating upon it it may come to wear off some part of it the force of the impellent by little and little bending the atome of the earth by driving a continual stream of a lesser part of fire against some determinate part of the atome By which word Atome no body will imagine we intend to express a perfect indivisible but only the least sort of natural bodies CHAP. VI. Of Light what it is HAving said thus much of fire the near relation between it and Light invites us in the next place to bend our eyes to that which uses to dazel theirs who look unwearily upon it Certainly as among all the sensible qualities it is the principal so among all corporeal things it seems to aim rightest at spiritual nature and to come nearest it And by some it has been judg'd to be spiritual if our eyes be capable to see Spirits No meaner man then Aristotle leads the the dance to hold light a quality and mainly to deny it any bodily subsistence And there has follow'd him no fewer then almost all the world ever since And the question imports no less then the whole Doctrine of Qualities for admit light to be a body and hardly any man will hold up his hand in defence of any other quality but if it be a quality then all others come in by parity and for company But before we go any further it will not be amiss to express what we mean when we reject qualities and how in some sense we are content to admit them According to that descripion that Phylosophers ordinarily make of them and especially the Modern we can by no means give way to them I confess ingeniously I understand not what they mean by them and I am confident that neither do they For the very notion that their first words seem to express of them they contradict again before they make an end of describing what they are They will have them to be real Entities or Things distinct from the bodies they accompany and yet they deny them a subsistence or self-being saying they do but inhere in their subject which supports them or which is all one that their being is a dependence on a subject If they will reflect upon what they say and make their thoughts and their words agree they 'l find that the first part of their description makes them compleat substances which afterwards in words they flatly deny and 't is impossible to reconcile these two meanings A reall Entity or Thing must necessarily have an Existence or Being of its own which they allow them and whatever hath so becomes a substance for it subsists by its own Existence or to say plainer is what it is by its own Being and needs not the existence of another thing to give it a Being And then presently to to say that it doth not subsist of it self or that it requires the subsistence of a substance to make it Be is a pure contradiction to the former This arises from a wrong notion they make to themselvs of substance existence and subsistance and from their not consulting sufficiently with their own thoughts as well as studying in Books They meet there with different terms by help of which they keep themselves from contradiction in words but not in effect If the terms were rightly conceived and notions duely fitted to them which requires deep meditation on the things themselvs and a brain free from all inaclination to siding or affection to opinoins for the Authors sakes before they be well understood and examin'd many of those disputs would fall to the ground in which oftentimes both sides lose themselvs and the question before they come to an end They are in the dark before they are aware and then they make a noyse only with terms which like too heavie weapons that they cannot weild carry their strokes beyond their aim Of such nature are the Qualities and Moods that some modern Philosophers have so subtilised on And in that sense we utterly denie them which being a question appertaining to Metaphysicks it belongs not to our present purpose to ingage our selvs further in it But as they are ordinarily understood in common conversation we allow them And our work is but to explicate and shew the particulars in retail of what men naturally spake in grosse For that serves their turn to know what one another means whereas it belongs only to a Phylosopher to examine the causes of things Others are content with the effects and they speak truly and properly when they design them As for example when they say that fire burns by a quality of heat that it has or that a Deye is square by the qualitie of a cubicall figure that is in it they speak as they should do But if others will take occasion upon this to let their understanding give a Being to these qualities distinct from the substances in which they conceive them there they miss If we consider the same man hungry or thirsty or weary or sleepy or standing or sitting the understanding presently makes within it self reall things of sleep hunger thirst weariness standing and sitting Whereas indeed they are but different affections or situations of the same body And therefore we must beware of applying these notions of our mind to the things as they are in themselves as much as we must of conceiving those parts to be actually in Continued Quantity wherof we can frame actually distinct notions in our understanding But as when ordinary men say that a Yard contains three feet 't is true in this sence that three feet may be made of it but whiles 't is a yard 't is but one quantitie or thing and not three things so they who make profession to examine rigourously the meaning of words must explicate in what sense it is true that Heat and Figure our former examples are qualities for such we grant them to be and in no wise contradict the common manner of speech which enters not into the Phylosophicall nature of them We say then that Qualities are nothing else but the Proprieties or Particularities wherin one thing differs from another And therfore
occur other arguments of no less importance to prove this verity than these we have already proposed CHAP. VII Two objections answer'd against light being fire with a more ample proof of its being such HAving then said thus much to perswade us of the corporeity of this subtile thing that so queintly plays with our eyes we will in the next place examine those objections that at the beginning we set down against its being a body and if after a through discussion of them we find they do in truth conclude nothing of what at the first sight they bear so great a shew of but that we shall be able perfectly to solve and enerve their force no body will think it rashness in us to crave leave of Aristotle that we may dissent from him in a matter that he has not look'd to the bottom of and whose opinion therin cannot be defended from plain contradictions and impossibilities 'T is true never any one man looked fo far as he into the bowels of nature he may be rightly termed the Genius of it and whoever follows his principles in the main cannot be led into errour but we must not believe that he or any man else who relies upon the strength and negotiation of his own reason ever had a priviledge of infallibility entail'd to all he said Let us then admire him for what he has deliver'd us and where he falls short or is weary in his search and suffers himself to be born down by popular opinions against his own principles which happens very seldom to him let us seek to supply and relieve him But to pursue our intent We will begin with answerin the third objection which is that if light were fire it must heat as well as enlighten where it shines There 's no doubt but it doth so as is evident by the weather-glasses and other artificiall musical instruments as Organs and Virginals that played by themselvs wâ—ch Cornelius Drebbel That admirable master of Mechanicks made to shew the King All which depends upon the rarefaction and condensation of some subtile body conserv'd in a cavity within the bulk of the whole instrument for assoon as the Sun shined they would have motion and play their parts And questionless that grew out of the rarefaction of the subtile liquor he made use of which was dilated assoon as the air was warmd by the Sun-beams Of whose operation it was so sensible that they no sooner left the Horizon but its motion ceased And if but a cloud came between the instrument and them the musick would presently go slower time And the ancient miracle of Memnons statue seems to be a juggling of the Ethiopian priests made by the like invention But though he and they found some spirituall and refined natter that would receive such notable impressions from so small alterations of temper yet it is no wonder that our gross bodies are not sensible of them for we cannot feel heat unless it be greater then that which is in our sense And the heat there must be in proportion to the heat of our bloud which is an high degree of warmth and therfore 't is very possible that an exceeding rarified fire may cause a far lesse impression of heat then we are able to feel Consider how if you set pure spirit of wine on fire and so convert it into actual flame yet it will not burn nor scarce warm your hand and then can you expect that the light of a candle which fills a great room should burn or warm you as far as it shines If you would exactly know what degree of heat and power of burning that light has which for example shines upon the wall in a great chamber in the midst wherof there stands a candle do but calculate what overproportion of quantitie all the light in the whole room bears to the quantity of the little flame at the top of the candle and that is the overproportion of the force of burning which is in the candle to the force of burning which is in so much light at the wall as in extension is equall to the flame of the candle Which when you have considered you will not quarrel at its not warming you at that distance although you grant it to be fire streaming out from â—e flame as from the spring that feeds it and extreamly dilated according to the nature of fire when it is at liberty by going so far without any other grosse body to imprison or clog it 'T is manifest that this rule of examining the proportion of burning in so much of the light as the flame is by calculating the proportion of the quantity or extension of all the light in the room to the extension of the flame of the candle and then comparing the flame of the candle to a part of light equall in extension unto it is a good and infallible one if we abstract from accidental inequalities since both the light and the flame are in a perpetual flux and all the light was first in the flame which is the spring from whence it continually flows As in a river where every part runs with a settled stream though one place be straighter and another broader yet of necessity since all the water that is in the broad place came out of the narrow it must follow that in equal portions of time there is no more water where it has the liberty of a larg channel then where the banks press it into a narrow bed so that there be no inequalities in the bottome In like manner if in a large stove a basin of water be converted into steam that rarified water which then fills the whole Stove is no more then what the Basin contain'd before and consequently the power of moistening which is in a foot 's extension for example of the stove wherein that steam is must be in proportion to the vertue of wetting in the foot extension of water as the quantity of that great room which the steam fills is to the quantity of the water contain'd in the basin For although the rarified water be not in every least part of that great place it seems to take up by reason that there is Air in which it must swim yet the power of wetting that was in the Basin of water is dilated through the whole room by the conjunction of the Myst or Dew to all the sensible parts of the Air that is in the room and consequently the power of wetting which is in any foot of that room is in a manner as much less then the power of wetting which was in the foot of water as if the water were rarified to the quantity of the whole room and no air were left with it And in the same manner it fares with dilated fire as it doth with dilated water with only this difference peradventure that Fire grows purer and more towards its own nature by dilatation whereas water becomes more mix'd and is carried
from its nature by suffering the like effect Yet dilated water will in proportion moisten more then dilated fire will burn for the rarefaction of water brings it nearer to the nature of air whose chief propriety is moisture and the fire that accompanies it when it raiseth it into steam gives it more powerful ingression into what body it meets withal whereas fire when 't is very pure and at entire liberty to stretch and spread it self as wide as the nature of it will carry it gets no advantage of burning by its mixture with air and although it gains force by its purity yet by reason of its extreme rarefaction it must needs be extreamly faint But if by the help of Glasses you will gather into less room what is diffused into a great one and so condense it as much as it is for example in the flame of a candle then that fire or compacted light will burn much more forcibly then so much flame for there is as much of it in quantity excepting what is lost in the carriage of it and it is held in together in as little room and it has this advantage besides that 't is clog'd with no grosse body to hinder the activity of it It seems to me now that the very answering this objection doth besides repelling the force of it evidently prove that light is nothing but fire in its own nature and exceedingly dilated for if you suppose fire for example the flame of a candle to be stretch'd out to the utmost expansion that you may well imagine such a gross body is capable of 't is impossible it should appear and work otherwise then it doth in light as I have shewd above And again we see plainly that light gather'd together burns more forcibly then any other fire whatever and therefore must needs be fire Why then shall we not confidently conclude that what is fire before it gets abroad and is fire again when it comes together doth likewise remain fire during all its journey Nay even in the journey it self we have particular testimony that it is fire for light returning back from the earth charg'd with little atomes as it doth in soultry gloomy weather heats much more than before just as fire doth when it is imprisoned in a dense body Philosophers ought not to judge by the same rules that the common people doth Their gross sense is all their guide and therfore they cannot apprehend any thing to be fire that doth not make it self to be known for such by burning them But he that judiciously examines the matter and traces the pedigree and period of it and sees the reason why in some circumstances it burns and in others not is too blame if he suffer himself to be led by others ignorance contrary to his own reason When they that are curious in perfumes will have their chamber fil'd with a good scent in a hot season that agrees not with burning perfumes and therfore make some odoriferous water be blown about it by their servants mouthes that are dexterous in that ministery as is used in Spain in the Summer time every one that sees it done though on a sudden the water be lost to his eyes and touch and is only discernable by his nose yet is well satisfied that the scent which recreates him is the very water he saw in the glass extremely dilated by the forcible sprouting of it out from the servants mouth and will by little and little fall down and become again palpable water as it was before and therefore doubts not but it is still water whiles it hangs in the air divided into little atomes Whereas one that saw not the beginning of this operation by water nor observ'd how in the end it shews it self again in water might the better be excused if he should not think that what he smel'd were water blown about the air nor any substance of it self because he neither sees nor handles it but some adventitious quality he knows not how adhering to the air The like difference is between Philosophers that proceed orderly in their discourses and others that pay themselves with terms which they understand not The one see evidence in what they conclude whiles the others guesse wildly at random I hope the Reader will not deem it time lost from our main drift which we take up thus in examples and digressions for if I be not much deceived they serve exceedingly to illustrate the matter Which I hope I have now rendred so plain as no man that shall have well weighed it will expect that Fire dilated into that rarified substance which mankind who according to the different appearance of things to their sense gives different names to them calls Light should burn like that grosser substance which from doing so they call fire nor doubt but that they may be the same thing more or less attenuated as leaf-gold that flies in the air as light as down is as truly gold as that in an ingot which being heavier then any other substance falls most forcibly to the ground What we have said of the unburning fire which we call light streaming from the flame of a Candle may easily be apply'd to all other lights deprived of sensible heat whereof some appear with flame others without it Of the first sort are the innoxious flames that are often seen on the hair of mens heads and horses manes on the Masts of ships over graves and fat marish grounds and the like and of the latter sort are Glow-worms and the light-conserving stones rotten wood some kinds of fish and of flesh when they begin to putrifie and some other things of the like nature Now to answer the second part of this objection That we daily see great heats without any light as well as much light without any heat and therefore light and fire cannot be the same thing You may call to mind how Dense bodies are capable of great quantities of Rare ones and thereby it comes to pass that bodies which repugn to the dilatation of flame may nevertheless have much fire inclosed in them As in a stove let the fire be never so great yet it appears not outwards to the sight although that stove warm all the rooms near it So when many little parts of heat are imprison'd in as many little cells of gross earthly substance which are like so many little stoves to them that imprisonment will not hinder them from being very hot to the sense of feeling which is most perceptible of dense things But because they are choak'd with the closeness of the gross matter wherein they are closed they cannot break out into a body of flame or light so to discover their nature which as we have said before is the most unfit way for burning for we see that light must be condensed to produce flame and fire as flame must be to burn violently Having thus clear'd the third objection as I
of fewel to maintain the same light for a great company of years But I should not easily be perswaded that either flame or light could be made without any manner of consuming the body which serves them for fewel CHAP. VIII An Answer to three other Objectious formerly proposed against Light being a Substance HAving thus defended our selves from their Objections who would not allow light to be fire and having satisfied their inquisition who would know what becomes of it when it dyes if it be a body we will now apply our selves to answer their difficulties who will not let it pass for a body because it is in the same place with another body as when the Sun-beams enlighten all the air and when the several lights of two distinct Candles are both of them every where in the same room Which is the substance of the second main objection This of the justling of the aire is easily answered thus that the aire being a very divisible body doth without resistance yield as much place as is requisite for light And that light though our eyes judge it diffused every where yet is not truly in every point or atome of air but to make us see it every where it suffices that it be in every part of the air which is as big as the black or sight of our eye so that we cannot set our eye in any position where it receives not impressions of light In the same manner as Perfumes which though they be so gross bodies that they may be sensibly wasted by the wind yet â—o fill the air that we can put our nose in no part of the room where a perfume is burned but we shall smell it And the like is of mists as also of the sprouted water to make a perfume which we mention'd above But because pure discourses in such small thrids as these 〈◊〉 but weakly bind such Readers as are not accustom'd to them and I would if possible render this Treatise intelligible to every rational man how ever little vers'd in Scholastick learning among whom I expect it will have a fairer passage then among those that are already deeply imbued with other principles let us try if we can herein inform our selves by our sense and bring our eyes for witness of what we say He then that is desirous to satisfie himself in this particular may put himself in a dark room through which the Sun sends his beams by a cranie or little hole in the wall and he will discover a multitude of little atomes flying about in that little stream of light which his eye cannot discern when he is environ'd on all sides with a full light Then let him examine whether or no there be light in the midst of those little bodies and his own reason will easily till him that if those bodies were as perspicuous as the air they would not reflect upon our eyes the beams by which we see them And therefore he will boldly conclude that at the least such parts of them as reflect light to us do not admit it nor let it sink into them Then let him consider the multitude of them and the little distance betwixt one another and how nevertheless they hinder not our sight but we have it free to discover all objects beyond them in what position soever we place our eye And when he thus perceives that these opacous bodies which are every where do not hinder the eye from judging light to have an equal plenary diffusion through the whole place that it irradiates he can have no difficulty to allow air that is diaphanous and more subtile far then they and consequently divisible into lesser atomes and having lesser pores gives less scope to our eyes to miss light then they do to be every where mingled with light though we see nothing but light and cannot discern any breach of it Especially when he shall adde to this consideration that the subtile body which thus fills the air is the most visible thing in the world and that whereby all other things are seen and that the air it mingles it self with is not at all visible by reason of the extreme diaphaneity of it and easie reception of the light in every pore of it without any resistance or reflection and that such is the nature of light as it easily drowns an obscure body if it be not too big and not onely such but even other light bodies for so we know as well the fixed Stars as the Planets are conceal'd from our sight by the nearness to the Sun neither the lightness of the one nor the bigness of the other prevailing against the darkning of an exuperant light and we have daily experience of the same in very pure chrystal glasses and in very clear water which though we cannot discern by our sight if they be certain positions nevertheless by experience we find that they reflect much light and consequently have great store of opacous parts And then he cannot choose but conclude that it is impossible but light should appear as it doth to be every where and to be one continued thing though his discourse withal assure him it is every where mingled with air And this very answer I think will draw with it by consequence the solution of the other part of the same objection which is of many lights joyning in the same place and the same is likewise concerning the images of colours every where crossing one another without hindrance But to raise this contemplation a strain higher let us consider how light being the most rare of all known bodies is of its own nature by reason of the divisibility that followeth rarity divisible into lesser parts then any other and particularly then flame which being mixed with smoke and other corpulency falls very short of light And this to the proportion in which it is more rare then the body 't is compared to Now a great Mathematician having devised how to measure the rarefaction of Gun-powder into flame found the Diameter fifty times increased and so concluded that the body of the flame was in proportion to the body of the Gun-powder it was made of as 125000. is to one Wherfore by the immediately proceeding consequence we find that 125000 parts of flame may be couched in the room of one least part of gunpowder and peradventure many more considering how porous a body Gun-powder is Which being admitted 't is evident that although light were as gross as the flame of Gun-powder and Gun-powder were as solid as gold yet there might pass 125000. rayes of light in the space wherin one least part of Gun-powder might be contained which space would be absolutely invisible to us and be contained many times in the bigness of the sight of a mans eye Out of which we may gather what an infinity of objects may seem to us to cross themselvs in the same indivisible place and yet may have room sufficient for every one
