compress its parts any more then it was compressed before but a stone or other mixt heavy body lying upon the ground presseth a hole into the ground yet if as much more earth as there is contained in such a stone were cast upon the same place it would not make any sensible cavity or Impression the reason is because in a stone or mixt body the earth is violently detained and therefore useth the greater force or compression to the Center but earth being in its natural seat doth not This quality may be called coldness supposing it to be a passion wrought upon the tact by the earth punctually pressing to the Center In this sense coldness is an absolute quality in another it may be taken for a privation of heat because it seizeth upon the tact only in the absence of heat According to the former sense doth the Poet elegantly explain the nature of Cold. Nam penetrabile frigus adurit For the penetrating cold doth burn By penetrating its compression is intended That the cold is penetrating and pressing none that ever hath been in Greenland will deny wherefore in that it is an absolute quality In the latter sense it may be taken for a privation for it is the absence of heat which effecteth Coldness yet not per se but per accidens because as long as the heat is in a body it doth through its motion ad extra balance and temper the motion of cold ad iutra but the heat being departed then coldness doth through its compression punctually divide the continuous parts of the body as the ayry and waterish parts of it and so coldness is reduced to action through the defect of heat to balance it This we are sensible of in the Winter at which time there being a detraction of the ambient heat the earthy parts contained in the Ayr do then through their weight press down upon us and being arrived to our skin they repel the heat which being repelled they joyn with the earthy parts of our Body and so cause a greater punctual compression whence we soon feel a dense acuteness thence an asperity and thence a hardness or rigidity When again we approach the fire then its heat joynes with our internal heat and expelling the extrinsick cold parts it doth force the intrinsick ones back to the Circumference and so we grow hot again VIII There is also a Compression observeable in water but much different from that caused by earth water compressing the tact with a continuation and not punctually and therefore the compression made by water is equal thick and obtuse whence it is that when we have newly washt our hands with cold water we feel a thick levor upon them caused by the continuous pressure of the water The division which produceth this cold passion in our tact is not by separating or disjoyning its continuous parts but by squeezing the Ayr contained within its pores which being squeezed impelleth also the fiery spirits seated about these Pores from which impulsion we feel a punctual and acute division so that the passion raised by water doth per se only compress obtusely the continuous parts of our tact through a squeezing and per accidens it disuniteth them punctually by impelling the fiery spirits effentially inhering in the said tangent parts besides water containing some earthy points doth by reason of them excite withal a small acute compression Arist. Lib. 2. de ort anim Cap. 4. and in Lib. 1. de Meteor Cap. 4. seemes to assert that coldness is nothing else but a privation of heat For saith he the two Elements implying water and earth remain cold by reason of the defect of circular motion making heat Zabarel Lib. 2. de qual Elem. cap. 3. makes good my Opinion although by guess or at least we must say that coldness is really in it self a positive quality but wherein this positive quality consisteth he knoweth not but that it ariseth from a privation of heat and in respect of heat it may take place among privations This tends to the same purpose as I have stated before namely that coldness cannot act unless heat be absent in such a proportion as that it may have power over it The same is appliable to heat and the other qualities viz. that they are privations in regard they cannot act without the absence of their Opposites but that they are positive because they act sensibly in the absence of the said opposites But what shall I think of Aristotle who hath soon altered his opinion in Lib. 2. de Ort. Inter. Text. 9. Cold is that doth equally conjoyn and congregate bodies that are of the same Gender as well as those of a differing Gender A plain Contradiction for that which doth conjoyn and congregate bodies by condensation must be positive according to his own words yet nevertheless above he asserted it to be a Privation I wave this and proceed in making disquisition upon his Definition Broath as long as it remaines boyling hot the fat of it is contained within it being exactly mixed with the water but assoon as it cooles it is separated and cast forth to the top ergo cold doth segregate heterogenea from homogenea Earth separates her self from water and water segregates her parts from fire and ayr but water and earth are cold and yet do not congregate their own parts with others of another gender Ergo. 2. This is no more but the mentioning of one of its remote effects for they themselves grant that it produceth this effect through condensation ergo cold is not formally defined but described through one of its effects It now proves easie to us to decide that inveterated dispute concerning the primum frigidum That which doth most divide the tact by compression is the primum frigidum or the coldest but the earth doth most compress our tact or tangent parts for it doth compress the tact acutely and water obtusely only ergo it is the coldest 2. According to their own Tenents that which doth most condense is the coldest but earth condenses most for it condensates her own parts into Metals and Stones but water although it incrassates yet it cannot condense bodies into that consistence which earth doth ergo 3. That which is heaviest is the coldest for condensation is an effect of weight but earth is heaviest ergo Lastly If it be your pleasure to name Earth a frigidum in summo and Water a frigidum in remisso Fire a calidum in summo sive intenso and Ayr calidum in remisso you may without Offence CHAP. XVI Of the remaining Respective Qualities of the Elements 1. The Second Respective Quality of the Ayr. That water cannot be really and essentially attenuated The State of the Controversie 2. That Ayr cannot be really and essentially incrassated Why a man whilst he is alive sinkes down into the water and is drowned and afterwards is cast up again That a woman is longer in sinking or drowning then a
