Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	cold_a	hot_a	moist_a	5,424	5	10.2024	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65356	Academiarum examen, or, The examination of academies wherein is discussed and examined the matter, method and customes of academick and scholastick learning, and the insufficiency thereof discovered and laid open : as also some expedients proposed for the reforming of schools, and the perfecting and promoting of all kind of science ... / by Jo. Webster.	Webster, John, 1610-1682.	1654 (1654)	Wing W1209; ESTC R827	87,773	128

other because in it are very many things that are apparently and absolutely false to make which appear I shall onely name two or three manifest particulars First he affirms that nothing is contrary to substance which he again asserts in his Logick and repeats elsewhere which to me seems absolutely false for certainly the substance of the fire is contrary to the substance of the water But thou wilt say the contrariety is solely in the qualities But seeing these qualities are every one proper to their substances and do arise out of them and accept their esse from them and therefore doth not this also argue contrariety in them For let the substance be of the same nature on both sides from whence is it that these qualities do arise rather than others which are contrary unto them And again in the same chapter it is false that he teacheth that contraries cannot suffer of themselves For do not cold things strive with hot and moist things with dry And do not these qualities mutually beat back and expel one another Secondly it is false which he affirms lib. 2. Phys. cap. 7. That the formal final and efficient causes are coincident to wit in respect of the same effect for how can the father be the same with the essential form of the Son And it is also false which he defends in the eighth chapter That art doth not deliberate otherwise artists do all things rashly But although the Mason do not deliberate whether he ought to prepare a foundation rather than an house Therefore doth ●e not consult whether he shall build it now rather than at another time or whether of this matter rather than of other or whether in this manner rather than in another Thirdly how false is that which he laies down in the 6 and 7. chapters of the third book of Physicks that no number can be given than which a greater may not be excogitated but that a magnitude may be given to wit the world than which no greater can be excogitated I pray you why may it not be lawful and possible to conceive a magnitude greater than this world nay ten thousand times greater wherein lies the impossibilitie He also defines there infinitum to be that beyond which something alwaies may be taken but how is that possible to be infinite that hath something extrase or that it can be made infinite by something without it self These are brave fancies and fine dreams Fourthly in the 8. book besides innumerable falsityes that may be observed in the 5 6 7 8 and 9. chapters that is a most signal one which in the first chapter he labours to build up of the eternity of motion that thereby he may make out the ingeniture and eternity of the world Let us therefore see with what reasons he can evince and perswade it 1. Is this Motion is the act of a movable thing Therefore that which is movable hath preceded Motion I pray you doth he not wound himself with his own weapon and strangle himself by his own consequence For if any thing hath preceded Motion Therefore motion is not eternal 2. He argues The thing moving and the thing moved are either made or are eternal But neither can be said to be so But wherefore cannot the one or both be eternal and nevertheless without motion He adds because this is absurd An egregious instance truly and indeed Philosophical for where appears this absurdity He further urges If the thing movable had preceded motion then it had rested and so another motion had been necessary before of which that rest had been a privation Verily as though he who is born blind ought to have seen in the womb that blindless might be accounted the privation thereof 3. He proceeds Power ought to be neer to the Act. As though stones that have lain hid from the framing of the world under the earth had not as well power to be framed into an house which is made to day as they have a few daies before they be digged up 4. He saith Time is eternal therefore Motion also He confirms the Antecedent 1. Because all Philosophers except Plato do affirm it As though the matter were pleaded in the Court where voices are numbred yet some have accounted Plato's judgement more than a thousand but this were to try things by authority not by truth 2. Because time is not sine nunc but every nunc is the beginning of the sequent and the end of the praecedent time As though there could not be a nunc first and last if either the motion of heaven hath begun or also if we believe that motion is not measured by time which were not hard to demonstrate 5. I shall onely instance in one place more and that is lib. 1. de Coelo cap. 3 cap. 4. There he assumes and endeavours to prove that Circulary motion hath nothing contrary un●o it what if of two wheels or orbs the one were moved towards the Orient and the other towards the Occident were they not to be said to be moved towards contrary parts and is not this to have something contrary unto it nay may not the motion of something in a straight line be contrary to motion that is circular seeing all motion is considered in relation unto the term or point from whence and unto which it moves and how this cannot be possible to me seems neither probable nor possible And though I have but taken these few things to instance in yet were it no hard matter but that it belongs not to my present purpose to evert the whole ground and fabrick of his Philosophy and that with arguments unanswerable and infallible but these are sufficient for this place and purpose 6. Aristotle's ipse dixit or the School's sic habet Aristoteles ought no longer to pass for oracles nor his tenents for truths before others because innumerable things in his Philosophy do contradict and are diametrically contrary and that I may make out what I say I shall call in for witness his own words and instance in some few particular places that it may be manifest how in constant and wavering he was in his own opinions First in his book of Categories there is plain contradiction seeing he makes ten and notwithstanding elsewhere sometimes three sometimes six sometimes eight He saith the first substance is rather substance than the second and not long after he affirmeth that the property of substance is to receive more and less He makes Time a species of Continued quantity and notwithstanding in the 4 book of Physicks he will have it to be Number which is Discrete quantity He also indeavours in the 1 book Priorum Analyticorum to demonstrate the definition of the figures and in the 2 after teacheth that definition cannot be demonstrated In the 1 book Posteriorum he will have us in Demonstration to proceed from things more known to us and for all that he defines demonstration to be that which proceeds