to which much more might be added but that we have already trespassed in length and I conceive enough is said to decide the matter an equal judge will find the ballance of the question to hang upon these termes that to prove the nature of light to be material corporeal are brought a company of accidents well known to be the proprieties of quantitie or bodies and as well known to be in light Even so far as that 't is manifest light in its beginning before it be dispersed is fire and if again it be gathered together it shews it self again to be fire And the receptacles of it are the receptacles of a body being a multitude of pores as the hardness and coldness of transparent things do give us to understand of which we shall hereafter have occasion to discourse On the contrary side whatever arguments are brought against lights being a body are only negative As that we see not any motion of light that we do not discern where the confines are between light and air that we see not room for both of them or for more lights to be together and the like which is to oppose negative proofs against affirmative ones and to build a doctrine upon the defect of our senses or upon the likeness of bodies which are extremely unlike expecting the same effects from the most subtile as from the most gross ones All which together with the authority of Aristotle his followers have turned light into darkness and made us almost deny the light of our own eyes Now then to take our leave of this important question let us return to the principles from whence we began and consider that Seeing Fire is the most rare of the Elements and very dry and that out of the former it hath that it may be cut into very small pieces and out of the later that it conserves its own figure and so is apt to divide what ever fluid body and joyning to these two principles that it multiplies extremely in its source It must of necessity follow that it sends out in great multitudes little small parts into the air and other bodies circumfused with great dilatation in a spherical manner And likewise that these little parts are easily broken and new ones still following the former are still multiplyed in straight lines from the place where they break Out of which 't is evident that of necessity it must in a manner fill all places and that no sensible place is so little but that fire wil be found in it if the medium be capacious As also that its extreme least parts will be very easily swallow'd up in the parts of the air which are humid and by their enfolding be as it were quite lost so as to lose the appearance of fire Again that in its reflections it will follow the nature of grosser bodies and have glidings like them which is that we call refractions That little streamings from it will cross one another in excessive great numbers in an unsensible part of space without hindering one another That its motion will be quicker then sense can judge of and therefore will seem to move in an instant or to stand still as in a stagnation That if there be any bodies so porous with little and thick pores as that the pores arrive near to equalling the substance of the body then such a body will be so fill'd with these little particles of fire that it will appear as if there were no stop in its passage but were all filled with fire and yet many of these little parts will be reflected And whatever qualities else we find in light we shall be able to derive them out of these principles and shew that fire must of necessity do what experience teaches us that light doth That is to say in one word it will shew us that fire is light But if fire be light then light must needs be fire And so we leave this matter CHAP. IX Of Local motion in common THough in the fifth Chapter we made only earth the pretender in the controversie aginst fire for superiority in activity and in very truth the greatest force of gravity appears in those bodies which are eminently earthy nevertheless both water and air as appears out of the 4. Chapter of the Elements do agree with earth in having gravity and gravity is the chief virtue to make them efficients So that upon the matter this plea is common to all the three Elements Wherfore to explicate this virtue wherby these three weighty Elements work let us call to mind what we said in the beginning of the last Chapter concerning local motion to wit that according as the body moved or the divider did more and more enter into the divided body so it joyn'd it self to some new parts of the Medium or divided body and did in like manner forsake others Whence it happens that in every part of motion it possesses a greater part of the Medium then it self can fill at once And because by the limitation and confinedness of every magnitude to just what it is and no more 't is impossible that a lesser body should at once equalize a greater it followes that this division or motion whereby a body attains to fill a place bigger then it self must be done successively that is it must first fill one part of the place it moves in then another and so proceed on till it have measur'd it self with every part of the place from the first beginning of the line of motion to the last period of it where the body rests By which discourse it is evident that there cannot in nature be a strength so great as to make the least or quickest moveable that is to pass in an instant or all together over the least place that can be imagin'd for that would make the moved body remaining what it is in regard of its bigness to equallize and fit a thing bigger then it is Therfore it is manifest that motion must consist of such parts as have this nature that whiles one of them is in being the others are not yet and as by degrees every new one comes to be all the others that were before do vanish and cease to be Which circumstance accompanying motion we call Succession And whatever is so done is said to be done in time which is the common measure of all succession For the change of situation of the Stars but especally of the Sun and Moon is observ'd more or less by all mankind and appears alike to every man and being the most known constant and uniform succession that men are used to is as it were by nature it self set in their way and offer'd them as fittest to estimate and judge all other particular successions by comparing them both to it and among themselves by it And accordingly we see all men naturally measure all other successions and express their quantities by comparing them to the
an aptitude the better to cut the medium and from the mltitude of little atomes descending that strike upon it and press it the way they go which is downwards then it would not import whether the inner part of that body were as solid as the outward parts for it cuts with only the outward and is smitten only upon the outward And yet experience shews us the contrary for a great bullet of lead that is solid and lead throughout descends faster then if three quarters of the Diameiter were hollow within and such a one falling upon any resisting substance works a greater effect then a hollow one And a ball of brass that hath but a thin outside of metal will swim upon the water when a massie one sinks presently Whereby it appears that it is rather some other quality belonging to the very bulk of the metal in it self and not these outward causes that occasion gravity But this difficulty is easily overcome if you consider how subtile those atomes are which descending downwards striking upon a body in their way cause its motion likewise downwards for you may remember how we have shew'd them to be the subtilest and the minutest divisions that Light the subtilest and sharpest divider in nature can make It is then easie to conceive that these extreme subtile bodies penetrate all others as light doth glass and run through them as sand through a small sieve or as water through a spunge so that they strike not only upon the Superficies but as well in every most interiour part of the whole body running quite through it all by the pores of it And then it must needs follow that the solider it is and the more parts it has within as well as without to be strucken upon the faster it go and the greater effect it must work in what falls upon whereas if three quarters of the Diameter of it within should be fill'd with nothing but air the atoms would fly without any considerable effect through all that space by reason of the rarity cessibility of it And that these atoms are thus subtile is manifest by several effects which we see in nature Divers Authors that write of Egypt assure us that though their houses be built of strong stone nevertheless a clod of earth laid in the inmost rooms and shut up from all appearing communication with air will encrease its weight so notably as therby they can judge the change of weather which will shortly ensue Which can proceed from no other cause but a multitde of little atoms of Saltpeter which floating in the air penetrate through the strongest wals and all the massie defences in their way and settle in the cold of earth as soon as they meet with it because it is of a temper fit to entertain and conserve embody them Delights have shewed us the way how to make the spirits or atoms of Snow and Saltpeter pass through a glass vessel which Alchimists hold to be the most impenetrable of all they can find to work with In our own bodies the aches which feeble parts feel before change of weather and the heaviness of our heads and shoulders if we remain in the open air presently after sunset abundantly testifie that even the grosser of these atoms which are the first that fall do vehemently penetrate our bodies so as sense will make us believe what reason peradventure could not But besides all this there is yet a more convincing reason why the descending atomes should move the whole density of a body even though it were so dense that they could not penetrate it and get into the bowels of it but must be content to strike barely upon the outside of it For nature has so order'd the matter that when dense parts stick close together and make the length composed of them to be very stiff one cannot be moved but that all the rest which are in that line must likewise be thereby moved so that if all the world were composed of atoms closse sticking together the least motion imaginable must drive on all that were in a straight line to the very end of the world This you see is evident in reason and experience confirms it when by a little knock given at the end of a long beam the shaking which makes sound reaches sensibly to the other end The blind man that governs his steps by feeling in defect of eyes receives advertisements of remote things through a staff which he holdeth in his hands peradventure more particularly then his eyes could have directed him And the like is of a deaf man that hears the sound of an Instrument by holding one end of a stick in his mouth whiles the other end rests upon the Instrument And some are of opinion and they not of the rank of vulgar Philosophers that if a staff were as long as to reach from the Sun to us it would have the same effect in a moment of time Although for my part I am hard to believe we could receive an advertisement so far unless the staff were of such a thickness as being proportionable to the length might keep it from facile bending for if it should be very plyant it would do us no service as we experience in a thrid which reaching from our hand to the ground if it knock against any thing makes no sensible impression in our hand So that in fine reason sense and authority all of them shew us that the less the atomes should penetrate into a moving body by reason of the extreme density of it the more efficaciously they would work and the greater celerity they would cause in its motion And hence we may give the fullest solution to the objection above Which was to this effect that seeing division is made only by the superficies or exteriour part of the dense body and the virtue whereby a dense body works is onely its resistance to division which makes it apt to divide it would follow that a hollow bowl of brass or iron should be as heavy as a solid one For we may answer that seeing the atoms must strike through the body and a cessible body doth not receive their strokes so firmly as a stiffe one nor can convey them so far if to a stiff superficies there succeed a yielding inside the strokes must of necessity lose much of their force and consequently cannot move a body full of air with so much celerity or with so much efficacy as they may a solid one But then you may peradventure say that if these strokes of the descending atomes upon a dense body were the cause of its motion downwards we must allow the atomes to move faster then the dense body that so they may still overtake it and drive it along and enter into it whereas if they should move slower then it none of them could come in their turn to give it a stroke but it would be past them and out of their reach before they
coms as easily as the very air So that in this example as wll as in the other nature teaches us that gravity is no quality And all or most of the arguments which we have urg'd against the quality of gravity in that explication we have consider'd it in have force likewise against it although it be said to be an Inclination of its subject to move it self to unity with the main stock of its own nature as divers witty men put it For this supposition doth but change the intention or end of gravity and is but to make it another kind of intellectual or knowing Entity that determines it self to an other end which is as impossible for a natural quality to do as to determine it self to the former ends And thus much the arguments we have proposed do convince evidently if they be apply'd against this opinion CHAP. XII Of Violent Motion ANd thus we have given a shortscantling wherby to understand in some measure the causes of that motion we call natural by reason it has its birth from the universal Oeconomy of nature here among us that is from the general working of the Sun wherby all natural things have their course and by reason that the cause of it is at all times and in all places constantly the same Next which the order of discourse leads us to take a survey of those forced motions whose first causes the more apparent they are the more obscurity they leave us in to determine by what means they are continued When a Tennis-ball is stroken by a Racket or an Arrow shot from a Bow we plainly see the causes of their motion namely the strings which first yielding and then returning with a greater celerity cause the missives to speed so fast towards their appointed homes Experience informs us what qualities the missives must be endued with to move fast and stedily They must be so heavy that the air may not break their course and yet so light that they may be within the command of the stroke which gives them motion the striker must be dense and in its best velocity the angle which the missive is to mount by if we will have it go to its furthest randome must be the half of a right one and lastly the figure of the missive must be such as may give scope to the air to bear it up and yet not hinder its course by taking too much hold of it All this we see But when with all we see that the mover deserts the moveable assoon as he has given the blow we are at a stand and know not where to seek for that which afterwards makes it flie For motion being a transient not a permanent thing assoon as the cause ceases that begot it in that very point it must be at an end and as long as the motion continues there must be some permanent cause to make it do so so that as soon as the Racket or bow string go back and leave the ball or arrow why should not they presently fall straight down to the ground Aristotle and hs followers have attributed the cause hereof to the air but Galileo relishes not this conception His arguments against it are as I remember to this tenor Frst air by reason of its rarity and divisibility seems not apt to conserve motion next we see that light things are best carried by the air and it has no power over weighty ones lastly it is evident that air takes most hold of the broadest superficies and therfore an arrow would fly faster broad waies then long waies if this were true Nevertheless since every effect must have a proportionable cause from whence it immediately flows and a body must have another body to thrust it on as long as it moves let us examin what bodies touch a moveable whilst it is in motion as the only means to find an issue out of this difficulty for to have recourse to a quality or impressed force for deliverance out of this straight is a shift that will not serve the turn in this way of discourse we use In this Philosophy no knot admits such a solution If then we enquire what body 't is that immediately touches the ball or arrow while it flies we shall find none others does so but the air and the atoms in it after the strings have given their stroke and are parted from the missive And though we have Galileo's authority and arguments to discourage us from believing the air can work this effect yet since there is no other body besides it left for us to consider in this case let us at the least examin how the air behaves it self after the stroke is given by the strings First then t is evident that as soon as the rocket or bow-string shrinks back from the missive and leavs a space between the missive and it as 't is clear it does assoon as it has strucken the resisting body the air must needs clap in with as much velocity as they retire and with somwhat more because the missive goes forward at the same time and therefore the air must hasten to overtake it least any vacuity should be left between the string and the arrow 'T is certain likewise that the air on the sides also upon the division of it slides back and helps to fill that space which the departed arrow leaves void Now this forcible closing of the air at the nock of the arrow must needs give an impulse or blow upon it If it seem to be but a little one you may consider 't is yet much greater then what the air and the bodies swiming in it at the first give to a stone falling from high and how at the last those little atoms that drive a stone in its natural motion with their little blows force it peradventure more violently and swiftly than any impelling agent we are acquainted with can do So that the impulse which they make on the arrow pressing violently upon it after such a vehement concussion and with a great velocity must needs cause a powerful effect in that which of it self is indifferent to any motion any way But unless this motion of the air continue to beat still upon the arrow it will soon fall to the ground for want of a cause to drive it forward and because the natural motion of the air being then the only one will determine it downwards Let us consider then how this violent rending of the air by the blow the bow-string gives to the Arrow must needs disorder the little atones that swim to and fro in it and that being heavier then the air are continually descending downwards This disorder makes some of the heavier parts of them get above others that are lighter then they which they not abiding presse upon those that are next them and they upon their fellows so that there is great commotion and undulation caused in the whole masse of air round about the arrow which must
continue some time before it can be settled and it being determin'd by the motion of the arrow that way that it slides it follows that all this commotion and undulation of the air serves to continue the arrow in its flight And thus faster then any part behind can be setled new ones before are stir'd till the resistance of the medium grows stronger then the impulse of the movers Besides this the arrow pressing on the air before it with a greater velocity then the air which is a liquid rare body can admit to move all of a piece without breaking it must of necessity happen that the parts of the air immediately before the arrow be driven upon others further off before these can be moved to give place unto them so that in some places the air becomes condens'd and consequently in others rarified Which also the wind we make in walking which will shake a paper pin'd loosly at the wall of a chamber towards which we walk and the cooling air caus'd by faning when we are hot do evidently confirm So that it cannot be doubted but condensation and rarefaction of the air must necessarily follow the motion of any solid body which being admitted 't is evident that a greater disorder and for some remarkable time must necessarily be in the air since it cannot brook to continue in more rarity or density then is natural to it Nor can weighty and light parts agree to rest in an equal height or lowness which the violence of the arrows motion forces them to for the present Therefore it cannot be deni'd but that though the arrow slide away there still remains behind it by this condensation and confusion of parts in the air motion enough to give impulse to the arrow so as to make it continue its motion after the bowstring has left it But here will arise a difficulty which is how this clapping in and undulation of the air should have strength and efficacy enough to cause the continuance of so smart a motion as is an arrow shot from a bow To this I need no other argument for an answer then to produce Galileo's testimony how great a body one single mans breath alone can in due circumstances give a rapid motion to and withal let us consider how the arrow and the air about it are already in a certain degree of velocity that is to say the obstacle that would hinder it from moving that way namely the resistance of the air is taken away and the causes that are to produce it namely the determining of the airs and atomes motion that way are heightned And then we may safely conclude that the arrow which of it self is indifferent to be moved upwards or downwards or forwards must needs obey that motion which is caused in it by the atomes and the air 's pressing upon it either according to the impulse of the string or when the string begins to flag according to the beating that follows the general constitution of nature or in a mixt manner according to the proportions that these two hold to one another Which proportions Galileus in his 4 Dialogue of Motion has attempted to explicate very ingeniously but having miss'd in one of his suppositions to wit that forced motion upon an Horizontal line is throughout uniform his great labours therein have taken little effect towards the advancing the knowledge of nature as he pretended for his conclusions succeed not in experience as Mersenius assures us after very exact trials nor can they in their reasons be fitted to nature So that to conclude this point I find no difficulty in allowing this motion of the air strength enough to force the moveable onwards for sometime after the first mover is sever'd from it and long after we see no motions of this nature endure so that we need seek no further cause for the continuance of it but may rest satisfied upon the whole matter that since the causes and circumstances our reason suggests to us are after mature and particular examination proportionable to the effects we see the doctrine we deliver must be sound and true For the establishing wherof we need not considering what we have already said spend much time in solving Galileo's arguments against it seeing out of what we have set down the answers to them appear plain enough For first we have assign'd causes how the air may continue its motion long enough to give as much impression as is needful to the arrow to make it go on as it does Which motion is not requisite to be near so great in the air behind the arrow that drives it on as what the arrow causes in the air before it for by reason of its density it must needs make a greater impression in the air it cuts then the air causes its motion would do of it self without the mediation of the arrow As when the force of a hand gives motion to a knife to cut a loaf of bread the knife by reason of the density and figure it has makes a greater impression in the loaf then the hand alone would do And this is the same that we declared in the natural motion of a heavy thing downwards to which we assigned two causes namely the beating of the atoms in the air falling down in their natural course to determine it the way it is to go and the density of the body that cutting more powerfully then those atoms can do gives together with their help a greater velocity to the moveable then the atoms of themselves can give Nor imports it that our resolution it aginst the general nature of rare and dense bodies in regard of conserving motion as Galileo objects For the reason why dense bodies conserve motion longer then rare bodies is because in regard of their dividing virtue they get in equal time a greater velocity Wherfore seeing velocity is equal to gravity it follows that resistance works not so much upon them as upon rare bodies and therfore cannot make them cease from motion so easily as it does rare bodies This is the general reason for the conservation of motion in dense bodies But because in our case there is a continual cause which conserves motion in the air the air may continue its motion longer than of it self it would do not in the same part of air which Galileus as it seems aim'd at but in divers parts in which the moveable successively is Which being concluded let us see how the forced motion comes to decrease and be ended To which purpose we may observe that the impression which the arrow receives from the air that drives it forwards being weaker than that which it receiv'd at first from the string by reason that the air is not so dense and therfore cannot strike so great a blow the arrow does not in this second measure of time wherein we consider the impulse given by the air only cut so strongly the air before it nor press so