the weighty body is also impelled forward but by refraction by the aid of the said weighty minims Here you may reply That the air doth also depress the body downwards and consequently detain it I answer Besides what I have stated in the solution of the six Problems at the 3 Art that as far as the air is continuous and so depresseth a body it doth detain it within its continuity but being rendred contiguous by the discontinuating weighty minims grants passage to any impelled body The first part of the Solution is apparent in drawing any weighty body under water through it where you may perceive a very forcible detention by reason of the continuity of the parts of the water the latter in drawing it through fire What concerns Dr. Gilberts Magnetick Effluvia Monsieur Gassendy his rigid Cords or Hooks which are by some borrowed to explain the differences of intention of Gravity are sutil since they are only pulled out of their Phanfies without any probable proof for either III. The precedent Solution may also be applied to this Problem viz. Why a pair of Scales are easier moved being empty than when balanced by equal weights IV. Whence is it that a man may carry a greater weight upon a Wheelbarrow than upon his back I answer Because in carrying a weight upon a Wheelbarrow he only thrusts it forward and is assisted by the contiguous pressure of the air qualified as we have proposed in the 2 Problem 2. Because the Wheel being circular is easily propelled A circular body is easier propelled because it is thrust forward upon single points which it is certain yield obedience with the least resistance to the force impelling 3. Because of the reason of the fift Problem V. A man impelling a weighty body from him shall easier impel it by making use of a Pole to thrust it forwards than if he tumbled it along with his arms only whence it is that they usually affix a long Iron handle to those great rouling stones that are used in Gardens for to even the ground 2. One shall cast a stone further with a sling than without it 3. Likewise a stroke given with a hammer with a long handle is much more forcible than if made by one with a short handle or striking with a long handled hammer the stroke shall be of a greater force if held by the farther end of it than if otherwise taken hold nearer to the hammer 4. A cuff given with a swing of ones arm makes by far a greater impression than a thump 5. A stick is easier broken upon ones knee the farther the hands are removed from it and the harder the nearer they are applied 6. The longer an Oar is the swifter the vection of the Boat is although impelled with the same force that a shorter may be All these being Problematically proposed are resolved by one and the same answer viz. Supposing the air to press so potently downwards I say that it being shoven and elevated before at the body propelled supposing it also to be continuous and consequently not complicable that is contiguously introceding as I have told you before is forced to rise up and to sink down again behind at the place out of which it was propelled but the instant before where through that violent and most swift descent and refraction against the body of the Propulsor and of the backward air must needs shove hard between the body propelled and the propulsor and backward air and so by that means must add a great force to the impulse of the said weighty body This premitted I say 2. That the more or the greater body of air is moved by the greater or longer impelled body the stronger swifter and easier the said greater or longer body must be impelled Hence we must also deduce the reason why a body being already in motion is easier moved forwards than one that is at rest 3. I say that a Globous Body is easiest impelled because the Air meeting with no resistance or stay by Angles slides quicker over it and consequently driveth the faster besides an angular Body having many plain sides breaking the force of the Air doth not force the air so much as a globous body that inverting the air quite contrary into a circular Figure upwards whereas naturally it striveth in a circular Figure downwards whereby the Air is much irritated and intended in its force Why an angular Body resisteth an impulse stronger is because the Air in depressing downwards takes faster hold of it in pressing upon its Plane being thereby and its angles hindred or cut off from sliding off as appears in the quadrangular stone exhibited in this apposed Scheme where you may plainly see the difference of the figures of the air in its elevation by bodies of various figures Here may be objected against these subconclusions that the air were it of that force as to superadd so much to the impulsor and impulse would evidently press down the loose Coat of the driver and be plainly felt by him Touching the force of the air no doubt but it is very great according to the commotion and irritation thereof as appears in expelling the flame out of a Gun in bursting thick Glass bottels c. 2. It doth not press down the loose garments of the impulsor because they are supported by air underneath and being very pervious and therefore not resisting gives passage to their meeting 3. It s force is not felt because it is equal and presseth the propulsor forward with a gradual equal and smooth force VI. Why is a Stick being thrust some part of it into a Hole apter to be broke near the Hole if bended than any where else I Answer that through the bending of the Stick the moveable parts of it viz. the air water and fire that are perfused within throughout its Pores are compressed towards the other end where being stopt through the compression of the sides of the Hole do tumefie the Stick there whereby together with the continuation of the force bending it is disrupted The said Spirits recurring in a Stick bowed only and not broken cause the relaxation of the inflexion forcing the solid parts of the Stick into their pristine position by their return VII Whether Gold doth attract Mercury Answ. The Vulgar imagineth it to be so because a piece of Gold being held in a Patients Mouth that is a salivating or lately hath salivated by Mercurials is changed white through its attracting the Mercury But how should it attract by its Volatick Spirits possibly No certainly for the whole Rabble of Chymical Vulcans finds its Spirits to be fixed beyond those of all other Bodies How then Not by acting a distanti Ergo it is fallacious that Gold attracts Mercury and more probable that the spirits of Mercury being ordinarily termed fugitive cannot be coagulated or collected but by the densest body whence it is that only Gold doth collect and coagulate its spirits about its
Archelogia Philosophica Nova OR New Principles OF PHILOSOPHY CONTAINING Philosophy in general Metaphysicks or Ontology Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power Religio Philosophi or Natural Theology Physicks or Natural Philosophy By GIDEON HARVEY Dr. of Phys. and Phil. Late Physician to his Majesties Army in Flanders LONDON Printed by J. H. for Samuel Thomson at the Bishops-head in St Pauls Church-yard 1663. Dr. HARVEY'S NEW PHILOSOPHY Imprimatur Geo. Stradling S. T. P. Rev. in Christo Pat. Gilb. Episc. Lond. a Sac. Domest Ex AEd. Sabaud Octob. 30. 1662. To the Right Honourable THOMAS Earl of Ossory One of his Majesties most Honourable Privy Council in the Kingdom of Ireland My Lord ALthough the interval of several years past might easily have blotted out the memory of any Obligations yet it is the impression of your Lordships most obliging civilities conferred upon me when fortune had blessed me with the honour of your good company in my Travels in France that incites me to make the least recompence yet the greatest within my power of their remembrance and acknowledgement But what can this add Since Countries and Cities that have been honoured with your abode describe your fame with Characters of all perfections concurring in a Person of so Noble Prudent Valiant Heroick and so Affable a Spirit Whence I cannot but be confirmed of your Lordships Candour that encourageth me in this my enterprize of offering to you a piece of Philosophy so much below your acceptance however questioning not but that your Honours endowments will raise the use of it if any may be made to the greatest height And now being conscious of my presumption in aspiring to make choice of so eminent a Personage for a Patron do humbly beg your Pardon and the favour of subscribing my self Most Noble Sir Your Honours most humble and obliged Servant HARVEY TO THE READER Reader I Was concerned in my mind what to call you courteous or kind But since the Scene of this our Orb represents men moving so erratically and varying in that extremity from the Ecliptick of a fixt Judgment certainly I should have been frustrated in wooing your candour or gentleness dayly converse gives me the occasion of observing the variable Fates of Authors Works which although indited by accurateness it self and accomplisht with Herculean labours are oft termed stuffe by some and to others again the works of a Divinity scarce seem to surpass them But to render Lines harmonical to every Ear is one of the humane Impossibilities and no small difficulty to a divine Pen. However all Volumns sail through an Ocean so terrible by Oricanes from Mens Tongues the more by reason they are tossed to and fro without the conduct of their Pilot yet it is not this Charybdis of a carping Momus or that Scylla of a livid Zollus shall prevail to keep these upon the stocks but rather precipitate them upon a Voyage with a venture of their whole lading full of Novelties suspending my thoughts in the interim for a return Not a recompence of vain glory nor a reproof relished with contempt neither being placed in one Scale of a ballance over powers the other containing no more than an empty air And should not that be far short of my scope marked with a single Character of truth and advancement of Learning setting aside any 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The faces of most things appearing yet clouded many but partly unmask as many although of themselves clear covered under a vail of dark terms and absurd notions of Philosophers cannot but spur any sensible Genius to discuss that muddiness of some and redeem the light of others in the performing whereof I have here ingaged my self in these Treatises taking what advantage long time hard study and laborious experiments would contribute thereunto The only Instruments that I have imployed in the sounding of the natures of beings are the external senses assuming nothing or concluding no inference without their advice and undoubted assent whether in Metaphysicks Theology or Natural Philosophy Those terms or notions that only give a confuse testimony of their being to the understanding escaping the evidence of external sence we have declined as rocks whereon any one might otherwise easily make shipwrack of his sensible knowledge Wherefore whatever subject insisted upon within these narrow Pages doth not crave a necessary evident plain and demonstrable assent as being only attempted by external sense mediately or immediately my desire is the Reader would apprehend it to be no part of my Book But to give you a more particular account of my design I shall first discover to you my intention in annexing Natural Theology My thoughts fluctuating in a mist astonisht at the multiplicity of all kinds of bodies moving about me advised to stear their course to some immoveable whereupon they might fix themselves and thence to ponder upon others here they certainly concluded one universal immoveable whereon and whereby all moveables are moved because there can be no moveable but must necessarily have its respect to an immoveable they being relations which are constituted at the same time My next assumption following the chorea of the first and drawn from the relation interceding between an immoveable and moveable resolved me that a Moveable must necessarily be derived from an Immoveable whence I was soon confirmed of an universal Creator of the whole Universe Thence I made a digression into the reason and cause of the creation of all moveables particularly of my self and so keeping strait on my Road behold my steps markt and digested in the fourth Book of my Philosophy which by reason of their prius ought to have been ranckt in the front all men naturally converting their first thoughts thither but for orders sake have inserted them elsewhere Here I found the camp whereon Atheism and natural Faith were to encounter each other but the former being intrencht within the flesh to have much the advantage of the latter standing bare upon so slippery a ground whence it is that the greatest part of the World yea of Christendom render themselves up captives and eternal slaves to the obedience of the devil in the service of Atheism engaged in actions of Abomination Horrour and Blasphemy Notwithstanding since the ruines of those lines of Blessedness and Innocency yet discernable in the souls of all men are possible to be raised up again whence they may easily demolish and batter down those strong Bulworks of Pernicion it is that part of fortification I have endeavoured to delineate the knowledge whereof is absolutely necessary for Salvation and is a Key wherewith to unlock the Mysteries of eternal happiness revealed to us by the holy Scriptures which being founded upon the greatest and truest reason must certainly require a gradual ascent to it from natural Theology being a rational discourse inferring Theorems of Salvation from Humane Reason subordinate to the highest of the Scriptures Wherefore all evidence doth direct us to make this our mark or