violently upon it as in the first measure when the string parting from it did beat it forwards for till then the velocity encreases in the arrow as it does in the string that carries it along which proceeds from rest at the fingers loose from it to its highest degree of velocity which is when it arrives to the utmost extent of its jerk where it quits the arrow And therfore the air now doth not so swiftly nor so much of it rebound back from before and clap it self behind the arrow to fill the space that else would be left void by the arrows moving forward and consequently the blow it gives in the third measure to drive the arrow on cannot be so great as the blow was immediately after the strings parting from it which was in the second measure of time and therefore the arrow must needs move slower in the third measure than it did in the second as formerly it moved slower in the second which was the airs first stroke than it did in the first when the string drove it forwards And thus successively in every moment of time as the causes grow weaker weaker by the encrease of resistance in the air before and by the decrease of force in the subsequent air so the motion must be slower and slower till it come to pure cessation As for Galileu's second argument that the air has little power over heavy things and therfore he will not allow it to be the cause of continuing forced motions in dense bodies I wish he could as well have made experience what velocity of motion a mans breath might produce in an heavy bullet lying upon an even hard and slippery plain for a table would be too short as he did how admirable great a one it produced in pendants hanging in the air and I doubt not but he would have granted it as powerful in causing horizontal motions as he found it in the undulations of his pendants Which nevertheless sufficiently convince how great a power air has over heay bodies As likewise the experience of wind-guns assures us that air duly applyed is able to give greater motion to heavy bodies than to light ones For how can a straw or feather be imagin'd possibly to fly with half the violence as a bullet of lead doth out of one of those Engines And when a man sucks a bullet upwards in a perfectly bored barrel of a Gun which the bullet fits exactly as we have mention'd before with what a violence doth it follow the breath and ascend to the mouth of the barrel I remember to have seen a man that was uncautious and sucked strongly that had his foreteeth beaten out by the blow of the bullet ascending This experiment if well look'd into may peradventure make good a great part of this Doctrine we now deliver For the air pressing in behind the bullet at the touch-hole gives it its impulse upwards to which the density of the bullet being added you have the cause of its swiftness and violence for a bullet of wood or cork would not ascend so fast and so strongly and the sucking away of the air before it takes away that resistance which otherwise it would encounter with by the air lying in its way and its following the breath with so great ease shews as we touch'd before that of it self 't is indifferent to any motion when nothing presses upon it to determine it a certain way Now to Galileo's last argument that an arrow should fly faster broad-ways than long-ways if the air were cause of its motion there needs no more to be said but that the resistance of the air before hinders it as much as the impulse of the air behind helps it on So that nothing is gain'd in that regard but much is lost in respect of the figure which makes the arrow unapt to cut the air so well when it flyes broad-ways as when 't is shot long-ways and therfore the air being weakly cut so much of it cannot clap in behind the arrow and drive it on against the resistance before which is much greater Thus far with due respect and with acknowledging remembrance of the many admirable mysteries of nature which that great man hath taught the world we have taken liberty to dipute against him because this difficulty seems to have driven him against his Genius to believe that in such motions there must be allow'd a quality imprinted into the moved body to cause them which our whole scope both in this and all other occasions where like qualities are urged is to prove superfluous and ill grounded in nature and to be but meer terms to confound and leave in the dark whoever is forced to fly to them CHAP. XIII Of three sorts of violent motion Reflection Undulation and Refraction THe motion we have last spoken of because 't is ordinarily either in part or wholy contrary to gravity which is accounted the natural motion of most bodies uses to be call'd violent or forced And thus you have deliver'd you the natures and causes both of Natural and of Forced Motion yet it remains that we advertise you of some particular kinds of this forced motion which seem to be different from it but indeed are not As first the motion of Reflection which if we but consider how forced motion is made we shall find it is nothing else but a forced motion whose line whereon 't is made is as it were snapp'd in two by the encounter of a hard body For even as we see in a spout of water strongly shot against a wall the water following drives the precedent parts first to the wall and afterwards coming themselves to the wall forces them again another way from the wall so the latter parts of the torrent of air which is caused by the force that occasion'd the forced motion drives the former parts first upon the resistant body and afterwards again from it But this is more eminent in light than in any other body because light doth less rissent gravity and so observes the pure course of the stroke better than any other body from which others for the most part decline some way by reason of their weight Now the particular law of reflection is that the line incident the line of reflection must make equal angles with that line of the resistent superficies wch is in the same superficies with themselvs The demonstration wherof that great wit Renatus des Cartes hath excellently set down in his book of Dioptricks by the example of a ball strucken by a Racket against the earth or any resisting body the substance wherof is as follows The motion which we call Undulation needs no further explication for 't is manifest that since a Pendent when 't is removed from its perpendicular will restore it self therto by the natural force of gravity and that in so doing it gains a velocity and therefore cannot cease on a suddain it must needs be
Treatise So as that which remains for the present is to fall upon the discourse of such qualities as concur to the Constitution of bodies with an aim to discover whether or no they may be effected by the several mixtures of Rarity and Density in such sort as is already declared To which end we are to consider in what manner these two primary differences of bodies may be joyn'd together and what effects such conjuncton will produce As for their conjunction to deliver the nature of it entirely we must begin from the very root of it and consider how the Universe being finite which Mr. White hath demonstrated in the Second Knot of his First Dialogue there cannot be an Infinite Number of Bodies in it for Geometricians shew us how the least quantity that is may be repeated so often as would exceed any the greatest determinate quantity whatever Out of which it follows that although all the other bodies of the world were no bigger then the least quantity that can be designed yet they being infinite in number would be greater then the whole Universe that contains them Therfore of necessity there must be some least body or rather some least size of bodies Which in compounded bodies is not to be expected for their least parts being compounded must needs include compounding parts less then themselvs We must then look for this least size of bodies in the Elements which of all bodies are the simplest And among them we must pitch upon that wherein is greatest divisibility which consequently is divided into least parts that is Fire So as we may conclude that among all the bodies in the world that which of its own nature hath an aptitude to be least must be Fire Now the least body of fire be it never so little is yet divisible into less What is it then that makes it be one To determine this we must resort to the nature of Quantity whose formal notion and essence is To be divisible which signifies that many may be made of it But that of which many may be made is not yet many out of this very reason that many may be made of it But what is not many is one Therfore what hath quantity is by mere having quantity actually and formally as well one as it hath the possibility of being made many and consequently the least body of fire by having quantity has those parts which might be many actually one And this is the first conjunction of parts that is to be consider'd in the composition of bodies which though it be not an actual joyning of actual parts yet is a formal conjunction of what may be many In the next place we may consider how seeing the least bodies that are be of fire it must needs follow that the least parts of the other Elements must be bigger then they And consequently the possible parts of those least parts of the other Elements must have something to conserve them together more then is found in fire And this because Elements are purely distinguish'd by rarity and densiy is straight concluded to be density And thus we have found that as quantity is the cause of the possible parts being one so density is the cause of the like parts sticking together which appears in the very definition of it for to be less divisible which is the notion of density speaks a resistance to division or sticking together Now let us examine how two parts of different Elements are joyn'd together to make a compound In this conjunction we find both the affects we have already touch'd for two such parts must make one and moreover they must have some resistance to divisibility The first of these effects we have already assign'd to the nature of quantity And it being the formal effect of quantity it cannot wherever it is found have any other formal cause then quantity wherfore either the two little parts of different Elements do not become one body or if they do we must agree 't is by the nature of quantity which works as much in Heterogeneal parts as Homogeneal And it must needs do so because Rarity and Density which are the proper differences of Quantity cannot change the common nature of Quantity their Genus which by being so to them must be univocally in them both And this effect comes precisely from the pure notion of the Genus and consequently must be seen as well in two parts of different natures as in two parts of the same nature but in parts of the same nature which once were two and and afterwards become one there can be no other reason why they are one then the very same for which those parts that were never separated but that may be separated are likewise one and this most evidently is the nature of quantity Experience seems to confirm thus much when pouring water out of a basin some of it will remain sticking to the sides of the metal For if the quantity of the basin and of the water had not been one and the same by its own nature the water considering the pliableness of its parts would certainly have come all away and glided from the unevenness of the basin by the attractive unity of its whole and would have preserv'd the unity of its quantity within it self rather then by sticking to the basin have suffer'd division in its own quantity which we are sure was one whiles the water was altogether in the basin But that both the basin and the water making but one quantity and a division being unavoydable in that one quantity it was indifferent in regard of the quantity consider'd singly by it self where this division should be made whether in the parts of the basin or in the parts of the water and then the other circumstances determin'd it in that part of the water which was nearest to the joyning of it with the basin The second effect which was resistance to divisibility we assign'd to density And of that same cause must also depend the like effect in this case of the sticking together of the two parts of different Elements when they are joyn'd to one another For if the two parts whereof one is dense the other rare doe not exceed the quantity of some other part of one Homogeneal rare Element for the dividing wherof such a determinate force and no less can suffice then seeing that the whole composed of these two parts is not so divisible as the whole consisting of that one part the assign'd force will not be able to divide them Wherefore 't is plain that if the rare part had been joyn'd to another rare part instead of the dense one it is joyn'd to it had been more easily dividable from that then now it is from the dense part And by consequence it stickes more closely to the dense part then it would to another of its own nature Out of what we have said a step is made us to understand why
proportion over air and water And this I conceive produces those substāces which we may term co-agulated juyces and which the Latines call succi concreti whos 's first origine seems to have been liquours that have been afterwards dried by the force either of heat or cold Of this nature are all kind of Salts Niters Sulfurs and divers sorts of Bitumens All which easily bewray the relicks and effects of fire left in them some more some less according to their degrees And thus we have in general deduced from their causes the complexions of those bodies whereof the bulk of the world subjected to our use consists and which serve for the production and nourishment of living creatures both animal and vegetable Not so exactly I confess nor so particularly as the matter in it self or as a Treatise confined to that subject would require yet sufficiently for our intent In the performance whereof if more accurate searchers of nature shall find that we have peradventure been mistaken in the minute delivering of some particular bodies complexion their very correction I dare boldly say will justifie our principal scope which is to shew that all the great variety we see among bodies arises out of the commixion of the First Qualities and of the Elements for they will not be able to correct us upon any other grounds then those we have laid As may easily be perceiv'd if we cast a summary view upon the qualities of compounded bodies All which we shall find to spring out of rarity and density and to savour of their origine for the most manifest qualities of bodies may be reduced to certain pairs opposite to one another As namely some are liquid and flowing others are consistent some are soft others hard some are fatty viscuous and smooth others lean gritty and rough some gross others subtile some tough others brittle and the like Of which the liquid the soft the fat and the viscuous are so manifestly derived from rarity that we need not take any further pains to trace out their origine and the like is of their contraries from the contrary cause to wit of those bodies that are consistent hard lean and gritty all which evidently spring from density As for smoothness we have already shew'd how that proceeds from an airy or oily nature and by consequence from a certain degree of rarity And therefore roughness the contrary of it must proceed from a proportionable degree of density Toughness is also a kind of ductility which we have reduced to watriness that is to another degree of rarity and consequently brittleness must arise from the contrary degree of density Lastly grossness and subtilness consist in a difficulty or facility to be divided into small parts which appears to be nothing else but a certain determination of rarity and density And thus we see how the several complexions of bodies are reduced to the four Elements that compound them and the qualities of those bodies to the two primary differences of quantitative things by which the elements are diversified And out of this discourse it will be evident that these complexions and qualities though in diverse degrees must of necessity be found wherever there is any variation in bodies For seeing there can be no variation in bodies but by rarity and density and that the pure degrees of rarity and density make heat cold moisture and driness and in a word the four Elements 't is evident that wherever there is variety of bodies there must be the four Elements though peradventure far unlike these miked bodies which we call Elements And again because these Elements cannot consist without motion and by motion they of necessity produce Mixed bodies and forge out those Qualities which we come from explicating it must by like necessity follow that wherever there is any variety of active and passive bodies there mixed bodies likewise must reside of the same kinds and be indued with qualities of the like natures as those we have treated of though peradventure such as are in other places of the world remote from us may be in a degree far different from ours Since then it cannot be denied but that there must be notable variety of active and passive bodies wherever there is light neither can it be denied but that in all those Great Bodies from which light is reflected to us there must be a like variety of complexions and qualities and of bodies temper'd by them as we find here in the Orb we live in Which Systeme how different it is from that which Aristotle and the most of the School have deliver'd us as well in the evidencies of the proofs for its being so as in the position and model of it I leave to the prudent Readers to consider and judge Out of what has been already said 't is not hard to discover in what manner the composition of bodies is made In effecting which the main hinge wheron that motion depends is fire or heat as it likewise is in all other motions whatever Now because the composition of a mixed body proceeds from the action of one simple body or element upon the others it will not be amiss to declare by some example how this work passes for that purpose let us examine how fire or heat works upon his fellows By what we have formerly deliver'd 't is clear that fire streaming out from its centre and diffusing it self abroad so as to fill the circumference of a larger circle it must needs follow that the beams of it are most condens'd and compacted together near the centre and the further they stream from the centre the more thin and rarified they must grow yet this is with such moderation as we cannot any where discern that one beam doth not touch another and therfore the distances must be very smal Now let us suppose that fire happens to be in a viscuous and tenacious body and then consider what will happen in this case of one side the fire spreads it self abroad on the other side the parts of the tenacious body being moist as I have formerly determin'd their edges on all hands will stick fast to the dry beams of the fire that pass between them Then they stretching wider and wider from one another must needs draw with them the parts of that tenacious body which stick to them and stretch them into a greater widness or largness then they enjoy'd before from whence it follows that seeing there is no other body near therabouts but they two either there must be a vacuity left or else the tenacious body must hold and fill a greater space then it did before and consequently be more rare Contrariwise of any of the other elements be stronger then fire the denser Elements break off from their continu'd stream the little parts of fire which were gotten into their greater parts and sticking on all sides about them so enclose them that they have no more semblance of fire and
if afterwards by any accident there comes a great compression they force them to lose their natural rarity and to become some other Element Thus it fares with fire both in acting and suffering And the same course we have in both these regards expressed of it passes likewise in the rest of the Elements to the proportion of their contrarieties Hence it follows that when fire meets with humidity in any body it divides and subtilises it and disperses it gently and in a kind of equal manner through the whole body it is in if the operation of it be a natural and a gentle one and so drives it into other parts which at the same time it prepares to receive it by subtilising likewise those parts And thus moderate fire makes humour in very smal parts to incorporate it self in an even or uninform manner with the dry parts it meets with which being done whether the heat afterwards continues or the cold succeeds in lieu of it the effect must of necessity be that the body thus compos'd be bound up and fastn'd more or less according to the proportion of the Matter 't is made of of the Agents that work upon it and of the Time they employ about it This is every day seen in the ripening of fruits and in other frequent works as well of art as of nature and is so obvious and sensible to any reasonable observation that t is needless to enlarge my self much upon this subject Only it will not be amiss for examples sake to consider the progress of it in the composing or augmenting of metals or earths of divers sorts First heat as we have said draws humour out of all the bodies it works on then if the extracted humour be in quantity and the steams of it happen to come together in some hollow place fit to assemble them into greater parts they are condens'd and fall down in a liquid and running body These streams being corporified the body resulting out of them makes it self in the earth a channel to run in and if there be any loose parts in the channel they mingle themselvs with the running liquor and though there be none such yet in time liquor it self loosens the channel all about and imbibes into its own substance the parts it raises And thus all of them compacted together roll along till they tumble into some low place out of which they cannot so easily get to wander further When they are thus settled they the more easily receive into them and retain such heat as is every where to be met withal because it is diffused more or less through the earth This heat if it be sufficient digests it into a solid body the temper of cold likewise concurring in its measure to this effect And according to the variety of the substances wherof the first liquor was made and which it afterwards drew along with it the body that results out of them is diversifyed In confirmation of all which they that deal in Mines tell us they use to find metalls oftentimes mingled with stones as also coagulated juyces with both and earths of divers natures with all three and they with it and one with another among themselvs And that sometimes they find the mines not yet consolidated and digested throughly into metal when by their experience knowing after how many years they will be ripe they shut them up again till then Now if the hollow place wherin the body stay'd which at first was liquid and rolling be not at once filled by it but it takes up only part of it and the same liquor continues afterwards to flow thither then this body is augmented and groweth bigger and bigger And though the liquors should come at several times yet they become not therfore two several bodies but both grow into one body for the wet parts of the adventititious liquor mollifie the sides of the body already baked and both of them being of a like temper and cognation they easily stick and grow together Out of this discourse it follows evidently that in all sorts of compounded bodies whatever there must of necessity be actually comprised sundry parts of divers natures for otherwise they would be but so many pure degrees of rarity and density that is they would be but so many pure Elements and each of them have but one determinate virtue or operation CHAP. XV. Of the dissolution of mixed bodies THus much for composition of Bodies Their dissolution is made three wayes either by fire or by water or by some outward violence We will begin with examining how this last is done To which end we may consider that the unity of any body consisting in the connexion of its parts 't is evident the force of motion if it be exercised upon them must of necessity separate them as we see inbreaking cutting filing drawing asunder and the like All these motions because they are done by gross bodies require great parts to work upon are easily discern'd how they work so that it is not difficult to find the reason why some hard bodies break easily and others with much ado The first of which are called brittle the others tough For if you mark it all breaking requires that bending should precede which on the one side compresses the parts of the bended body and condenses them into a lesser room then they possess'd before and on the other side stretches them out and makes them take up more place This requires some fluid or moveable substance to be within the body else it could not be done for without such help the parts could not remove Therfore such hard bodies as have most fluid parts in them are most flexible that is are toughest and those whcih have fewest though they become therby hardest to have impression made upon them yet if the force be able to do it they rather yield to break then to bend and thence are called brittle Out of this we may infer that some bodies may be so suddenly bent as that therby they break afunder wheras if they were leisurely and gently dealt withal they would take what play one desires And likewise that there is no body be it never so brittle and hard but it will bend a little and indeed more then one would expect if it be wrought upon with time dexterity for there is none but contains in it some liquid parts more or less even glass and brick Upon which occasion I remember how once in a great storm of wind I saw the high slender brick Chimneys of the Kings house at S. James's one winter when the Court lay there bend from the wind like boughs and shake exceedingly and totter And at other times I have seen some very high and pointy Spire Steeples do the like And I have been assured the like of the whole pile of a high castle standing in a gullet in the course of the winde namely the castle of Wardour who have often seen it