circle whence we are to run to that blessed Meta of the other But how preposterous and rash is it for men to slip over this part and to cast themselves without a bottom into the very depth of divine Theology Alas their apprehension is immediately drowned in it their understanding amazed at those fathomless pits of reason in what different and monstrous acceptions do most Divines attach the genuine sense of Scripture through ignorance of its precedents scope dependance And more than this each invokes the Holy Ghost for a Witness for to attest those various Interpretations But what is this but their heavy dull imaginations hallucinating in the appearance of the Scriptures like several eyes in apparent objects of the Sky some framing this others that likeness of them I am not now to be confirmed in my belief that the worst of Atheism is latent in many supposed Divines their sinister ends cheats and vile secret passions of the flesh betraying their hypocrisie Certainly were I put to pick out of any Profession some that were to surmount all others in wickedness I should not need long time to ponder upon my Verdict The cause of this perversity I can state none but presumption in those who after a twelve-moneths dosing upon Ursin's Cat. or Ames Medul do apprehend they should know the whole drift and connection of the Fundamentals of Sacred Writings which to the same appearing upon a reflection dishering and strange in expressions have soon confounded their small relicts of natural faith into a detestable Atheism however cloathed with a dissembled time-holiness under their dark habits for to feed their covetousness out of their Benefices Had these but conferred with their innate Principles of Natural Theology and arrived to the habit therof before they had applied themselves to the top of inspired Learning beyond all surmising the Fundamentals of this latter would have been evidenced to them to be the alone absolute Wisdom plain Truth and most certain infallibility Notwithstanding so universal a neglect of this part yet I question not but many may be found so well principled in both that their undoubted Faith expressed in their most Holy Life and Actions will prove a great happiness to their Followers and Hearers in such Leaders and Teachers Next touching my Scope in the Metaphysicks which was principally the substitution of such Theorems in them as might be demonstrated by sense and had their sole dependance upon it in order to a confutation of those absurd Notions purely Logical although sold for real ones that Aristotle proposed in his Metaphysicks in the interpretation and ambiguities whereof Schollars do usually consume a whole age in vain reaping no better fruits thence than that after seven years study they are enabled to say Formaliter or Materialiter to every thing But lastly my chiefest design ever since the seventeenth year of my age when I had just finisht my course in Physick and taken my last degree consisted in elaborating such demonstrations in Natural Philosophy as might serve to unfold the natures of Beings in relation to the Art of Physick hitherto so uncertain blind and unfounded on Art that I dare confidently assert that the cure of many if not of most diseases is rather to be imputed to the strength of bodies than the application of vulgar Remedies as the precipitation of Patients to their extream Fate by the ordinary courses of Physick more than to the cruelty of their distempers setting aside those frequent mistakes in discovering them and their causes All which are so much subordinated to Natural Philosophy that whatever rare Invention in Practice or infallible distinction of any disease is deprehended in the Art of Medicine must be demonstrated by Principles of Physicks Difficulties of Nature that formerly seemed so uneasie to be explained I find very obvious and evident through them Many things that have hitherto lain hidden in the Bosome of Nature and such as no Philosophy could yet discover you will meet with here Besides these you are like to read the quotation of a Book of Souls or Psychelogia formerly intending its insertion in the Second Part of Philosophy But since I apprehend my self to be much scanted of my time and that this Volumn would swell up into too great a mole I am compelled to omit the publishing of it although it hath been long since ready for the Press Before I take my leave of my Reader I must not forget to crave your permission of using some kind of terms in my Books which although somewhat alienated from their proper signification yet can give you a reason of their figurative or tropical acception such are Catochization Grove besides many others I must also acquit my self to you of my default in such plain and unpolisht Lines which I have made use of Certainly whoever is acquainted with Philosophy will know that it is Philosophical so to write neither had I been ingaged in any other Subject could I have gratified your expectation herein since it was never my fortune to read two sheets of any English Book in my life or ever to have had the view of so much as the Title Leaf of an English Grammar I have also varied in the Orthography both of spelling and pointing from the ordinary and so the Printer hath varied from me My own part herein I can easily protect and so I may the Printers since his unacquaintedness with the matter and hand-writing and the dazling of his eyes which a pair of Spectacles might easily have mended in the smalness of my Letters hath set him upon the Lee shore of accurateness however you may prevent the danger of some mistakes although not of all since I have not the opportunity of so much as casting a superficial eye over half this Volumn by directing your self to the Errata which you will find set down at the end of each Book In fine not to detain you longer in preambles I shall only commend to you one of Grave Cato's Distichs thus inverted Non hos collaudes nec eos culpaveris ipse Hoc faciant stulti quos gloria vexat inanis Condemn thou none neither give them praise Let fools do so who love peoples gaze And advise you to suspend your Verdict upon these Writings untill you have perused them twice and then if disrelishing dishering false or contradicting to give your self the trouble of letting me know my errours in the sense of them which since my only scope is to promote Learning to be taught my self and to excite others to the study of things that are yet imprisoned in darkness I shall take for a very friendly office not valuing the hearing or acknowledging my mistakes although attended as usually with some reproof provided that at the same time I may be furnished with better Principles in lieu of mine or otherwise I shall think it much below me to take notice of such Scripts intended for nothing more than Libels Moreover that my further duty may
1 B. of the Parts of Liv. Creat C. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that we ought to divide a being by them parts which are contained in its essence and not by its Accidents The division of Matter in Metaphysical and Physical may be rejected upon the same ground These divisions as they are objective appertain to Logick where only second notions are treated of and are very useful to the directing of Reason VI. Forms are divisible in material and immaterial If material is understood to be that which doth inhere in matter which is its most frequent and ordinary acception for most Philosophers take it in that sense then all worldly beings are material what being is there but which doth inhere in Matter You may say mans soul. The soul of man according to this acception is material But if you take immaterial for that which can or doth exist out of matter then there are immaterial forms Neither can this be naturally for a Natural Form is which giveth an actual specification and numerication to matter If so how can a form give an actual Specification and numerication to matter when it is not united to it I prove that the Form giveth an actual specification and numerication to matter Forma dat esse i. e. Specif Numer non posse esse materiae A Form giveth a being not a power of being to Matter For matter hath the power of being from it self and not from the Form This is true for most Peripateticks hold that Potentia is essential to matter The Soul of man when once freed from its tye to the body ceases to be a Form but therefore doth not cease to continue a being So that I conclude there are immaterial beings but no immaterial Forms It is ridiculous to doubt whether the Soul of man when separated hath an Appetite or Inclination to its Body or to that matter which it did once informate because the soul in its separated estate is a compleat and perfect being and doth not need a Body neither is the Soul a Form in that state Wherefore should it then have an Appetite to its Body Such an Appetite would be in vain You may answer that it wanteth a Subject to inhere or subsist in I grant it and therefore it subsisteth in God VII A Form is improperly divided in an assistent and informating Form because one being is satisfied with one Form for had it two forms it would be a double being 2. That which they intend by an assistent form is coincident with an Efficient Cause CHAP. XXIV Of the Theorems of Causes 1. That a Cause and its Effects are co-existent 2. That there are but three Causes of every Natural Being 3. That there is but one Cause of every Being 4. That all Beings are constituted by one or more Causes 5. That all Causes are really univocal 6. That all Natural Causes act necessarily 7. That the Soul of a Beast acteth necessarily 8. That all Matter hath a Form That Matter is capable of many Forms I. A Cause and its Effect are existent at one and the same time This Theorem is received among most Philosophers who render it thus Posita Causa ponitur Effectus The Cause being stated that is reduced into action its Effect is also stated or produced The Reason depends upon their relation one to the other to whose Relata it is proper to exist at one and the same time according to that trite Maxim Relata mutuo sese ponunt tollunt Relations do constitute and abolish one another II. There are three Causes of every Natural Being whereof one reduced to Action supposeth the others also to be reduced to action The Proof of this is demonstrated by the same Axiom by which the next forementioned was inferred III. There is but one Cause of all Beings A Cause here is taken in a strict sense for that which produceth an effect essentially and really distinct from it self In this Acception is an efficient the only cause of all Beings Matter and Form are no Causes according to this Interpretation but Principles because they do not constitute an effect essentially different from themselves A Cause sometime is taken in a strict sense for that which produceth an Effect different from it self modally and so there are two to wit Matter and Form Lastly A cause as it signifieth in a middle signification participating of each acception comprehends a triplicity of causes viz. An Efficient Matter and Form IV. All beings are constituted by one or more Causes God is of himself and not from any other as from an efficient cause and consisteth of one pure formal cause By formal Cause understand an immaterial being Angels are constituted by two Causes namely by an Efficient and a Form All other Beings are constituted by more V. All Causes are univocal This is to be understood of Efficients only Whatever Effect a Cause produceth it is like to its Form and is formal only For it cannot generate matter that being created Wherefore it cannot produce any thing else but what like to it self and consequently produceth alwaies the same effect whereas an equivocal cause should produce different effects You may demand why it hapneth that many effects are different as we observe in the Sun which by its heat doth produce Vegetables and Animals which are different I answer that the Difference doth result from the diversity of the Matter upon which it acteth and not from the causality that being