concur to press on and hasten them and so the weight of gold being at length overcome by these two powerful Agents whereof one supplies what the other wants the whole substance of the metal is in little atomes diffused through the whole body of the water But this is not truly a dissolution or separation of the substantial parts of Gold one from another 't is only a corrosion which brings it into a subtile powder when the water salts are separated from it much like what filing though far smaller or grinding of leaf gold upon a porphyre stone may reduce it into for neither the parts of the water nor of the fire that make themselvs a way into the body of the gold are small and subtile enough to get between the parts that compose the essence of it and therefore all they can attain to is to divide it only in its quantity or bulk not in the composition of its nature Yet I intend not to deny but this is possible to be arrived to either by pure fire duly apply'd or by some other assistance as peradventure by some kind of Mercury which being of a nearer cognation to Metals then any other Liquor is may happily have a more powerful ingression into gold then any other body whatever and being withal very subject to rarefaction may after it is inter'd so perfectly penetrate the gold as it may separate every least part of it and so reduce it into an absolute calx But in this place I explicate no more then what ordinarily passes leaving the mysteries of this Art to those who profess it To go on then with what we have in hand Lead hath abundance of water overmingled with its earth as appears by its easie yielding to be bent any way and by its quiet standing bent in the same position that the force which bowed it leaves it in And therefore the liquid parts of Lead are easily separated from its dry and earthy ones and when it is melted the very shaking of it causes the gross parts to descend and many liquid ones to flie away with the fire so that suddenly it is thus converted into powder But this powder is gross in respect of other metals unless this operation be often reiterated or the fire more powerfully apply'd then what is just enough to bring the body of the Lead into powder The next consideration of bodies that fire works upon is of such as it divides into Spirits Salts Oyls Waters or Phlegms and Earth Now these are not pure and simple parts of the dissolv'd body but new compounded bodies made of the first by the operation of heat As Smoak is not pure water but water and fire together and therefore becomes not water but by cooling that is by the fire flying away from it So likewise those Spirits Salts Oyls and the rest are but degrees of things which fire makes of diverse parts of the dissolved body by separating them one from another and incorporating it self with them And so they are all of them compounded of the four Element and are further resolvable into them Yet I intend not to say that there are not originally in the body before its dissolution some loose parts which have the properties of these bodies that are made by the fire in the dissolving of it For seeing that nature works by the like instruments as art uses she must need in her excesses and defects produce like bodies to what art doth in dissolution which operation of art is but a kind of excess in the progress of nature But my meaning is that in such dissolution there are more of these parts made by the working of fire then were in the body before Now because this is the natural and most ordinary dissolution of things let us see in particular how it is done Suppose then that fire were in a convenient manner apply'd to a body that hath all sorts of parts in it and our own discourse will tell us the first effect it works will be that as the subtile parts of fire divide and pass through that body they will adhere to the most subtile parts in it which being most agile and least bound and incorporated to the bowels of the body and lying as 't were loosly scatter'd in it the fire will carry them away with it These will be the first that are separated from the main body which being retain'd in a fit receiver will by the coldness of the circumdant air grow outwardly cool themselves and become first a dew upon the sides of the glass and then still as they grow cooler condense more and more till at length they fall down congeal'd into a palpable liquor which is composed as you see of the hotest parts of the body mingled with the fire that carried them out and therfore this liquor is very inflamable and easily turn'd into actual fire as you see all Spirits and aquae ardentes of vegetables are The hot and loose parts being extracted and the fire continuing and encreasing those that will follow next are such as though they be not of themselvs loose yet are easiest to be made so and are therfore most separable These must be humide and those little dry parts which are incorporated with the overflowing humide ones in them for no parts that we can arrive to are of one pure simple nature but all mixed and composed of the four Elements in some proportion must be held together with such gross glew as the fire may easily penetrate and separate them And then the humide parts divided into little atoms stick to the lesser ones of the fire which by their multitude of number and velocity of motion supplying what they want of them in bulk carry them away with them And thus these Phlegmatick parts flie up with the fire and are afterwards congeal'd into an insipide water which if it have any savour 't is because the first ardent spirits are not totally separated from it but some few of them remain in it and give some little life to the whole body of that otherwise flat liquor Now those parts which the fire separates next from the remaining body after the fiery and watry ones are carryed away must be such as it can work upon and therfore must abound in humidity But since they stir not till the watry ones are gone 't is evident they are composed of many dry parts strongly incorporated and very subtilly mixed with the moist ones and that both of them are exceeding small and so closely and finely knit together that the fire hath much ado to get between and cut the thrids that tie them together and therfore they require a very great force of fire to carry them up Now the composition of these shewes them to be Aerial and together with the fire that is mingled with them they congeal into that consistence which we call Oyl Lastly it cannot be otherwise but that the fire in all this while of
continual application to the body it thus anatomises hath harden'd as it were rosted some parts into such greatness and driness as they will not flie nor can be carried up with any moderate heat But great quantity of fire being mingled with the subtiler parts of his baked earth makes them very pungent and acrimonious in tast so that they are of the nature of ordinary Salt and so called and by the help of water may easily be separated from the more gross parts which then remain a dead and useless earth By this discourse 't is apparent that fire has been the instrument which hath wrought all these parts of an entire body into the forms they are in for whiles it carried away the fiery parts it swel'd the watry ones and whiles it lifted up them it digested the Aerial parts and whiles it drove up the Oyle it baked the earth and salt Again all these retaining for the most part the proper nature of the substance from whence they are extracted 't is evident that the substance is not dissolv'd for so the nature of the whole would be dissolv'd and quite destroy'd extinguish'd in every part but that onely some parts containing the whole substance or rather the nature of the whole substance in them are separated fromo ther parts that have likewise the same nature in them The third instrument for the separation and dissolution of bodies is Water whose proper matter to work upon is Salt and it serves to supply what the fire could not perform which is the separation of the salt from the earth in calcined bodies All the other parts fire was able to sever but in these he hath so baked the little humidity he hath left in them with their much earth as he cannot divide them any further and so though he incorporates himself with them yet he can carry nothing away with him If then pure water be put upon that chalk the subtilest dry parts of it easily joyn to the supervenient moysture and sticking close to it draw it down to them But because they are the lighter it happens to them as when a man in a boat pulls the land to him that comes not to him but he removes himself and his boat to it so these ascend in the water as they dissolve And the water more and more penetrating them and by addition of its parts making the humidity which glews their earthy parts together greater and greater makes a wider and wider separation between those little earthy parts and so imbues the whole body of the water with them into which they are dispersed in little atomes Those that are of biggest bulk remain lowest in the water and in the same measure as their quantities dissolve into less and less they ascend higher and higher till at length the water is fully replenish'd with them and they are diffused through the whole body of it whiles the more gross and heavy earthy parts having nothing in them to make a present combination between them and the water fall down to the bottome and settle under the water in dust In which because earth alone predominates in a very great excess we can expect no other virtue to be in it but that which is proper to mere earth to wit driness and weight Which ordinary Alchimists look not after and therfore call it Terra damnata but others find a fixing quality in it by which they perform very admirable operations Now if you prove the impregnated water from the Terra damnata and then evaporate it you will find a pure white substance remaining Which by its bulk shews it self to be very earthy and by its pricking and corrasive taste will inform you much fire is in it and by its easie dissolution in a moist place that water had a great share in the production of it And thus the salts of bodies are made and extracted Now as water dissolves salt so by the incorporation and virtue of that corrosive substance it doth more then salt it self can do for having gotten acrimony and more weight by the mixture and dissolution of salt in it it makes it self away into solide bodies even into metalls as we see in brass and iron which are easily rusted by salt dissolving upon them And according as the salts are stronger so this corrasive virtue encreases in them even so much as neither silver nor gold are free from their eating quality But they as well as the rest are divided into most small parts and made to swim in water in such sort as we have explicated above and wherof every ordinary Alchymist teaches the practise But this is not all salts help as well to melt hard bodies and metalls as to corrode them For fome fusible salts flowing upon them by the heat of the fire and others dissolv'd by the steam of the metal that incorporates with them as soon as they are in flux mingle with the natural juice of the metals and penetrate deeper then without them the fire could do and swell them and make them fit to run These are the principal ways of the two last instruments in dissolving of bodies taking each of them by it self But there remains one more of very great importance as well in the works of nature as of art in which both the former are joyned and concur and that is putrefaction Whose way of working is by gentle heat and moisture to wet and pierce the body it works upon wherby 't is made to swel and the hot parts of it being loosen'd they are at length drunk up and drown'd in the moist ones from whence by fire they are easily separated as we have already declared and those moist parts afterwards leaving it the substance remaines dry and falls in pieces for want of the glew that held it together CHAP. XVI An explication of certain Maxims touching the operations and qualities of bodies and whether the Elements be found pure in any part of the World OUt of what we have determin'd concerning the natural actions of bodies in their making and destroying one another 't is easie to understand the right meaning of some terms and the true reason of some maxims much used in the Schools As first when Philosophers attribute to all sorts of corporeal Agents a Sphere of Activity The sense of that manner of expression in fire appears plainly by what we have already declared of the nature and manner of operation of that Element And in like manner if we consider how the force of cold consists in a compression of the body that is made cold we may perceive that if in the cooled body there be any subtile parts which can break forth from the rest such compression wil make them do so Especially if the compression be of little parts of the compressed body within themselvs as well as of the outward bulk of the whole body round about For at first the compression of such causes in the body
change of place we must call to mind how two dense bodies moving one against the other each of them bear before them some little quantity of a rarer body immediately joyn'd to them and consequently these more rare bodies must be the first to feel the power of the dense bodies and receive impressions from their motions each of them by the opposite rare body which like an Huissier goes before to make way for his following Master that obliges him to this service Now when these rare Ushers have strugled a while like the first lightly armed Ranks of two Armies in the interjacent Field between their main Battails that follow them close at the heels they must at the length yield when they are overborn by a greater weight then they can sustain and then they recoil back as it were to save themselves by getting in among the files of the dense bodies that drove them on Which not opening to admit them and yet they still flying violently from the mastering force that pursues them they presse so hard upon what at the first pressed them on as notwithstanding their density and strength they force them to retire back for unless they do so they are not of the number of those that work upon one another And this retiring is either on both sides or but of one side If both then 't is evident how each of them is an Agent and each of them a sufferer each of them overcoming his opposite in such sort as himself likewise receives blows and loss But if only one of the dense bodies be so shocked as to recoil back then that only suffers in its body and the other suffers only in its vertue that is in the air or other rare body it sends before it which it drives with such a violence that it masters and quells the opposition of the other body before it can reach to shake the dense body before which it runs Yet that rare body must be pressed and broken into in some measure by the incounter of the other which though never so weak yet makes some resistance but much more when it comes to grapple with the dense body it self and so between them it is wounded and infeebled like those souldiers that first enter a Breach in a Town from whence when they have driven the enemy they pursue him to the Cittadel and force him from thence too and so how maimed so ever they prove they make a free and easie way without resistance for the whole body of their army to follow them and take quiet possession of that which cost them so much to win And thus we see how it may happen that one of these moving bodies doth not suffer so much as to be stay'd in its journey much less to be driven back And yet the other body at the same time work in some measure upon it by working upon what is next to it which recoiling against it must needs make some impression upon it since there can be no opposition but must have some effect Now this impression or effect though it be not perceptible by causing a contrary motion yet it must needs infeeble the virtue of the conquering Agent and deaden the celerity of its motion And thus it is evident that in all pure local motions of corporeal Agents every one of them must in some proportion suffer in acting and in suffering must act And what we have said of this kind of action may easily be apply'd to the other where the effect of local motion is design'd by a particular name as it is in the examples we gave of heating and cooling And in that the proceeding will appear to be the very same as in this For if fire heats water the water reacts again either upon the fire and cools it if it be immediate to it or else upon the interjacent air if it be at a distance from the fire And so the air is in some measure cooled by the cold atomes that issue from the water whose compass or sphere of activity being lesser then the fire 's they cannot cool so far off as others can heat but where they a rrive they give their proportion of cold in the very midst of the others army of fiery atomes notwithstanding their multitude and violence According to which doctrine our Countryman Suisseth's argument that in the Schools is held insoluble hath not so much as any semblance of the least difficult For 't is evident that such atomes of fire and water as we determine heat and cold to be may pass and croud by one another into the subjects they are sent to by divers little streams without hindring one another as we have declared of air and light and each of them be receiv'd in their own nature temper by the same subject though sense can judge only according to which of them is predominant and according to the proportion of its superiority Upon which occasion we cannot chuse but note how the doctrine of qualities is not only unable to give account of the ordinary and plain effects of nature but also uses to end in clear impossibilities and contradictions if it be driven far as this argument of Suisseth shews and many others of the like nature A fourth position among Philosophers is that Some Notions admit the denominations of Intention and remission but that others do not The reason of which we shall clearly see if we but consider how these terms of intention and remission do but express more or less of the thing that is said to be intended or remitted for the nature of more and less implyes a latitude and divisibility and therefore cannot agree with the nature of such things as consist in an indivisible being As for example to be a whole or an equal cannot be sometimes more sometimes less for they consist in such a rigorous indivisible being that if the least part imaginable be wanting it is no longer a whole if there be the least excess between two things they are no longer equal but in some other proportion then of equality in regard of one another And hence it is that Aristotle teaches us that Substance and the species of Quantity do not admit of intention and remission but that Quality doth For first in Substance we know that the signification of this word is that which makes a thing be what it is as is evident by our giving it for an answer to the question what a thing is And therfore if there were any divisibility in Substance it would be in what the thing is and consequently every division following that divisibility would make the thing another what that is another thing and so the Substance that 's pretended to be changed by intension or remission would not be divided as is supposed but would cease to be and another substance would succeed in the room of it Wherby you see that every mutation in Substance makes a new thing and that more and
less in quiddity cannot be pronounced of the same thing Likewise in Quantity 't is clear that its Specieses consist in an indivsible For as in Numbers ten Lions for example or ten Elephants are no more in regard of multitude then ten Fleas or ten Motes in the Sun and if you add or take any thing from ten it is no more ten but some other number so likewise in Continued extension a span an ell an ounce or any other measure whatever ceaseth to be a span c. if you add to it or diminish from it the least quantity imaginable And peradventure the same is also of Figures as of a Sphere a Cube a Circle a Square c. though they be in the rank of Qualites But if we consider such Qualities as Heat Cold Moisture Driness Softness Hardness Weight Lightness and the like we shall find that they may be in any body somtims more somtimes less according as the excess of any Element or mixture is greater in it at one time then at another and yet the body in which these qualities are intended or remitted remain still with the same denomination As when Dirt continues still soft though sometimes it be less soft other whiles softer and wax remains figurable whether it be melted or congealed and wood is still hot though it lose or gain some degrees of heat But such intention in any subject whatever hath its determinate limits that it cannot pass for when more of that quality which we say is intended that is more of the atoms of the active body is brought into the body that suffers the intension then its complexion can brook it resigns its nature to their violence and becomes a new thing such an one as they are pleased to make it As when wood with extremity of heating that is with bringing into it so many atoms of fire that the fire is wronger in it then its own nature is converted into fire smoak water and ashes and nothing remains of the nature of wood But before we end this Chapter we may remember how in the of the Fourth we remitted a question concerning the Existence of the Elements that is whether in any places of the world there were any pure elements either in bulk or in little parts as being not ready to resolve it till we had declared the manner of working of bodies one upon another Here then will be a fit place to determine that out of what we have discoursed concerning the actions wherby bodies are made and corrupted For considering the universal action of fire that runs through all the bodies we have commerce withal by reason of the Suns influence into them and operation upon them with his light and beams which reach far and near and looking upon the effects we have shew'd follow thence 't is manifest there cannot be any great quantity of any body whatever in which fire is not intrinsecally mixed And on the other side we see that where fire is once mixed 't is very hard to separate it totally from thence Again we see it is impossible that pure fire should be conserved without being adjoyn'd to some other body both because of its violent nativity still streaming forth with a great impetuosity as also because it is so easily overcome by any obsident body when it is dilated And therfore we may safely conclude that no simple Element can consist in any great quantity in this course of nature we live in and take a survey of Neither doth it appear to what purpose nature should have placed any such storehouses of Simples seeing she can make all needful complexions by the dissolutions of mixed bodies into other mixed bodies favouring of the nature of the Elements without needing their purity to begin upon But on the other side it is as evident that the Elements must remain pure in every compounded body in such extreme small parts as we use to call atoms For if they did not the variety of bodies would be nothing else but so many degrees of rarity and density or somany pure Homogeneal Elements and not bodies composed of heterogeneal parts and consequently would not be able to shew that variety of parts which we see in bodies nor could produce the complicated effects which proced from them And accordingly we are sure that the least parts which our senses can arrive to discover have many varieties in them even so much that a whole living creature whose organical parts must needs be of exceeding different natures may be so little as to our eyes to seem indivisible we not distinguishing any difference of parts in it without the help of a multiplying glass as in the least kind of mites and in worms pick'd out of childrens hands we daily experience So as it is evident that no sensible part can be unmingled But then again when we call to mind how we have shew'd that the qualities which we find in bodies result out of the composition and mixtion of the Elements we must needs conclude that they must of necessity remain in their own essences in the mixed body and so out of the whole discourse determine that they are not there in any visible quantity but in those least atoms that are too subtile for our senses to discern Which position we do not understand so Metaphysically as to say that their Substantial form remain actually in the mixed body but only that their accidental qualities are found in the compound remitting that other question to Metaphysicians those spiriâ—al Anatomists to decide CHAP. XVII Of Rarefaction and Condensation the two first motions of particular bodies OUr intention in this discourse concerning the natures and motions of bodies aiming no further then at the discovery of what is or may be done by corporeal Agents thereby to determin what is the work of Immaterial and Spiritual Substances it cannot be expected at our hands that we should deliver here an entire and complete body of Natural Philosophy But only take so much of it in our way as is needful to carry us with truth and evidence to our journeys end It belongs not then to us to meddle with those sublime contemplations which search into the nature of the vast Universe and determine the unity and limitation of it and shew by what strings and upon what pins and wheels and hinges the whole World moves and from thence ascend to an awful acknowledgment and humble admiration of the Primary Cause from whence and of which both the being of it and the beginning of the first motion and the continuance of all others proceed and depend Nor indeed vvould it be to any purpose for any man to sail in this Ocean and begin a new voyage of navigation upon it unless he were assured he had ballast enough in his Ship to make her sink deep into the water and carry her steddily through those unruly waves and that he were furnish'd with skill provision sufficient to go through without
either losing his course by steering after a wrong compass or being forced back again with short and obscure relations of discoveries since others that went out before him are return'd with a large account to such as are able to understand and sum it up Which surely our learned Countryman and my best and most honoured Friend and to whom of all men living I am most obliged for to him I ow that little which I know and what I have and shall set down in all this discourse is but a few sparks kindled by me at his great fire has both profoundly and accutely and in every regard judiciously performed in his Dialogues of the World Our task then in a lower strain and more proportionate to so weak shoulders is to look no further then among those bodies we converse with Of which having declared by what course and Engines Nature governs their common motions that are found even in the Elements and from thence are derived to all bodies composed of them we intend now to consider such motions as accompany divers particular bodies and are much admired by whoever understands not the the causes of them To begin from the easiest and most connexed with the actions of the Elements the handsel of our labour will light upon the motions of Rarefaction and Condensation as they are the passions of mixed bodies And first for Rarefaction we may remember how it proceeds originally from fire and depends of heat as is declared in the former Chapter and wherever we find Rarefaction we may be confident the body which suffers it is not without fire working upon it From hence we may gather that when the Air imprison'd in a baloon or bladder swells against what contains it and stretches its case and seeks to break out this effect must proceed from fire or heat though we see not the fire working either within the very bowels of the air or without by pressing upon what contains it and so making it self a way to it And that this latter way is able to work this effect may be convinced by the contrary effect from a contrary cause for ' take a bladder stretch'd out to its greatest extent by air shut up within it and hang it in a cold place you will see it presently contract it self into a less room and the bladder will grow wrinckled and become too big for the air within it But for immediate proof of this position we see that the addition of a very smal degree of heat rarifies the air in a Weather-glass the air receiving the impression of heat sooner then water and so makes it extend it self into a greater place and consequently it presses upon the water and forces it down into a less room then formerly it possessed And likewise we see Quicksilver and other liquors if they be shut up in glasses close stop'd and set in sufficient heat and a little is sufficient for this effect will swell and fill their glasses and at the last break them rather then not find a way to give themselvs more room which is then grown too straight in the glass by reason of the rarefaction of the liquors by the fire working upon them Now again that this effect may be wrought by the inward heat that is inclosed in the bowels of the substance thus shut up both reason and experience assure us For they teach us that if a body which is not extremely compacted but that by its loosness is easily divisible into little parts such a one as Wine or other spiritual liquors be inclosed in a vessel the little atoms that perpetually move up and down in every space of the whole World making their way through every body will set on work the little parts in the Wine for example to play their game so that the hot and light parts if they be many not enduring to be compressed and kept in by the heavie and cold ones seek to break out with force and till they can free themselvs from the dense ones that would imprison them they carry them along with them and make them swell out as well as themselvs Now if they be kept in by the vessel so that they have not play enough they drive the dense ones like so many little hammers or wedges against the sides of it and at length break it and so make themselvs way to a larger room But if they have vent the more fiery hot spirits fly away and leave the other grosser parts quiet and at rest On the other side if the hot and light parts in a liquor be not many nor very active and the vessel be so ful that the parts have not free scope to remove and make way for one another there will not follow any great effect in this kind as we see in Bottle Beer or Ale that works little unless there be some space left empty in the bottle And again if the vessel be very much too big for the liquor in it the fiery parts find room first to swel up the heavie ones and at length to get out from them though the vessel be close stopped for they have scope enough to float up and down between the surface of the liquor and the roof of the vessel And this is the reason that if a little beer or small wine be left long in a great cask be it never so close stop'd it will in time grow dead And then if at the opening of the bung after the cask hath been long unstir'd you hold a candle close to it you shall at the instant see a flash of flame environing the vent Which is no other thing but the subtile spirits that parting from the beer or wine have left it dead and flying abroad as soon as they are permited are set on fire by the flame they meet with in their journey as being more combustible because more subtile then that spirit of wine which is kept in form of liquor and yet that likewise though much grosser is set on fire by the touch of flame And this happens not only to Wine and Beer or Ale but even to water As dayly experience shews in the East Indian Ships that having been five or six yeers at Sea when they open some of their casks of Thames Water in their return homewards for they keep that water till the last as being their best and most durable and that grows lighter and purer by the often purifyings through violent motions in storms every one of which makes new gross and earthy parts fall down to the bottom and other volatile ones ascend to the top a flame is seen about their bungs if a candle be near as we said before of wine And to proceed with confirming this doctrine by further experience we dayly see that the little parts of heat being agitated and brought into motion in any body enter and pierce into other parts and incorporate themselvs with them and set them on fire if they be capable