ever one and the same The diversity of Effects is accidental to the Efficient and therefore not to be allowed of in Sciences VI. All Natural Causes act Necessarily Hence derives this Maxim Natura nunquam errat Nature doth never erre because she acts necessarily Against this Maxim may be objected that Nature erreth in generating a Monster This is no Errour of Nature It might rather be imputed an Errour if when it should produce a Monster it doth not That which acts after the same manner at all times doth not erre But Nature doth act in the same manner at all times Ergo she doth never erre I prove the Minor If she acts differently at any time it is in a Monster But she doth not act differently in a Monster as in the example forenamed of a Dog without Legs she doth through the Efficient cause educe a form out of the matter which she extendeth according to the extent of the subjected matter the matter therefore being deficient in quantity it is accidental to Nature if thereby a being is not brought to the likeness of its Species The Soul of man may be considered either 1. As a Natural Cause and so it acteth also necessarily in giving a Being and Life to the Body For as long as it abideth in the body it cannot but give Life to its Parts 2. As it is above a Natural Cause in that it hath a power of acting voluntarily without the Necessity or Impulse of Nature VII The Soul of a Beast doth act
to the owner which is only possible in unfixt and untied matters V. I have briefly enumerated the contents of the Moral Law according as it is engraffed upon all mens hearts This Law is perfect and compleat because there is no moral precept belonging to any moral virtue but is contained herein neither is there any vice but is hereby checked and condemned Wherefore I shall compare them together to wit moral Virtues with the moral Law A virtue is a habit of acting good on the other side vice is a habit of acting evil Virtue or vice may be termed moral or theologick according to the act which it produceth which is either moral good or evil or theologick good or evil So holinesse is a habit of acting according to the Law of God Sin is a habit of acting contrary to the Law of God according it is written in all mens hearts That this Law is known to all men it appears hence because all men are checked by their conscience at one time or another for their sins There are four cardinal or principal Virtues Prudence Justice Temperance and Fortitude Prudence is a habit through which a man is directed in exercising particular virtues It s integrant parts are three 1. The remembrance of things past 2. The knowledge of things present 3. The fore-sight of things to come Thomas Aquinas counteth eight 1. Memory 2. Knowledge 3. Aptnesse to learn 4. Cunningnesse 5. Reason 6. Fore-sight 7. Circumspection 8. Caution The subjected parts of Prudence are four 1. Kingly prudence in governing his Subjects 2. Politick prudence of the People in obeying the Magistrate 3. Oeconomical prudence in governing a family 4. Military prudence in ruling an Army The potential parts of prudence are three 1. Inquiry for means 2. Judgement concerning the means invented 3. Command that them things be effected upon which judgement is past Justice is a virtue of giving every one what is his It s integral parts are three 1. To live honestly 2. To give every one what is his 3. To wrong no man The subjected parts of Justice are two 1. General Justice through which a man deals justly with the Commonwealth 2. Special or particular Justice through which a man deals justly with every particular person Special Justice is two-fold 1. Commutative Justice through which a man is just in his trading with others 2. Distributive Justice which is either recompencing every one for his good deserts or punishing every one for his crimes in which there is observed a Geometrical proportion and in commutative Justice an Arithmetical proportion Right is that which agreeth with the Law or Justice It is either natural or positive humane or divine Ecclesiastick or civil written or not written A Law is a rule command or precept of Justice containing in it what is just and what ought to be done There are three conditions required to the constitution of a Law 1. Equity 2. Authority 3. Promulgation or the publishing of it A Law is either external or participated The participated Law is divided in Natural Humane and Divine The Humane Law is either Civil or Canonical The Divine Law is divided into the old and new Law Temperance is a habit of moderating the senses particularly the senses of feeling and tasting The integral parts are two 1. Bashfulnesse 2. Honesty The potential parts are four Continence Clemency Humility and Modesty The subjected parts are Abstinence Sobriety Chastity and Shamefac'dnesse Fortitude is a virtue in attempting terrible matters Its acts are two 1. To uphold 2. To go on The integral parts of Fortitude are Magnanimity Magnificence Patience and Perseverance A man must not only have a bare knowledge of God's Law or of the moral Virtues but also a practick knowledge that is to know them in himself so as to practise them CHAP. XIV Of Man's Fall and of Atheism 1. A rational enquiry into man's primitive estate The maenner of man's fall 2. Grounds whence a man may rationally collect hopes for his restoration 3. That Atheism is the worst of sins and that an Atheist is unable of performing the least good act Wherein the goodnesse of an action doth consist 4. A Character of an Atheist That confirmed Atheism is the onely sinne against the holy Ghost A full Discovery of an Atheist THe other part of the object of Faith is Gods mercy and goodnesse how a natural man comes to find out God's mercy I shall instantly demonstrate Man having compared the difficulty of the Law with his unablenesse of performing obedience to it cannot rest satisfied or assured unlesse relieved and assisted by these two Attributes of God for he being conscious of his pravity and corrupt state of nature must imagine that he was not so created but good and blessed because the Creator is good and blessed and being left to his free-will knowing what was good and what might be evil he through a wanton curiosity and alurement of an evil spirit which spirits were created before man and whose nature it hath alwayes been to tempt man and draw him into evil as shall be proved by reason elsewhere was overswayed to try evil one act of which had not God through his grace prevented it might have been