therof as we see in wet Hay or Flax laid together in great quantity And if they be not capable of taking fire then they carry them with them to the outside when they can transport them no further part flies away other part staies with them as we see in new Bear or Ale and in must of wine in which a substance usually call'd the mother is wrought up to the top Which in wine wil at the last be converted into Tartar when the spirits that are very volatile are flown away and leave those parts from whence they have evaporated more gross and earthy then the others where the grosser and subtiler parts continue still mixed but in Beer or rather in ale this mother which in them we call Barm wil continue longer in the same consistence and with the same qualities for the spirits of it are not so fiery that they must presently leave the body they have incorporated themselvs with nor are hot enough to bake it into a hard consistence And therfore Bakers make use of it to raise their bread which neither will it do unless it be kept from cold both which are evident signs that it works in force of heat and consequently that it continues still a hot and light substance And again we see that after wine or beer hath wrought once a violent motion wil make it work a new As is daily seen in great lightnings and in thunder and by much rocking of them For such motion rarifies and consequently heats them partly by separating the little parts of the liquor which were before as glew'd together therfore lay quietly but now by their pulling a sunder and the liquors growing therby more loose then it was they have freedom to play up and down and partly by beating one part against another which breaks and divides them into lesser atomes and so brings some of them into the state of fire which you may remember is nothing else but a body brought into such a degree of littleness and rarity of its parts And this is the reason why such hard and dry bodies as have an unctuous substance in them are by motion either easily set on fire or at least fire is easily goten out of them As happens in flints and divers other stones which yields fire when they are strucken and if presently after you smel to them you shall perceive an odour of brimstone and burning which is a certain signe that the motion converted into fire the natural Brimstone that was mingled withthe Flint whose denser parts were grown cold and so stuck to the stone And in like manner the Ivywood and divers others as also the Indian Canes which from thence are called Firecanes being rub'd with some other stick of the same nature if they be first very dry will of themselvs set on fire and the like will happen to Coach-wheels in in the Summer if they be overheated with motion To conclude our discourse of Rarefaction we may look a little into the power and efficacity of it which is no where to be seen so clearly as in fire And as fire is the general cause of rarefaction so is it of all bodies the most rarified And therfore 't is no marvel if its effects be the greatest that are in nature seeing 't is the proper operation of the most active Element The wonderful force of it we daily see in Thunder in Guns in Granado's in Mines of which continual experience as well as several Histories witnesse little less then miracles Leaving them to the remarks of curious persons we wil only look into the way by which so main effects proceed from causes that appear so slender 'T is evident that fire as we have said before dilates it self spherically as nature shews us manifestly in bubbles of boyling water and Milk and generally of such substances as are of a viscuous composition for those bubbles being round assure us that the cause which made them did equally dilate them from the Centre to all parts Now then remembring the infinite multiplication which is in fire we may conceive that when a grain of Gun-powder is turn'd into it there are so many little bubbles of a viscuous substance one backing another with great celerity as there are parts of fire more then there were of Gun-powder And if we make a computation of the number and celerity of these bubbles we shall find that although every one of them single seem to be of an inconsiderable force yet the whole number of them together will exceed the resistance of the body move or broken by them especially if we note that when hard substances have not time allow'd them to yield they break the sooner And then we shall not so much admire the extremities we see acted by these means Thus having look'd into the nature of Rarefaction and trac'd the progress of it from the motion of the Sun fire in the next place we are to examine the nature of Condensation And we shall oftentimes find it likewise aneffect of the same cause otherwise working For there being two different ways to dry any wet thing one by taking away that juyce which makes a body liquid the other by putting more drought to the wet body that it may imbibe the moisture this latter way doth as well as the former condense a body for by the close sticking of wet to dry the most part of condensation is effected in compounded bodies The first of these wayes properly and immediately proceeds from heat For heat entring into a body incorporates it self with the moist and viscuous parts it findes there as purging medicines do with humour they work on which when the stomack can no longer entertain by reason of their unruly motions in wrestling together they are both ejected grappling with one another and the place of their contention is thus by the supervenience of a guest of a contrary nature that will not stay long there purged from the superabundance of the former ones that annoy'd it Even so the fire that is greedily drunk up by the watry and viscuous parts of a compounded body and whose activity and restless nature will not endure to be long imprisoned there quickly pierces quite through the body it enters into and after a while streams out at an opposite side as fast as it enters on the side next to it and carries away with it those glewy parts it is incorporated with and by their absence leaves the body they paâ—t from dryer then at the first it was Which course we may observe in Syrops that are boyl'd to a consistence and in broths that are consumed to a jelly over which whiles they are making by the fire under them you see a great steam which is the watry parts that being incorporated with fire fly away in smoke Likewise when the sea-water is condens'd into salt you see it is an effect of the Sun or fire that exhales or boyls
salts solution As soon as you put the first salt into the water it falls down presently to the bottome of it and as the water by its humidity pierces by degrees the little joynts of this salt so the small parts of it are by little and little separated from one another and united to parts of water And so infusing more and more salt this progress will continue till every part of water is incorporated with some part of salt and then the water can no longer work of it self but in conjunction to the salt with which it is united After which if more salt of the same kind be put into the water that water so impregnated will not be able to divide it because it has not any so subtile parts left as are able to enter between the joynts of a salt so closely compacted but may be compared to that salt as a thing of equal driness with it and therfore is unapt to moisten and pierce it But if you put into this compound of salt and water another kind of salt that is of a stronger and drier nature then the former and whose parts are more grosly united then the first salt dissolv'd in the water will be able to get in betwixt the joynts of the grosser salt and divide it into little parts and will incorporate his already-composed parts of salt and water into a decompound of two salts and water till all his parts be anew impregnated with second grosser salt as before the pure water was with the first subtiler salt And so it will proceed on if proportionate bodies be joyn'd till the dissolving composition grow into a thick body To which discourse we may add that when the water is so fully impregnated with the first salt as it will receive no more remaining in the temper 't is in yet if it be heated it will then afresh dissolve more of the same kind Which shews that the reason of its giving over to dissolve is for want of having the water divided into parts little enough to stick to more salt which as in this case the fire doth so peradventure in the other the acrimoniousness of the salt doth it And this is sufficient to give curious wits occasion by making further experiments to Search out the truth of this matter Only we may note what happens in most of the experiencies we have mention'd to wit that things of the same nature joyn better and more easily then others that are more estranged from one another Which is very agreeable to reason seeing that if nature intends to have things consist long together she must fit them for such consistence Which seems to proceed out of their agreement in four qualities First in weight for bodies of divers degrees in weight if they be at liberty seek divers places and consequently substances of like weight must of necessity find one another out and croud together as we have shew'd it is the nature of heat to make them do Now it is apparent that things of one nature must in equal parts have the same or a near proportion ofweight seeing that in their composition they must have the same proportion of Elements The second reason of the consistence of bodies together that are of the same nature is the agreement of their liquid parts in the same degree of rarity and density For as it is the nature of quantity in common to make all parts be one quantity so it is the nature of the degrees of quantity when two parts meet that are of the same degree to make them one in that degree of quantity which is to make them stick together in that degree of sticking which the degree of density that is common to them both makes of its own nature Wheras parts of different densities cannot have this reason of sticking though peradventure they may upon some other ground have some more efficatious one And in this manner the like humide parts of two bodies becomming one the holes or receptacles in which those humide parts are contain'd must also needs be united The third reason is the agreeable proportion which their several figures have in respect of one another For if any humidity be extracted out of a mixed body especially by the virtue of fire it must have left pores of such figures as the humidity that is drawn out of them is apt to be cut into for every humide body not being absolutely humide but having certain dry parts mixed with it is more apt for one kind of figure and greatness then for another and by consequence whenever that humidity shall meet again with the body it was severed from it will easily run through and into it all and fill exactly the cavities pores it passed before The last quality in which bodies that are to consist long together agree is the bigness of the humide dry parts of the same body For if the humide parts be too big for the dry ones 't is clear that the dry ones must needs hang loosly together by them because their glew is in too great a quantity But if the humide parts be too little for the dry on s then of necessity some portion of every little dry part must be unfurnish of glew by means wherof to stick to his fellow and so the sticking parts not being conveniently proportion'd to one another their adhesion cannot be so solid as if each of them were exactly fitted to his fellow CHAP. XVIII Of another motion belonging to particular bodies call'd Atraction and of certain operations term'd Magicall HAving thus ended the two motions of rarefaction and condensation the next that offer themselvs are the locall motions which some bodies have to others These are somtimes perform'd by a plain force in the body towards which the motion is and other whiles by a hidden cause which is not so easily discern'd The first is chiefly that which is ordinarily said to be done by the force of nature to hinder vacuum and is much practis'd by nature as in drawing our breath in sucking and many other natural operations which are imitated by art in making of Pumps Syphons and such other instuments and in that admirable experiment of taking up a heavy Marble stone merely by another lying flat and smoothly upon it without any ther connexion of the two stones together as also by that sport of boyes when they spread a thin moistned leather upon a smooth broad stone press it all over close to it and then by pulling of a string fastned at the middle of the leather they draw up likewise the heavy stone In all which the first cause of the motion proceeds from that body towards which the motion is made and therfore is properly called Attraction For the better understanding and delaring of which let us suppose two marble stones very broad and exceeding smoothly polished to be laid one flat upon the other and let there be a ring fastned at the back part of the
is drawn the more must needs follow Now if there be floating in this air any other atoms subject to the current which the air takes they must also come with it to the fire and by it be rarified and exported out of that little orb Hence it is that men with very good reason hold that fire airs a chamber as we term it that is purifies it both because it purifies it as wind doth by drawing a current of air into it that sweeps through it or by making it purifie it self by motion as a stream of water doth by running as also because those vapours which approach the fire are burned dissolv'd So that the air being noisome and unwholesome by reason of its grossness proceeding from its standing unmoved like a stagnation of dead water in a marish place the fire takes away that cause of annoyance By this very rule we learn that other hot things which participate the nature of fire must likewise in other respects have a resemblance in this quality And accordingly we see that hot loaves in a Bakers shop newly drawn out of the Oven are accounted to draw to them any infection which is in the air The like we say of onyons and other strong breathing substances which by their smel shew much heat in them In like manner 't is conceiv'd that Pigeons and Rabbets and Cats easily take infection by reason of their extraordinary warmth which they have in themselvs And this is confirm'd by the practise of Physitians who use to lay warm Pigeons newly killed to the feet wrists or heads of sick persons and young Puppies to their stomacks and somtimes certain hot gums to their navels to draw out such vapours or humours as infest the body for the same reason they hang amulets of arsenick sublimate dryed Toads or Spiders about their patients necks to draw to them venimous qualities from their bodie Hence also it is that if a man be strucken by a Viper or a Scorpion they use to break the body of the beast it self that stung him if they can get it upon the wound but if the beast be crawl'd out of their finding they do the like by some other venimous creature as I have seen a bruised Toad laid to the biting of a Viper And they manifestly perceive the apply'd body to swel with the Poyson suck'd out from the wound the patient to be reliev'd have less poyson in the same manner as by cupping-glasses the poyson is likewise drawn out from the wound so that you may see the reason of both is the very same or at least very like one another Only we are to note that the proper body of the beast out of which the venome was driven into the wound is more efficacious than any other to suck it out And the like is to be observ'd in all other kinds that such vapours as are to be drawn come better and incorporate faster in bodies of like nature then in those which have only the common conditions of heat and dryness the one of which serves to attract the other to fasten and incorporate into itself the moisture which the first draws to it So we see that water soaks into a dry body whence it was extracted almost inseparably and is hidden in it as when it rains first after hot weather the ground is presently dried after the shower Likewise we see that in most cements you must mingle a dust of the nature of the things which are to be cemented if you will have them bind strongly Out of this discourse we may yield a reason for those Magical operations which some attribute to the Devils assistance peradventure because mans wickedness hath bin more ingenious then his good will and so has found more means to hurt then to help nay when he hath arrived some way to help those very helps have undergone the same calumny because of the likeness which their operations have to the others Without doubt very unjustly if there be truth in the effects For where have we any such good suggestions of the enemy of mankind proposed to us that we may with reason believe he would duly settledly and constantly concur to the help and service of all those he so much hates as he must needs do if he be the Author of such effects Or is it not a wrong to Almighty God and to his careful instruments rather to impute to the Devil the aids which to some may seem supernatural then to them of whom we may justly believe and expect such good Offices and assistances I mean those operations both good and bad which ordinarily are called Magnetical though peradventure wrongfully as not having that property whcih denominates the loadstone One thing I may assure that if the reports be true they have the perfect imitation of nature in them As for example that the Weapons-Salve or the Sympathetick-Powder requires in the using it to be conserved in an equal moderate temper and that the weapon which made the wound or the cloth upon which the blood remains that issued from it be orderly and frequently dressed or else the wounded person will not be cured Likewise the steam or spirits which at the giving of the wound enter'd into the pores of the weapon must not be driven out of it which will be done by fire and so when it is heated by holding over coals you may see a moisture sweat out of the blade at the opposite side to the fire as far as it entred into the wounded persons body which being once all sweated out you shall see no more the like steam upon the sword neither must the blood be washed out of the bloudy cloth for in these cases the powder or salve will work nothing Likewise if there be any excess either of heat or cold in keeping the medicated weapon or cloth the patient feels that as he would do if the like excess where in any remedy that were applyed to the wound it self Likewise if the medicated weapon or bloudy cloth be kept too close no effect follows Likewise the natures of the things used in these cures are of themselves soveraign for healing the like griefs though peradventure too violent if they were apply'd in body without much attenuation And truly if we will deny all effects of this kind we must in a manner renounce all humane faith men of all sorts and qualities and many of them such in my own knowledge as I cannot question their prudence in observing or their sincerity in relating having very frequently made experience of such medicines and all affirming after one fashion to have found the same effects Adde to these the multitude of other like effects appearing or conceited to appear in other things In some Countries 't is a familiar disease with Kine to have a swelling in the soles of their feet and the ordinary cure is to cut a turf upon which they have troden with their sore foot and to hang
when he considers with what labour difficulty and slowness he joyns the letters spells syllables forms characters fits and breaks his fingers as though they were upon the rack to stop the right frets and touch the right strings and yet you see how strange a dexterity is gain'd in all these by industry and practise and readiness beyond what we could imagine possible if we saw not dayly the effects If then we can but arrive to decipher the first characters of the hidden Alphabet we are now taking in hand and can but spellingly read the first syllables of it we need not doubt but that the wise Author of nature in the masterpiece of the creature which was to express the excellency of the workman would with excellent cunning art dispose all circumstances so aptly as to speak readily a compleat language rising from those Elements and that should have as large an extent in practise and expression beyond those first principles which we like children only lisp out as the vast discourses of wisest most learned men are beyond the spellings of infants and yet those discourses spring from the same root as the other spellings do and are but a raising of them to a greater height as the admired musick of the best player on a Lute or Harp that ever was is derived from the harsh twangs of course Bowstrings which are composed together and refined till at length they arrive to that wonderful perfection And so without scruple we may in the business we are next falling upon conclude that the admirable and almost miraculous effects we see are but the elevating-to-a-wonderful-height those very actions and motions which we shall produce as causes and principles of them Let us then suppose a solid hard body of an unctuous nature whose parts are so subtile and fiery that with a little agitation they are much rarified and breath out in steams though they be too subtile for our eyes to discern like the steam that issues from sweating men or horses or that which flyes from a candle when 't is put out but that these steams as soon as they come into the cold air are by that cold suddenly condens'd again and by being condens'd shorten themselvs and by little and little retire till they settle themselvs upon the body from whence they sprung in such manner as you may observe the little tender horns of Snails use to shrink back if any thing touch them till they settle in little lumps upon their heads If I say these strings of bituminous vapours should in their way outwards meet with any light and spungy body they would pierce into it and settle in it and if it were of a competent bigness for them to wield they would carry it with them which way soever they go so that if they shrink back again to the fountain from whence they came they must needs carry back with them the light spungy body they have fixed their darts in Consider then that how much heat rarifies so much cold condenses and therfore such parts as by agitation were spun out into a subtile thrid of an inch long for example as they cool grow bigger and bigger and consequently shorter and shorter till at length they gather themselvs back into their main body and there they settle again in cold bitumen as they were at first and the light body they stick to is drawn back with them and consequently sticks to the superficies of the bitumen As if something were tyed at one end of a luâ—estring extended to its utmost capacity and the other end were fastned to some pin as the string shrinks up so that which is tyed at it must needs move nearer and nearer the pin which artifice of nature jugglers imitate when by means of an unseen hair they draw light bodies to them Now if all this operation be done without your seeing the little thrids which cause it the matter appears wonderful and strange But when you consider this progress that we have set down you will judge it possible And this seems to be the case of those bodies which we call Electrical as yellow Amber Jet and the like all which are of a bituminous unctuous nature as appears by their easie combustibility and smel when they are burned And if some do not so apparently shew this unctuous nature it is because either they are too hard or else they have a high degre of aqueous humidity joyn'd with their unctuosity and in them the operation will be duller in that proportion For as we see that unctuous substances are more odoriferous then others and send their streams further off and more efficaciously so we cannot doubt but such bodies as consist in a moist nature accordingly send forth their emanations in a feebler proportion Yet that proportion will not be so feeble but they may have an Electrical effect as well as the more efficacious Electrical bodies which may be perceptible if exact experience be made by an instrument like the Marriners needle as our learned Countryman Dr. Gilbert teaches But that in those eminent agents the spirits wherby they attract are unctuous is plain because the fire consumes them and so if the agents be over heated they cannot work but moderate heat even of fire encreases their operation Again they are clog'd by mysty air or wettine and likewise are pierc'd through and cut asunder by spirit of wine or aquae ardentes but oyl doth not hurt them Likewise they yield more spirits in the Sun then in the shade and they continue longer when the air is cleard by North or Eastern winds They require to be polish'd either because the rubbing which polish'd them takes off from their surfaces the former emanations which returning back stick upon them and so hinder the passage of those that are within or else because their outsides may be foul or lastly because the ports may be dilated by that smoothing Now that hardness and solidity is required argues that these spirits must be quick ones that they may return smartly and not be lost through their languishing in the air Likewise that all bodies which are not either exceeding rare or else set on fire may be drawn by these unctuous thrids concludes that the quality by which they do it is a common one that hath no particular contrarieties such an one as we see in grease or in pitch to stick to any thing from which in like manner nothing is exempted but fire and air And lastly that they work most efficaciously when they are heated by rubbing rather then by fire shews that their spirits are excitated by motion and therby made to fly abroad in such manner as we see in Pomanders and other perfumes which must be heated if you will have them communicate their scent And a like effect as in them agitation doth in Jet yellow Amber and such other Electrical bodies for if upon rubbing them you put them presently to your nose you wil discern
of necessity be more humid and figurable then that of an ordinary plant and the Artificer which works and moulds it must be more active Wherfore we must suppose that the mass of which an Animal is to be made must be actually liquid and the fire that works upon it must be so powerful that of its own nature it may be able to convert this liquid matter into such breaths and steams as we see use to rise from water when the Sun or fire works upon it Yet if the mass were altogether as liquid as water it would vanish away by heat boyling it and be dried up therfore it must be of such a convenient temper that although in some of its parts it be fluid and apt to run yet by others it must be held together as we see that unctuous things for the most part are which will swell by heat but not fly away So then if we imagine a great heat to be imprison'd in such a liquor and that it seeks by boyling to break out but that the solidness and viscousness of the substance will not permit it to evaporate it cannot chuse but comport it self in some such sort as we see butter or oyl in a frying-pan over the fire when it rises in bubbles but much more efficaciously For their body is not strong enough to keep in the heat and therfore those bubbles fall again wheras if it were those bubbles would rise higher and higher and stretch themselvs longer and longer as when the Soap-boylers boyl a strong unctuous lye into Soap and every one of them would be as it were a little brook wherof the channel would be the enclosing substance and the inward smoak that extends it might be compared to the water of it as when a glass is blown out by fire and air into a long figure Now we may remember how we have said where we treated of the Production and Resolution of Mixed bodies that there are two sorts of liquid substantial parts which by the operation of fire are sent out of the body it works upon the watery and the oyly parts For thouh there appear somtimes some very subtile and Ethereal parts of a third kind wich are the Aquae Ardentes or borning spirits yet in such a close distilling of circulation as this is they are not sever'd by themselvs but accompany the rest and especially the watery parts which are of a nature that the rising Ethereal spirits easily mingle with and extend themselves in it wherby the water becomes more efficacious and the spiritt less fugitive Of these liquid parts which the fire sends away the watry ones are the first as being the easiest to be raised the oyly parts rise more difficultly and therfore come last And in the same manner it happens in this emission of brooks the watry and oyly steams will each of them fly into different reservs and if there arrive to them abundance of their own quality each of them must make a substance of its own nature by by setling in a convenient place and by due concoction Which substance after it is made and confirm'd if more humidity and heat press it will again break forth into other little channels But when the watry and oyly parts are boyl'd away there remain yet behind other more solid and fixed parts and more strongly incorporated with fire then either of these which yet cannot drie up into a fiery salt because a continual accession of humour keeps them always flowing and so they become like a cauldron of boyling fire Which must propagate it self as wide as either of the other since the activity of it must needs be greater then theirs as being the source of motion to them and that there wants not humidity for it to extend it self by And thus you see three roots of three divers plants all in the same plant proceeding by natural resolution from one primitive source Wherof that which is most watry is fittest to fabricate the body and common outside of the triformed plant since water is the most figurable principle in nature and most susceptible of multiplication and by its cold is easiest to be hardned and therfore fittest to resist the injuries of enemy-bodies that may infest it The oily parts are fittest for the continuance and solidity of the plant for we see that viscuosity and oyliness hold together the parts where they abound and they are slowly wasted by fire but conserve and are an aliment to the fire that consumes them The parts of the third kind are fittest for the conservation of heat which though in them it be too violent yet is necessary for working upon other parts and maintaining a due temper in them And thus we have armed our plant with three sorts of rivers or brooks to run through him with as many different streams the one of a gentle balsamike oyle another of streaming fire and the third of a con-natural and cooler water to irrigate and temper him The streams of water as we have said must run through the whole fabrick of this triformed plant and because it is not a simple water but warm in a good degree and as it were a middle substance betwixt water and air by reason of the ardent volatile spirit that is with it 't is of a fit nature to swell as air doth and yet withall to resist violence in a convenient degree as water doth Therfore if from its source nature sends abundance into any one part that part must swell and grow thicker and shorter and so must be contracted that way which nature has order'd it Whence we perceive a means by which nature may draw any part of the outward fabrick which way soever she is pleased by set instruments for such an effect But when there is no motion or but little in these pipes the standing stream that is in a very little though long channel must needs be troubled in its whole body if any one part of it be press'd upon so as to receive therby any impression and therfore whatever is done upon it though at the very furthest end of it makes a commotion and sends an impression up to its very source Which appearing by our former d scourse to be the origine of particular and accasional motion 't is obvious to conceive how it is apt to be moved and wrought by such an impression to set on foot the begining of any motion which by natures providence is convenient for the plant when such an impression is made upon it And thus you see this plant hath the virtue both of sense or feeling that is of being moved and effected by extern objects lightly striking upon it as also of moving it self to or from such an object according as nature shall have ordain'd Which in sum is that This Plant is a Sensitive Creature composed of three sources the Heart the Brain and the Liver whose off-springs are the Arteries the Nervs and the Veins which are fil'd with Vital
out into an extasie of admiration and hymns of praise as great Galen did upon the like occasion when we reverently consider the infinite Wisedome and deep far-looking Providence of the all-seeing Creatour and Orderer of the World in so punctually adopting such a multitude and swarm of causes to produce by so long a progress so wonderful an effect in the whole course of which if any one the very least of them all went never so little awry the whole fabrick would be discomposed and changed from the nature it is design'd to Out of our short survey of which answerable to our weak talents and slender experience I perswade mv self it appears evident enough that to effect this work of generation there needs not be supposed a forming virtue or Vis formatrix of an anknown power and operation as those that consider things suddenly and but in gross use to put Yet in discourse for conveniency and shortness of expression we shall not quite banish that term from all commerce with us so that what we mean by it be rightly understood which is the complex assemblement or chain of all the causes that concur to produce this effect as they are set on foot to this end by the great Architect and Moderatour of them God Almighty whose instrument Nature is that is the same thing or rather the same things so order'd as we have declared but express'd and compriz'd under another name CHAP. XXVI How motion begins in Living Creatures And of the motion of the Heart circulation of the Bloud Nutrition Augmentation and Corruption or Death BUt we must not take our leave of this subject til we have examin'd how motion begins in living things as well Plants as Sensative creatures We can readily pitch upon the part we are to make our observations in for retriving the origine of this primary motion for having concluded that the roots of Plants and the hearts of Animals are the parts of them which are first made and from which the forming virtue is derived to all the rest it were unreasonable to seek for their first motion any where else But in what manner and by what means doth it begin there For roots the difficulty is not great for the moysture of the earth pressing upon the seed and soaking into it the hot parts of it which were imprison'd in cold and dry ones are therby stir'd up and set on work then they mingling themselves with that moysture ferment and distend the whole seed til making it open and break the skin more juice comes in which imcorporating it self with the heat those hot and now moyst parts will not be contain'd in so narrow a room as at the first but strugling to get out on all sides and striving to enlarge themselvs they thrust forth little parts Which if they stay in the earth grow white and make the root but those which ascend and make their way into the air being less compressed and more full of heat and moysture turn green and as fast as they grow up new moysture coming to the root is sent up through the pores of it and this fails not till the heat of the root it self fails For it being the nature of heat to rarifie and elevate there must of necessity be caus'd in the earth a kind of sucking in of moysture into the root from the next parts to it to fill those capacities which the dilating heat hath made that else would be empty and to supply the rooms of those which the heat continually sends upwards for the moysture of the root hath a continuity with that in the earth and therfore they adhere together as in a Pump or rather as in filtration and follow one another when any of them are in motion and still the next must needs come in and fill the room where it finds an empty space immediate to it The like of which happens to the Air when we breath for our lungs being like a Bladder when we open them the air must needs come in to fill that capacity which else would be empty and when we shut them again as in a pair of Bellows we put it out This may suffice concerning the primary motion of roots but in that of the heart we shall find the matter not altogether so plain Monsieur des Cartes following herein the steps of the learned and ingenuous Dr. Harvey who hath invented and teaches that curious and excellent Doctrine of the Cerculation of the Bloud as indeed what secret of nature can be hidden from so sharp a wit when he applyes himself to penetrate into the bottome of it explicates the matter much after this sort That the heart within the substance of it is like a hollow Cavern in whose bottome were an hot stone on which should drop as much liquor as the fiery stone could blow into smoke and this smoke or steam should be more then the Cave could contain wherfore it must break out which to do it presses on all sides to get an issue or door to let it out It finds of two sorts but only one kind of them will serve it for this purpose for the one sort of these doors opens inwards the other outwards which is the cause that the more it strives to get out the faster it shuts the doors of the first kind but by the same means it beats back the other doors and so gets out Now when it is gone quite out of this Cavern and consequently leaves it to its natural disposition whereas before it violently stretched it out and by doing so kept close the doors that open inwards then all the parts of it begin to slacken and those Doors give way to new liquor to drop in anew which the heat in the bottome of the heart rarifies again in-into smoke as before And thus he conceives the motion of the heart to be made taking the substance of it to be as I may say like to limber Leather which upon the feeling of it with bloud and steam opens and dilates it self and at the going of it out it shrinks together like a bladder But I doubt this Explication will not go through the difficulty For first both Galen and Dr. Harvey shew that as soon as the bloud is come into the heart it contracts it self which agrees not with Monsir des Cartes his supposition for in his doctrine there appears no cause why it should contract it self when it is full but contrariwise it should go on dilating it self till enough of the bloud which drops into the heart were converted into steam to force the doors open that so it may gain an issue thence and a passage into the body Next Monsir des Cartes supposes that the substance of the heart is like a bladder which hath no motion of it self but opens and shuts according as what is within it stretches it out or permits it to shrink and fall together again Wheras Dr. Harvey proves
little parts of the substance which we chew in our Teeth and which passes over it You may observe how if we take any herb or fruit and having chop'd or beaten it small put it into a wooden dish of water and squeeze it a little the juice communicating and mingling it self with the water infects it with the tast of it self and remaining a while in the bowl sinks by little and little into the very pores of the wood as is manifest by its retaining a long time after the tast and smell of that herb In like manner nature hath taught us by chewing our meat and by turning it in our mouths and pressing it a little that we may the more easily swallow it to imbue our Spittle with such little parts as easily diffuse themselvs in water And then our Spittle being continuate to the moysture within our tongue in such sort as we declared of the moisture of the earth that soaks into the root of a plant and particularly in the sinews of it must of necessity affect those little sensible strings with the qualities which these petty bodies mixed every where with the moisture are themselves imbued withal And if thou ask what motions or qualities these be Physitians to whom it belongs most particularly to look into them will tell you that some dilate the tongue more and some less as if some of these little bodies had an aereal and others a watry disposition and these two they express by the names of sweet and fatty That some contract and draw the tongue together as choaky and rough things do most and next to them crabby and immature sharpness That some corrode and pierce the Tongue as Salt and sowre things That bitter things search the outside of it as if they swept it and that other things as it were prick it as spices and hot drinks Now all these are sensible material things which admit to be explicated clearly by the varieties of rarity and density concurring to their compositions and are so proportionable to such material instruments as we cannot doubt but they may be throughly declared by our former principles The next Element above Water is Air which our Nostrils being our Instrument to suck in we cannot doubt but what affects a man by his Nose must come to him in Breath or Air. And as humidity receives grosser and weightier parts so those which are more subtile and light rise up into the Air and these we know attain to this lightness by the commixtion of fire which is hot and dry And therfore we cannot doubt but that the nature of Smells is more or less tending to heat and drought which is the cause that their commixtion with the brain proves comfortable to it because of its own disposition it is usually subject to be too moist and too cold Whether there be any immediate instrument of this sense to receive the passion or effect which by it other bodies make upon us or whether the sense it self be nothing but a passage of these exhalations and little bodies to the brain fitly accommodated to discern what is good or hurtful for it and accordingly to move the body to admit or reject them it imports not us at present to determine let Physicians and Anatomists resolve that question Whiles it suffices us to understand that the operations of bodies by Odours upon our sense are perform'd by real and solid parts of the whole substance which are truly material though very little bodies and not by imaginary qualities And those bodies when they proceed out of the same things that yield also tastive particles although without such material violence and in a more subtile manner must of necessity have in them the same nature which those have that affect the tast and they must both of them affect a man much alike by his tast by his smell and so are very proportionate to one another excepting in those properties which require more cold or liquidity then can well stand with the nature of a smell And accordingly the very names which men have imposed to express the affections of both many times agree as savour and sweet which are common both to the smell and tast the strongest of which we see oftentimes make themselves known as well by the one as by the other sense and either of them in excess will turn a mans stomack And the Physicians that write of these senses find them very conformable whence it happens that the losing of one of them is the losse also of the other And experience teaches us in all Beasts that the Smell is given to living creatures to know what meats are good for them and what are not And accordingly we see them still smell for the most part at any unknown meat before they touch it which seldom fails of informing them rightly nature having provided this remedy against the gluttony which could not choose but follow the convenient disposition and temper of their parts and humours through which they often swallow their meat greedily and suddenly without expecting to try it first by their tast Besides that many meats are so strong that their very tasting them after their usual manner would poison or at least greatly annoy them and therfore nature hath provided this sense to prevent their tast which being far more subtile then their tast the final atoms by which it is perform'd are not so very noxious to the health of the Animal as the other grosser atoms are And doubtlesly the like use men would make of this sense had they not on the one side better means then it to know the qualities of meats and therfore this is not much reflected on And on the other side were they not continually stuff'd and clogg'd with gross vapours of streamy meats which are daily reeking from the Table and their stomacks and permit not purer Atomes of bodies to be discerned which require clear and uninfected organs to take notice of them As we see it fare with doggs who have not so true and sensible noses when they are high fed and lie in the kitchin amidst the steams of meat as when they are kept in their kennel with a more spare diet fit for hunting One full example this age affords us in this kind of a man whose extremity of fear wrought upon him to give us this experiment He was born in some Village of the Countrey of Liege and therfore among strangers he is known by the name of John of Liege I have been informed of this story by several whom I dare confidently believe that have had it from his own mouth and have question'd him with great curiosity particularly about it When he was a little boy there being wars in the Countrey as that State is seldom without molestations from abroad when they have no distempers at home which is an inseparable effect of a Countries situation upon the Frontiers of powerful neighbouring Princes that are at variance the
red The reason hereof is that The colours which appear in the glasse are of the nature of those luminous colours we first explicated that arise from looking upon white and black bordering together For a candle standing in the air is as it were a white situated between two blacks the circumstant dusky air having the nature of a black so then that side of the candle which is seen through the thicker part of the glass appears red and that which is seen through the thinner appears blew in the same manner as when we look through the glass Whereas the colours shine contrariwise upon a paper or reflecting object as we have already declared together with the reasons of both these appearances each fitted to its proper case of looking through the glass upon the luminous object surrounded with darkness in the one and of observing the effect wrought by the same luminous object in some medium or upon some reflectent superficies in the other And to confirm this if a white paper be set standing hollow before the glass like half a hollow pillar whose flats stands edgeways towards the glass so as both the edges may be seen through it the further edge will seem blew and the nearer will be red and the like will happen if the paper be held in the free air parallel to the lower superficies of the glass without any black carpet to limit both ends of it which serves to make the colours the smarter So that in both cases the air serves manifestly for a black in the first between the two white edges and in the second limiting the two white ends and by consequence the air about the candle must likewise serve for two blacks including the light candle between them Several other delightful experiments of luminous colour I might produce to confirm the grounds I have laid for the nature and making of them But I conceive these I have mention'd are abundantly enough for the end I propose to my self Therfore I will take my leave of this subtle and nice subject referring my Reader if he be curious to entertain himself with a full variety of such shining wonders to our ingenious Countreyman and my worthy friend Mr. Hall who at my last being at Liege shew'd me there most of the experiences I have mention'd together with several other very fine and remarkable curiosities concerning light which he promised me he would shortly publish in a work that he had already cast and almost finished upon that svbject And in it I doubt not but He will give entire satisfaction to all the doubts and Problems that may occur in this subject wheras my little exercise formerly in making experiments of this kind and my less conveniency of attempting any now makes me content my self with thus spining a course thred from wooll carded me by others that may run through the whole doctrine of colours whose causes have hitherto been so much admired and that it will do so I am strongly perswaded both because if I look upon the causes which I have assigned à prirori me thinks they appear very agreeable to nature and to reason and if I apply them to the several Phenomens which Mr. Hall shew'd me and to as many others as I have otherwise met with I find they agree exactly with them and render a full account of them And thus you have the whole nature of luminous colours resolv'd into the mixion of light and darkness by the due ordering of which who have skil therin may produce any middle colour he please as I my self have seen the experience of infinite changes in such sort made so that it seems to me nothing can be more manifest then that luminous colours are generated in the way here deliver'd Of which how that gentle and obedient Philosophy of Qualities readily obedient to what hard task soever you assign it will render a rational account and what discreet vertue it will give the same things to produce different colours and maked different appearances meerly by such nice changes of situation I do not well understand But peradventure the Patrones of it may say that every such circumstance is a Conditio sine qua non and therwith no doubt their Auditors will be much the wiser in comprehending the particular nature of light and of the colours that have their origine from it The Rainbow for whose sake most men handle this matter of luminous colours is generated in the first of the two ways we have deliver'd for the production of such colours and hath its origine from refraction when the eye being at a convenient distance from the refracting body looks upon it to discern what apears in it The speculation of which may be found in that excellent discourse of Mounsir des Cartes which is the sixth of his Meteors where he hath with great accurateness deliver'd a most ingenious doctrine of this mystery had not his bad chance of missing in a former principle as I conceive somwhat obscured it For he there gives the cause so neat and so justly calculated to the apearances as no man can doubt but that he hath found out the true reason of this wonder of nature which hath perplex'd so many great wits as may almost be seen with our very eyes when looking upon the fresh dew in a Sunshiny morning we may in due positions perceive the Rainbow colours not three yards distant from us in which we may distinguish even single drops with their effects But he having deterned the nature of light to consist in motion and proceeding consequently concludes colours to be but certain kinds of motion by which I fear it is impossible that any good account should be given of the experiences we see But what we have already said in that point I conceive is sufficient to give the Reader satisfaction therin and to secure him that the generation of the colours in the Rain-bow as well as all other colours is reduced to the mingling of light and darkness which is our principal intent to prove Adding therto by way of advertisement for others whose leisure may permit them to make use thereof that who shall ballance the proportions of luminous colours may peradventure make himself a step to judg of the natures of those bodes which really and constantly wear like dyes for the figures of the least parts of such bodies joyntly with the connexion or mingling of them with pores must of necessity be that which makes them reflect light to our eyes in such proportions as the luminous colours of their tincture and semblance do For two things are to be consider'd in bodies in order to reflecting of light either the extancies and cavities of them or their hardness and softness As for the first the proportions of light mingled with darkness will be varied according as the extancies or the cavities exceed and as each of them is great or small since cavities have the nature of darkness in respect