valid enough to corrupt his nature in such a manner that he would have been rendred uncapable of ever recovering his former state or of acting a good act By reason that the commission of one evil act must needs have effected a privation of that habit which he once had of working good for they being acts proceeding from two contrary habits the latter must have expelled the former which would have remained unrecoverable because à privatione ad habitum non datur regressus After a privation a habit cannot return Put out your sight once and you will never recover it Wherefore it must have followed that man being arrived to this depraved state of nature must have become a meer alien from God in whose former resemblance his happinesse did consist Furthermore the immortal spirit expiring out of the body in that condition abideth eternally in absence and dissemblance from God which two cases makes its state most wofull and dismal Thus you may remark that it is possible to a natural man by way of a Sorites to collect his first beatitude deficience guilt and punishment II. Is it not then a man's greatest concernment to bestir himself in this need and defect for a means of restoration Here may be demanded How can a man hope for restoration if the habit of acting good is quite extirpated and that from a privation to a habit there is no returning 2. Why may not a man have the same hopes of restoration here in this world as well as out of it as the Papists hold To the first I answer That extirpation may be understood in a two-fold representation 1. As it represents a total extinction and annihilation Nihil remanente sui 2. As it doth represent not a total yet almost
of the organ and of the contrary habit of darknesse But I shall explain my meaning more amply The first man in the state of his integrity had no habit in him whence his acts proceeded but were effected through a natural disposition and principle of good which God through his bounty had conferred upon him This natural disposition produced its first acts as perfect or with the same facility as it did the following acts for otherwise man could not be supposed to have been created perfect V. Hence it appears that man at his first creation had no habit for a habit according to Philosophers is Habitus est qualitas adventitia ad operandum cum facilitate an acquired quality through which a substance is inclined to act with ease Observe then 1. It is an acquired quality that is not natural 2. That through a habit we do operate with ease which supposeth there was a difficulty of working before we had acquired this habit But wherein lay the difficulty either in the power of acting or in the instrument or in the object upon which it acted There could be no difficulty in the power for that inhering in the substantial form is unalterable Ergo in the instrument and object Now then the difficulty in the instrument and object is removed by often fitting the organ to the object and the object to the organ and so you see a habit is acquired through many repeated acts Wherefore the first man in his entire state needed no habit he acting all things naturally and with ease His organs were all perfect and had no resistance in them against the power or no unfitnesse to the object so likewise the objects were all fitted to their several organs CHAP. XVII Containing rational discoveries of Mans primitive and second estate 1. That Man was created most perfect A proof from reason inferring God to be a most rational spirit 2. That Man by means of his first and second light understood all beings perfectly in their proper natures as they were 3. That the first man did not sleep during his incorrupt estate 4. That the first man did eat and drink 5. That the first man would have generated in the same manner and through the same parts as he did afterwards but without that shame and sinfull lust That there were no co-Adamites The absurdity of that blasphemous opinion touching prae-Adamites 6. That the first man was beyond danger of erring in any action proceeding from his soul. 7. A rational inquiry into the first sinne and knowledg of the first Commandment 8. The manner of man's fall proved by reason His punishment for the breach of the first Commandment 9. A further collection of man's punishment for his first sinne That a present unavoidable temporal death was part of mans punishment and not a present unavoidable eternal death 10. That man after his fall was not become utterly evil 11. An enumeration of the relicts of Good in man TO tell you how darknesse first ceased on man it will be necessary to examine and dive into his first creation the state and manner of it and hence by way of consequence to deduct the casualties and accidents to which he was exposed First Beyond all arguments Man was created most perfect in his essence and operations because whatever is immediatly created by God must be perfect the reason is in that God is a most perfect cause and therefore his immediate effects and acts cannot but be most perfect and man above all he being created according to God's own image You may demand how I come to know that I answer that man may easily apprehend that God is a spirit because his substance is immediatly imperceptible through any of the external senses were he material his body would be perceptible through its trinal dimension of parts neverthelesse his acts upon material objects are but mediately every minute perceived by us through the said intermediate actions upon material objects Secondly We know that he is most rational and understanding because Right Reason cannot but judg all his acts to be most Rational on the other part the soul knoweth her self to be a spirit because her essence is also immediately imperceptible by any of the external senses That she is rational needs no proof Wherefore hence it is apparent enough that man was created after God's image II. The first light then being most perfect produced also its second light in no lesse perfection particularly that which is instrumentall to its Reasoning which made man capable of understanding all things in the world in their own nature Besides there was no resistence or obscurity in any of the objects because they being all created for the service of man had their natures as it were writ upon their breast so that herein they were at the command of the understanding not only so but his will exercised a free and despotick command over all God's creatures whether inanimated or animated which