in the utmost extremity without sending any due proportion of spirits to the brain till they settle a little and grow more moderate Now when these motions are moderate they immediately send up some abundance of spirits to the brain which if they be in a convenient proportion are by the brain thrust into such nervs as are fit to receive them and swelling them they give motion to the muscles and tendons that are fastned to them and they move the whole body or what part of it is under command of those nervs that are thus fill'd and swell'd with spirits by the brain If the object was conformable to the living creature then the brain sends spirits into such nervs as carry the body to it but if otherwise it causes a motion of aversion or flight from it To the cause of this latter we give the name of Fear and the other that carries one to the pursuit of the object we call Hope Anger or Audacity is mixt of both these for it seeks to avoid an evil by embracing and overcoming it and proceeds out of abundance of spirits Now if the proportion of spirits sent from the heart be too great for the brain it hinders or perverts the due operation both in man and beast All which it will not be amiss to open a little more particularly and first why painful or displeasing objects contract the spirits and grateful ones contrariwise dilate them It is because the good of the heart consists in use that is in heat and moisture and 't is the nature of heat to dilate it self in moisture whereas cold and dry things contract the bodies they work on and such are enemies to the nature of men and beasts And accordingly experience as well as reason teaches us that all objects which be naturally good are hot and moist in due proportion to the creature that is affected and pleas'd with them Now the living creature being composed of the same principles as the world round about him is and the heart being an abridgment of the whole sensible creature and besides full of blood and that very hot it comes to pass that if any of these little extracts of the outward world arrive to the hot blood about the heart it works in this blood such like an effect as we see a drop of water falling into a glass of wine which is presently dispersed into a competent compass of the wine so that any little object must needs make a notable motion in the blood about the heart This motion according to the nature of the object will be either conformable or contrary unless it be so little a one as no effect will follow of it and then 't is of that kind which above we call'd indifferent If the ensuing effect be connatural to the heart there rises a motion of a certain fume about the heart which motion we call Pleasure and it never fails of accompanying all those motions which are good as Joy Love Hope and the like but if the motion be displeasing there is likewise a common sense of a heaviness about the heart which we call Grief and it is common to Sorrow Fear Hate and the like Now 't is manifest by experience that these motions are all different ones and strike against divers of those parts of of our body which encompass the heart out of which striking follows that the spirits sent from the heart affect the brain diversly and are by it convey'd into divers nerves and so set divers members in action Whence follows that certain Members are generally moved upon the motion of such a passion in the heart especially in beasts who have a more determinate course of working than man hath and if somtimes we see variety even in beasts upon knowledge of the circumstances we may easily guess at the causes of that variety The particularities of all which motions we remit Physicians and Anatomists advertising only that the fume of pleasure and the heaviness of grief plainly shew that the first motions participate of Dilatation and the latter of Compression Thus you see how by the senses a living creature becomes judg of what is good what bad for him which operation is perform'd more perfectly in Beasts and especially in those that live in the free air remote from humane conversation for their senses are fresh and untainted as nature made them than in Men. Yet without doubt nature has been as favourable in this particular to men as them were it not that with disorder and excess we corrupt and oppress our senses as appears evidently by the Story we have recorded of John of Leige as also by the ordinary practice of some Hermites in the Deserts who by their taste or smell would presently be inform'd whether the herbs and roots and fruits they met with were good or hurtful for them though they never before had had trial of them Of which excellency of the Senses there remains in us only some dim sparks in those qualities which we call sympathies and antipathies wherof the reasonss are plain out of our late discourse and are nothing else but a conformity or opposition of a living creature by some individual property of it to some body without it in such sort as its conformity or opposition to things by its specifical qualities is term'd natubal or against nature But of this we shall discourse more at large hereafter Thus it appears how the senses are seated in us principally for the end of moving us to or from objects that are good for or hurtful to us But though our Reader be content to allow this intent of nature in our three inferiour senses yet he may peradventure not be satisfied how the two more noble ones the Hearing and the Seeing cause such motions to or from objects as are requisite to be in living creatures for the preservation of them for may he say how can a man by only seeing an object or by hearing the sound of it tell what qualities it is imbued with or what motion of liking or disliking can be caus'd in his heart by his meer receiving the visible species of an object at his eyes or by his ears hearing some noise it makes And if there be no such motion there what should occasion him to prosecute or avoid that object When he tasts or smells or touches a thing he finds it sweet or bitter or stinking or hot or cold and is therwith either pleased or displeased but when he only sees or hears it what liking or disliking can he have of it in order to the preservation of his nature The solution of this difficulty may in part appear out of what we have already said But for the most part the objects of these two nobler senses move us by being joyn'd in the Memory with some other thing that either pleas'd or displeas'd some of the other three senses And from thence it is that the motion of going to imbrace the object or
I am obliged to make plain but the latter concerns this Treatise no more than it would do a man to enquire anxiously into the particulars of what it is that a beast is doing whiles looking upon it at a great distance he perceivs plainly that it moves it self and his errant is but to be assured whether it be alive or dead which the moving of it self in common sufficiently demonstrates without descending into a particular search of what his motions are But let us come to the matter First I conceive no man will make any difficulty in allowing that it is the temper of the blood and spirits in Birds brought therto by the quality of their food and the season of the year which makes them couple with one another and not any aim or desire of having young ones that occasions this action in them Then it follows that the Hens eggs will encrease in her belly and when they grow big they cannot choose but be troublesome unto her and therfore must of necessity breed in her an inclination to rest in some soft place and to be rid of them And as we see a Dog or a Cat press'd by nature searches about to find a convenient place to disburthen themselvs in not only of their young ones but even of their excrements so do Birds whose eggs within them making them heavy and unfit to flie they begin to sit much and are pleas'd in a soft and warm place and thereupon are delighted with straws and mosse and other gentle substances and so carry them to their sitting place Which that they do not by design is evident by the manner of it for when they have met with a straw or other fit material they flie not with it directly to their nest but first to a bough of some tree or to the top of a house and there they hop and dance a while with it in their beaks and from thence skip to another place where they entertain themselvs in like manner and at last they get to their nest Where if the straws should lie confusedly their ends would prick and hurt them and therfore they turn and alter their positions till they lie smooth which we that look upon the effect and compare them with our performing of like actions if we had occasion may call a judicious ordering of them wheras in them it is nothing but removing such things as press upon their sense till they cause them no more pain or unquierness Their plaistering of their nests may be attributed to the great heat reigning in them at that time which makes them still be dabling in moist clay and water and gravel without which all birds will soon grow sick blind and at length die which for the coolness of it they bring home to their nests in their beaks and upon their feet and when it grows dry and consequently troublesome to them they wipe it off and rub their dirty parts upon the place where they use to sit and then flie for more to refresh themselvs with Out of all which actions set on foot by the wise orderer of nature to compass a remote end quite different from the immediate end that every one of them is done for there results a fit and convenient place for these little builders that know not what they do whiles they build themselvs houses to lie and lay their eggs in which the next year when the like occasion occurrs they build again peradventure then as much through memory of the former as upon their temper and other circumstances moving their fantasy so as we have set down In like manner that whiles the Halcyon layes and hatches her eggs the Sea is calm needs no more be attributed to the wisdom and providence of that bird in choosing a fit season than to any good nature or discourse in that rouling and merciless Element as though it had a pious care of preserving the eggs committed to his trust no such supplements are requisite to be added to the distributions of nature who hath set material causes on foot to produce a conjuncture of both those effects at the same period of time for the propagation of this animal's species In fine both the time and place of the Halcyon's breeding and the manner and order and season of all birds making their nests proceeds from secret motions which require great observing and attention to understand them and serve for directions to every bird according to her kind to make her nest fittest for her use Which secret motions we cannot doubt but are material ones and aâ—se out of the constitution and temper of their bodies and spirits which in like circumstances are alike in them all for all the birds of one kind make their nests exactly alike Which they would not do if this work proceeded from reason in them and were govern'd by their own election and design as we see it happen among men upon all occasions either of building houses or of making clothes or of what action soever is guided by their reason governing their fantasy in all which we see so great variety and inconstancy Therfore this invariability in the birds operations must proceed from a higher intellect that hath determinately and precisely ordered a complex or assembly of sundry causes to meet infallibly and by necessity for the production of an effect he hath designed and so the birds are but material instruments to perform without their knowledg or reflexion a superiour reason's counsels even as in a clock that is composed of several pieces and wheels all the parts conspire to give notice of the several effluxes and periods of time which the maker hath order'd it for And though this be a work of reason and discourse in him that set it together yet the instrumental performance of it depends meerly of local motion and the revolutions of bodies so orderly proportion'd to one another that their effects cannot fail when once the engine is wound up In like manner then the Bird is the engine of the Artificer infinitely more perfect and knowing and dexterous than a poor clock-maker and the plummets which make it go are the row and order of causes chain'd together which by the design of the supream workman bring to pass such effects as we see in the building of their nests and in doing such other actions as may be compared to the strikings of the clock and the ringing of the alarm at due times And as that King of Claina upon his first seeing a Watch thought it a living and judicious creature because it moved so regularly of it self and believ'd it to be dead when it was run out till the opening and winding it up discover'd to him the artifice of it So any man may be excused that looking upon these strange actions and this admirable oeconomy of some living creatures should believe them endew'd with reason till he have well reflected upon every particular circumstance of their nature and operations for
Their stories tell us that at their first arrival upon those coasts where it seems men had never been the birds would not flie away but suffer'd the Mariners to take them in their hands nor the beasts which with us are wild would run from them but their discourteous guests used them so hardly as they soon chang'd their confidence into distrust and aversion and by little and little grew by their commerce with men and receiving injuries from them to be as wild as any of the like kind in our parts From the Dams and Sires this apprehension and fear at the sight of men so deeply rooted in them is doubtless transmitted to their young ones for it proceeds out of the disposition of the body and the passion immediately made in the heart and that is as truly a material motion as any whatever can be and must have setled material instruments fitted to it if it be constant as well as any other natural operation whatever And this passion of the heart proceeds again from a perpetual connexion of the two objects in the memory which being a perpetually constant thing is as true a quality of that beasts brain in whom it is as the being of a quick or dull apprehension or apt to know one kind of meat from another which is natural to the whole species or any other quality whatever residing in that beast Wherfore 't is no wonder that it passes by generation to the off-spring which is a thing so common even in mankind as there can be no doubt of it and is at first made by a violent cause that greatly alters the body and consequently the seed must be imbew'd with a like disposition and so it passes together with the nature of the Sire or of the Dam into the brood From hence proceeds that children love the same meats and exercises that their Fathers and Mothers were affected with and fear the like harms This is the reason why a Grand-child of my Lord of Dorset whose honour'd name must never be mention'd by me without a particular respect and humble acknowledgment of the noble and steady friendship he hath ever been pleas'd to honour me with was always extremely sick if but the Nurse did eat any Capers against which my Lord's antipathy is famous whiles she gave suck to that pretty infant The Children of great Mathematicians who have been used to busie their fantasies continually with figures and proportions have been oftentimes observ'd to have a natural bent to those Sciences And we may note that even in particular gestures and in little singularities in familiar conversation children will oftentimes resemble their Parents as well as in the lineaments of their faces The young ones of excellent setting Dogs will have a notable aptitude to that exercise and may be taught with half the pains that their sire or dam was if they were chosen out of a race of Spaniels not trained to setting All which effects can proceed from no other cause but as we have touch'd already that the fantasy of the parent alters the temper and disposition of his body and seed according as it self is temper'd and disposed and consequently such a creature must be made of it as retains the same qualities as 't is said that sufficient Tartar put at the root of a tree will make the fruit have a winy taste But nothing confirms this so much as certain notable accidents wherof though every one in particular would seem incredible yet the number of them and the weight of the reporters who are the witnesses cannot choose but purchase a general credit to the kind of them These accidents are that out of some strong imagination of the parents but especially of the mother in the time of conception the children draw such main differences as were incredible if the testifying authority were not so great but being true they convince beyond all question the truth we have proposed of the parents imagination working upon and making an impression in the seed wherof children or young ones of their kind are made Some children of white parents are reported to havebeen black upon occasion of a Black-moors picture too much in the mothers eye Others are said to have been born with their skins all hairy out of the sight of St Baptist's picture as he was in the desart or of some other hairy image Another child is famed to have been born disformed so as Devils are painted because the sather was in a Devils habit when he got the child There was a Lady a kinswoman of mine who used much to wear black patches upon her face as was the fashion among young women which I to put her from used to tell her in jest that the next child she should go with whiles the sollicitude and care of those patches was so strong in her fantasy would come into the world with a great black spot in the midst of its forehead and this apprehension was so lively in her imagination at the time she proved with child that her daughter was born mark'd just as the mother had fansied which there are at hand witnesses enough to confirm but non more pregnant than the young Lady her self upon whom the mark is yet remaining Among other creatures 't is said that a Hen hatch'd a Chicken with a Kites bill because she was frighted with a Kite whiles the Cock was treading her The story of Jacol's Sheep is known to all and some write that the painting of beautiful colour'd pigeons in a Dove-house will make the following race become like them and in Authors store of such examples may be found To give a reasonable and fully satisfying cause of this great effect I confess is very difficult since for the most part the parents seed is made long time before the accoupling of the male and female and though it were not we should be mainly to seek for a rational ground to discourse in particular upon it Yet not to leav our Reader without a hint which way to drive his inquisition we will note thus much that Aristotle and other natural Philosophers and Physicians affirm that in some persons the passion is so great in the time of their accoupling that for the present it quite bereavs them of the use of reason and they are for the while in a kind of short fit of an Epilepsie By which 't is manifest that abundance of animal spirits then part from the head and descend into those parts which are the instruments of generation Wherfore if there be abundance of specieses of any one kind of object then strong in the imagination it must of necessity be carryed down together with the spirits into the seed and by consequence when the seed infected with this nature begins to separate and distribute it self to the forming of the several parts of the Embryon the spirits which resort into the brain of the child as to their proper Element and from thence finish all the
easily perceive Wherfore let any judicious Reader that hath look'd further into Aristotle than only upon his Logical and Metaphysical works judg whether in bulk our Doctrine be not conformable to the course of his and of all the best Philosophers that have been and are though in retail or particulars we somtimes mingle therewith our own private judgments as every one of them hath likewise shewed us the way to do by the liberty themselvs have taken to dissent in some points from their predecessours And were it our turn to declare and teach Logick and Metaphysicks we should be forced to go the way of matter and forms and privations as Aristottle hath trodden it out to us in his works of that strain But this is not our task for the present for no man that contemplates nature as he ought can choose but see that these notions are no more necessary when we consider the framing of the Elements than when we examine the making of compounded bodies and therfore these are to be set apart as higher principles and of another strain than need be made use of for the actual composition of compounded things and for the resolution of them into their material ingredients or to cause their particular Motions which are the Subjects we now discourse of Upon this occasion I think it not amiss to touch how the latter Sectatours or rather pretenders of Aristotle for truly they have not his way have introduced a model of doctrine or rather of ignorance out of his words which he never so much as dream'd of howbeit they alledge Texts out of him to confirm what they say as Hereticks do out of Scripture to prove their Assertions For wheras he call'd certain Collections or Positions of things by certain common names as the Art of Logick requires terming some of them Qualities others Actions others Places or Habits or Relatives or the like these his later followers have concieted that these names did not design a concurrence of sundry things or a diverse disposition of the parts of any thing out of which some effect resulted which the understanding considering all together hath expressed the notion of it by one name but have imagin'd that every one of these names had correspondent to it some real positive Entity or thing separated in its own nature from the main thing or substance in which it was and indifferent to any other substance but in all to which it is linked working still that effect which is to be expected from the nature of such a quality or action c. And thus to the very negatives of things as to the names of points lines instants and the like they have imagined positive Entities to correspond likewise to the names of actions places and the like they have framed other Entities as also to the names of colours sounds tasts smells touches and the rest of the sensible qualitie and generally to all qualities whatever Wheras nothing is more evident than that Aristotle meant by qualities no other thing but that disposition of parts which is proper to one body and not found in all as you will plainly see if you but examine what beauty health agility science and such other qualities are for by that name he calls them and by such examples gives us to understand what he means by the word Quality the first of which is nothing else but a composition of several parts and colours in due proportion to one another the next but a due temper of the humours and the being of every part of the body in the state it should be the third but a due proportion of the spirits and strength of the sinews and the last but order'd Phantasmes Now when these perverters of Aristotle have framed such Entities under that conception which nature hath attributed to substances they immediately upon the nick with the same breath that describ'd them as substances deny them to be substances and thus they confound the first apprehensions of nature by seeking learned and strained definitions for plain things After which they are fain to look for glew and paste to join these Entities to the substance they accompany which they find with the same facillity by imagining a new Entity whose nature it is to do that which they have need of And this is the general course of their Philosophy whose great subtilty and queint speculations in enquiring how things come to pass afford no better satisfaction than to say upon every occasion that there is an Entity which makes it be so As if you ask them how a wall is white or black They will tell you there is an Entity or Quality whose essence is to be Whiteness or blackness diffused through the wall If you continue to ask how doth whiteness stick to the wall They reply that it is by means of an Entity called Union whose nature it is actually to joyn whiteness and the wall together And then if you enquire how it comes to pass that one white is like another They will as readily answer that this is wrought by another Entity whose nature is to be likeness and it makes one thing like another The consideration of which doctrine makes me remember a ridiculous Tale of a trewant School-boys Latine who upon a time when he came home to see his friends being asked by his Father what was Latine for bread answer'd bredilus and for beer beeribus and the like of all other things he ask'd him adding only a termination in bus to the plain English word of every one of them which his Father perceiving and though ignorant of Latine yet presently apprehending that the mysteries his son had learn'd deserv'd not the expence of keeping him at School bade him immediately put off his hosibus and shoosibus and fall to his old Trade of treading Morteribus In like manner these great Clerks do as readily find a pretty Quality or mood wherby to render the nature or causes of any effect in their easy Philosophy as this Boy did a Bus to stamp upon an English word and coyn it into his mock Latine But to be serious as the weight of the matter requires let these so peremptory pretenders of Aristotle shew me but one Text in him where he admits any middle distinction such as those modern Philosophers do and must needs admit who maintain the qualities we have rejected betwixt that which he calls Numerical and that which he calls of Reason Notion or Definition the first of which we may term to be of or in things the other to be in our heads or discourses or the One Natural the other Logical and I will yield that they have reason and I have groslly mistaken what he has written and do not reach the depth of his sense But this they will never be able to do Besides the whole scope of his Doctrine and all his discourses and intentions are carry'd throughout and built on the same foundations that we have laid for ours
is in them nothing else but each of them to be white and two quantities to be half and whole is in theÌ„ nothing else but each quantity to be just what it is But a respect in its own nature is a kind of tye co mparison tending or order of one of those things to another and is no where to be found in its formal subsistence but in the apprehensiou of man therfore it cannot be described by any similitude nor be expressed by any means but like Being by the sound of a word which we are agreed on to stir up in such a notion For in the things it is not such as our notion of it is which notion is that we use to express by Prepositions and Conjunctions and which Aristotle Logicians express in common by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or ad therfore there is nothing out of us to paint it by as I could do white or square or round or the like because these have a beings in the things that are white or square c. consequently they may be expressed by others of the like nature but the likeness that one white hath to another or the respect that either of them hath to mans imagination is only in man who by comparing them gives birth to the nature and being of respect Out of this discourse we may collect two Singularities of Man which 't will much import us to take particular notice of One is that Being or a thing the formal notion of which is merely Being is the proper affection of man For every particular thing is in him by being as I may say grafted upon the stock of Existence or being And accordingly we see that whatever we speak of we say is something and whatever we conceive we give the nature of a thing as when we have said the wall is white we frame whiteness as a thing so immediately before speaking of Respect we took respect as it were a thing and enquired where it is so that 't is evident all the negotiation of our understanding trades in all that is apprehended by it as if they were things The other Singularity we may observe in man is that he is a coÌ„paring power for all his particular knowledges are nothing else but respectsa nd comparisons between particular things as for example for a manto know heat or cold c. is to know what effects fire or water c. can work upon such or such bodies Out of the first of these proprieties it follows that what effects a man or makes impression upon his understanding doth not therby lose its own peculiar nature nor is modified to the recipient the contrary of which we see happens perpepetually in bodies Observe the sustenance we take which that it may become part of our body is first changed into a substance like our body and ceases being what it was When water or any liquid body is receiv'd into a vessel it loses its own figure puts on the figure of the vessel it is in If heat enters into a body that is already hot that heat becomes therby more heat if into a cold body it is converted into warmth And in like manner all other corporeal things are accommodated to the quallities of the recipient and in it they lose their own proper terms and cosistences but what comes into the understanding of a man is so received by or joyn'd to him that it still retains its own proper limitations and particular nature notwithstanding its assumption to him For Being is joyn'd to every thing there since as we have said 't is by Being that any thing comes thither consequently this stock of Being makes every graft that is inoculated into it Be what of its own nature it is For Being joyn'd to another motion doth not change that notion but makes it be what it was befoâ—e since if it should be changed Being were not added to it as for example add Being to the notion of knife and it makes a knife or that notion to Be a knife and if after the addition it doth not remain a knife it was not Being that was added to a knife Out of the later of the singularities proper to man it follows that a multitude of things may beunited in him without suffering any confusion among themselvs but every one of them will remain with its proprieties and distinct limitations For so of necessity it must be when that which unites them to him is the comparing them to something besides themselvs which work could not be perform'd unless what is to be compared retain exactly its own nature wherby the comparison may be made no more than one can weigh two quantities one against another unless he keep asunder what is in each seal and keep all other weights from mingling with them And accordingly we see that we cannot compare black to white or a Horse to an Oxe unless we take together the properties by which black differs from white or an oxe from an horse and consequently they must remain unmingled and without confusion precisely what in themselvs they are and be indifferent in the sight of the comparer But indeed if we look well into the matter we shall find that setting aside the notion of Existence or Being all our other notions are nothing else but comparisons and respects and that by the mediation of respects the natures of all things are in us and by the varying of them we multiply our Notions Which in their first division that reduces their several kinds into general heads increase into the Ten famous Tribes that Logicians call Predicaments and they comprehend under them all the particular notions that man hath or can have according to the course of knowledge in this life Of which Predicaments the seven last are so manifestly respective that all men acknowledg them to be so Substance we have already shew'd to have a respect to Being Quantity we proved in the first Chapter of the former Treatise of the Nature and Operation of Bodies to consist in a respect to Parts Quality is divided into four branches wherof Power is clearly a respect to that over which it hath power or from which it may suffer Habite is a respect to the substance wherin it is as being the property by which it is well or ill conveniently or inconveniently affected in regard of its own nature as you may observe in health or sickness or the like The Passible Qualities are those we have explicated in discoursing of the Elements and of Mixts and whose natures we have there shew'd consist in respects of acting or suffering Figure or shape which is the last branch of the division of the Predicament of Quality is nothing else but a certain disposition of one part of a body to another And so you see how all the Ten Predicaments consist purely in diversity of Respects by consequence all our conceits and notions excepting that
dense signifies nothing else but that it is in such a degree of density that some of its own parts by their being assisted and set on work by a general cause which is the fall of the atomes are powerful enough to divide other adjoyning parts of the same density with them one from another as we see water pour'd out of an Ewer into a Basin where there is already other water has the power to divide the water in the Basin by the assistance of the celerity which it gets in descending And now I hope the Reader is fully satisfied that there is no contradiction in puting Density and Gravity to be the same thing materially and that nevertheless the same thing may be more heavy then dense or more dense then heavy as we took it to our several purposes in the investigation of the Elements Having thus laid an intelligible ground to discover how these motions that are general to all bodies and are natural in chief are contrived by nature we will now endeavour to shew that the contrary position is not only voluntary but also impossible Let us therfore suppose that a body has a quality to move it downwards And first we shall ask what downwards signifies For either it signifies towards a fix'd point of Imaginary Space or towards a fix'd point of the Universe or towards some Moveable point As for the first who would maintain it must have more imagnation then judgment to think that a natural quality could have an essence determin'd by a nothing because we can frame a conceit of that nothing As for the second 't is very uncertain whether any such point be in nature for as for the centre of the earthy 't is clear that if the earth be carried about the centre of it cannot be a fixed point Again if the centre signifies a determinate point in the earth that is the Medium of gravity or of quantity 't is chang'd as often as any dust lights unequally upon any one side of the earth which would make that side bigger then it was and I doubt a quality cannot have moral considerations to think that so little does no harm As for the third position likewise 't is not intelligible how a quality should change its inclination or essence according to the change that should light now to make one point now another be the centre to which it should tend Again let us consider that a quality has a determinate essence Then seeing its power is to move to move signifies to cut the Medium 't is moved in it belongs to it of its nature to cut so much of such a Medium in such a time So that if no other cause be added but that you take precisely in abstracto that quality that Medium and that time this effect will follow that so much motion is made And if this effect should not follow 't is clear that The being able to cut so much of such a Medium in such a time is not the essence of this quality as it was supposed to be Dividing then the time and the Medium half the motion should be made in half the time a quarter of the motion in a quarter of the time and so without end as far as you can divide But this is demonstratively impossibly since 't is demonstrated that a moveable coming from rest must of necessity pass through all degrees of tardity and therefore by the demonstration cited out of Galileus we may take a part in which this gravity cannot move its body in a proportionate part of time through a proportionate part of the medium But because in natural Theorems experiences are naturally required let us see whether nature gives us any testimony of this verity To that purpose we may consider a Plummet hang'd in a small string from a beam which being lifted up gently on the one side at the extent of the string and permitted to fall meerly by the power of gravity will ascend very near as high on the contrary side as the place it was held in from whence it fell In this experiment we may note two things First that if gravity be a quality it works against its own nature in lifting up the plummet seeing its nature is only to carry it down For though it may be answer'd that 't is not the gravity but another quality called vis impressa which carries it up nevertheless it cannot be denied but that gravity is either the immediate or at least the mediate cause which makes this vis impressa the effect whereof being contrary to the nature of gravity 't is absurd to make gravity the cause of it that is the cause of an essence whose nature is contrary to its own And the same argument will proceed though you put not vis impressa but suppose some other thing to be the cause of the plummets remounting as long as gravity is said to be a quality for still gravity must be the cause of an effect contrary to its own inclination by setting on foot the immediate cause to produce it The second thing we are to note in this experiment of the plummets ascent is that if gravity be a quality there must be as much resistance to its going up as there was force to its coming down Therefore there must be twice as much force to make it ascend as there was to make it descend that is to say there must be twice as much force as the natural force of the gravity is for there must be once as much to equallize the resistance of the gravity and then another time as much to carry it as far through the same Medium in the same time But 't is impossible that any cause should produce an effect greater then it self Again the gravity must needs be in a determinate degree and the vertue that makes the plummet remount whatever it be may be put as little as we please and consequently not able to oversway the gravity alone if it be an intrinsecal quality and yet the plummet will remount in which case you put an effect withot a cause Another experience we may take from the force of sucking For take the barrel of a long Gun perfectly bored and set it upright with the breech upon the ground and take a bullet that is exactly fit for it but so as it stick not any where both the barrel and it being perfectly polished and then if you suck at the mouth of the barrel though never so gently the bullet will come up so forcibly that it will hazard the striking out your teeth Now let us consider what force were necessary to suck the bullet up and how very Slowly it would ascend if in the barrel it had as much resistance to ascend as in the free air it has inclination to go down But if it had a quality of gravity natural to it it must of necessity have such resistance wheras in our experiment we see it
that every action of thine be it never so slight is mainly mischievous or be it never so bedeckt with those specious considerations which the wise men of the world judg important is foolish absurd and unworthy of a man unworthy of one that understands and acknowledges thy dignity if in it there be any speck or through it there appear any spark of those mean and flat motives which with a false byas draw any way aside from attaining that happiness we expect in thee That happiness ought to be the end and mark we level at that the rule and model of all our actions that the measure of every circumstance of every atome of whatever we bestow so precious a thing upon as the employment of thee is But we must not so slightly pass over the intenseness and vehemence of that Felicity which thou my Soul shalt injoy when thou art sever'd from thy benuming compartner I see evidently that thou dost not survive a simple dull essence but art replenish'd with a vast incomprehensible extent of riches delight within thy self I see that golden chain which here by long discourses fills huge volumes of Books and dives into the Hidden natures of several Bodies all in thee resumed into one circle or link which contains in it self the large scope of whatever screwing discourse can reach to I see it comprehend and master the whole world of Bodies I see every particular nature as it were imbossed out to the life in thy celestial garment I see every solitary substance rank'd in its due place and order not crush'd or throng'd by the multitude of its fellows but each of them in its full extent in the full propriety of every part and effect of it and distinguish'd into more divisions than ever nature sever'd it into In thee I see an infinite multitude enjoy place enough I see that neither height nor profundity nor longitude nor latitude are able to exempt themselvs from thy defused powers they faddom all they comprehend all they master all they inrich thee with the stock of all and thou thy self art all and somwhat more than all and yet now but one of all I see that every one of this all in thee encreases the strength by which thou know'st any other of the same all al encreases the knowledg of all by a multiplication beyond the skill of Arithmetick being in its kind absolutely infinite by having a nature incapable of being either infinite or finite I see again that those things which have not knowledg are situated in the lowest and meanest rank of creatures and are in no wise comparable to those which know I see there is no pleasure at all no happiness no felicity but by and in knowledg Experience teaches me how the purer and nobler race of mankind adores in their hearts this idol of knowledg and scorns whatever else they seem to court and be fond of And I see that this excess or Sea of knowledg which is in thee grows not by the succession of one thought after another but it is like a full swoln Ocean never ebing on any coast but equally pushing at all its bounds and tumbling out its flowing waves on every side and into every creek so that every where it makes high tide Or like a pure Sun which from all parts of it shoots its radiant beams with a like extremity of violence And I see likewise that this admirable knowledg is not begotten and conserv'd in thee by the accidentary help of defective causes but rooted in thy self and steep'd in thy own essence like an unextinguishable sourse of a perpetual streaming fire or the living head of an everruning spring beholding to none out of thy self save only to thy Almighty Creator and begging of none but being in thy self all that of which thou should'st beg This then my Soul being thy lot and such a height of pleasure being reserv'd for thee such an extremity of felicity within a short space attending thee can any degenerate thought ever gain strength enough to shake the evidence which these considerations implant and rivet in thee Can any dull oblivion deface this so lively and so beautiful image or any length of time draw in thy memory a veil between it and thy present attention Can any perversity so distort thy straight eys that thou should'st not look alwaies fix'd on this Mark and level thy aim directly at this White How is it possible that thou canst brook to live and not expire presently therby to ingulf thy self and be throughly imbibed with such an overflowing bliss Why dost thou not break the walls and chains of thy flesh and blood and leap into this glorious liberty Here Stoicks you are to use your swords Upon these considerations you may justifie the letting out the blood which by your discourses you seem so prodigal of To die upon these terms is not to part with that which you fondly call happy life feeding your selvs and flattering your hearts with empty words but rather it is to plunge your selvs into a felicity you were never able to imagine or frame to your misguided thoughts any scantling of But nature pulls me by the ear and warns me from being so wrongful to her as to conceive that so wise a governess should to no advantage condemn mankind to so long a banishment as the ordinary extent of his dull life wearisom pilgrimage here under the Sun reaches to Can we imagine she would allow him so much lazy time to effect nothing in Or can we suspect she intends him no further advantage than what an abortive child arrives to in his mothers womb For whatever the nets and toils of discourse can circle in all that he who but once knows that himself is can attain to as fully as he that is enrich'd with the Science of all things in the world For the connexion of things is so linked together that proceeding from any one you reach the knowledg of many and from many you cannot 〈◊〉 of attaining all So that a Separated Soul which but knows her self cannot choose but know her Body too and from her Body she cannot miss in proceeding from the causes of them both as far as immediate causes proceed from others over them and as little can she be ignorant of all the effects of those causes she reaches to And thus all that huge masse of knowleg and happ ness which we have consider'd in our last reflection amounts to no more than the silliest Soul buried in warm blood can and will infallibly attain to when its time comes We 〈◊〉 then assure our selvs that just nature hath provided and 〈◊〉 a greater measure of such felicity for longer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 much greater as may well be worth the pains and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so miserable and tedious a passage as here my Soul 〈◊〉 â—gglest through For certainly if the dull percussion which by natures institution hammers out a spiritual Soul from gross 〈◊〉
and blood can aâ—chieve so wondâ—ous an effect by such 〈◊〉 instruments as are used in the contriving of a man how can it be imagined but that 50 or an 100 years beating upon far more 〈◊〉 elements â—efined in so long a â—me as a child is 〈◊〉 a man arriving to his perfect discourse must necessarily 〈◊〉 out in such a Soul a strange and admirable excellencv abâ—ve the unlick'd form of an abortive Embryonâ— Surely those innumerable strokes every one of which makes a strong impression in the Soul upon whom they beat cannot choose but work a mighty difference in the subject that receivs them changing it strangely from the condition it was in before they begun to new mould it What if I should say the odds between two such Souls may peradventure be not unlike the difference between the two wits judgments of the subtilest Philosopher that ever was and of the dullest Child or Idiot living But this comparison falls too short by far even so much that there is no resemblance or proportion between the things compared For as the excess of great numbers one to another drowns the excess of small ones and makes it not considerable in respect of theirs though they should be in the same proportion so the advantages of a Soul forged to its highest perfection in a mans Body by its long abode there and making right use of that precious time allow'd it must needs in positive value though not in geometrical proportion infinitly exceed when it shall be deliver'd out of prison the advantages which the newly hatcht Soul of an abortive infant shall acquire at the breaking of its chains In this case I believe no man would be of Caesar's mind when he wished to be rather the first man in a contemptible poor Village he passed through among the desert mountains than the second man in Rome Let us suppose the wealth of the richest man in that barren habitation to be one hundred Crowns and that the next to him in substance had but half so much as he in like manner in that opulent City the head of the world where millions were as familiar as pence in other places let the excess of the richest mans wealth be but as in the former double over his that comes next him and there you shall find that if the poorest of the two be worth fifty millions the other hath fifty millions more than he wheras the formers petty treasure exceeds his neighbours but by fifty Crowns What proportion is there in the common estimation of affairs between that trivial sum and fifty millions Much less is there between the excellency of a Separated Soul first perfected in its Body and another that is let loose into compleat liberty before its Body arrived in a natural course to be deliver'd into this world and by its eye to enjoy the light of it The change of every Soul at its separation from the Body to a degree of perfection above what it enjoy'd in the Body is in a manner infinite and by a like infinite proportion every degree of perfection it had in the Body is also then multiply'd what a vast product then of infinity must necessarily be raised by this multiplying instant of the Souls attaining liberty in a well-moulded Soul infinitly beyond that perfection which the Soul of an Infant dying before it be born arrives to And yet we have determined that to be in a manner infinite Here our skill of Arithmetick and proportion fails us Here we find infinite excess over what we also know to be infinite How this can be the feeble eys of our limited understanding are too dull to penetrate into but that it is so we are sure the rigor of discourse convinces necessarily concludes it That assures us that since every impression upon the Soul while it is in its Body makes a change in it were there no others made but meerly the iterating of those acts which brought it from ignorance to knowledg that Soul upon which a hundred of those acts had wrought must have a hundred degrees of advantage over another upon which only one had beaten though by that one it acquired perfect knowledg of that thing And then in the separation these hundred degrees being each of them infinitely multiply'b how infinitly must such a Soul exceed in that particular though we know not how the knowledg of the other Soul which though it be perfect in its kind yet had but one act to forge it out When we arrive to understand the difference of knowledg between the superior and inferior ranks of Intelligences among whom the lowest knows as much as the highest and yet the knowledg of the highest is infinitly more perfect and admirable than the knowledg of his inferiors then not before we shall throughly comprehend this mystery In the mean time 't is enough for us that we are sure thus it fares with Souls and that by how much the excellency and perfection of an all-knowing and all-comprehending Soul deliver'd out of the Body of a wretched Embryon is above the vileness of that heavy lump of flesh it 〈◊〉 quited in its mothers womb even by so much and according to the same proportion must the excellency of a compleat Sâ—l compleated in its Body be in a pitch above the adorable mâ—esty wisdom and aâ—gustness of the greatest and most admired oracle in the world living embodyed in flesh and blood Which as it is in a height and eminency over such an excellent and admirable man infinitly beyond the excess of such a man over that silly lump of slesh which composes the most contempâ—ble Idiot or Embrvon so likewise is the excess of it over the Soul of an abortive Embryon though by the separation grown never so knowing and perfect infinitly greater than the dignity and wisedom of such a man is above the feebleness and misery of a new animated child Therfore have patience my Soul 〈◊〉 repine not at thy longer stay here in this veil of misery where thou art banish'd from those unspeakable joys thou seest at hand before thee Thou shalt have an overflowing reward for thy enduring and patienting in this thy darksome prison Deprive not thy self through mischievous hast of the great hopes and admirable felicity that attend thee canst thou but with due temper stay for it Be content to let thy stock lye out a while at interest thy profits will come in in vast proportions every year every day every hour will pay thee interest upon interest and the longer it runs on the more it multiplies And by the account thou shalt find if thou proceedest as thou should'st that one moment oft-times brings in a greater increase to thy stock of treasure than the many years thou didst live and trade before and the longer thou livest the thicker will these moments arrive to thee In like manner as in Arithmetical Numeration every addition of the least Figure multiplies the whole sum it