latter and particularly beasts were all of a meek and obedient nature otherwise they could not have fitted man's occasions III. Whether man in this state naturally slept or not is dubious yet it is more probable that he did not because sleep ariseth from an imperfection of the Body and wearinesse of the animal spirits which is not to be supposed in so perfect a creature Besides sleep would have detracted part of his happinesse because an intermission from joy is a kind of misery and a total abolishment of joy is a total misery IV. Man did eat and drink for otherwise many parts of his body as his stomack gutts liver spleen kidnies bladder c. would have been formed in vain V. Man had he continued in his primitive state would have generated and in the same manner through the same parts as he did since although without that sinfull lust and shame The reason is Because the sparmatick parts or genitals would else be supposed to be superadded for no end It is probable that Adam did not generate in his incorrupt state for if he had he would have begot children since that through his entire perfection he could misse of no end in any of his actions who not participating of original sinne would in like manner have continued their race to this day and have remained in Paradice but finding that no such Paradice can at present be discovered upon earth and that all the best parts of the earth are known we may justly inferre the probability of the fore-stated conclusion Possibly you may object That Paradise is in another material world as supposing every Star to be a world I answer That your objection is absurd and hath no apparent foundation as I have proved in my Physicks The same reasons do also shew the absurdity of that blasphemous opinion touching Pra-Adamites and co-Adamites VI. There was no action or pleasure if immediately proceeding from the soul wherein man could erre because the soul having a resemblance to the Divine Nature had
aeternum O the harmony of their quavering wings and smooth voices O the glorious order in their moving O the splendour that encompasseth them O the glistering of their appearances O those bright Stars moving swister than the Heavens O the â—lustery descent of the myriads of Seraphims then of Cberubims and of Thrones O but what misery is it to be shut out from this celestial consort and have ones brains dashed against the fiery pins and burning stakes of Hell Wo the most horrible sight of that monstrous Arch-devil Satan piercing the most tender sinews of man with his serpentine tongue haling each limb of him with so many Drakes heads scruing his conscience by trusting his eyes into that dread magnifying glasse of Hell which serveth him to shake his shattery bones through seeing the monstrous greatnesse of his sins Wo that multiplying Glasse expressing the vast number of his detestable wicked deeds Wo the fearfull thunder of those innumerable legions of wretches roaring out through the most intollerable pains of their sinews the rigid torments and the gnawing fretting distracting inflaming Gangrene of their sad consciences Wo the everlasting pricking pinching convulsion rotting of their sinews Wo the deformity of their ulcer'd swelled rankled bodies Wo the fearfull spectacle and disorder of hellish monsters here is a fiery Serpent there a roaring Lion here stands a dreadfull Drake formed out of the body of an Atheist there a raging Crocodile grown up out of the body of a Traitor Wo the unexpressible innumerable torments and dreads of Hell And this you see is the end of Good and Evil and of this Treatise CHAP. XXII Comprizing a brief account of the Religion of the Heathen Philosophers 1. Socrates his belief of God 2. What God is according to Homer 3. What Plato thought God to be 4. Thales his saying of God 5. Instances proving the Heathens to have known Gods Attributes particularly That Thales believed God's Omniscience and God's unchangeable Decrees 6. That Socrates asserted God's Omniscience Omnipotence his creating of the world in time his justice and mercy God's Omnipresence 7. The Articles of Plato 's Faith 8. Aristotle 's Belief 8. Virgil 's opinion of divine things 10. The divine Song of Orpheus 11. Trismegistus upon the Creation of the world AFter the proposal of a Rational Divinity and its evidence through humane Reason it will not a little conduce to the proof thereof that Heathens have through the light of Nature attained to the same I. Socrates who might more justly be surnamed Divine than his Scholar Plato who received most of his learning from him constantly used to say That the only amiable wisdome was to know and understand God and Nature which knowledge saith he was not be got in men but it was called to mind as if he would have said the soul must needs retain some impression from whence it was derived He asserted also That the supream God was the Father and maker of all things II. Homer declared God the Father of all the gods which are created and maker of beasts and all other things that had no souls By gods here he meant men who for their excellency of wit and parts were after their death remembred with Sacrifices and honoured with the name of gods Neither did men really take these for gods but only in the same manner as Papists do their Saints for they were not ignorant that these had been men and could then perform no more than men Hence Heraclitus affirmed That this world was not made by any of the gods or men III. Plato his assertion was That God of all causes was the most excellent and the first IV. God saith Thales is the most ancient of things for he never had beginning or birth V. Now I come to produce that they had attained a particular knowledge of God's Attributes Thales being demanded whether a man might do ill and conceal it from God no nor think it said he Stobaeus relates of Thales that he being asked what was the strongest answered Necessity for it rules all the world Necessity is the firm judgement and immutable power of Providence A golden saying inverting Fate into God's unchangeable Decree VI. Socrates his knowledge of God was after this tenour viz. That God knoweth all things said done or silently desired That God through his care sustains all his creatures in providing light water and fire for them But particularly for man for whose service and subjection he hath ordained plants and all other creatures That God is one perfect in himself giving the being and well-being of every creature what he is I know not what he is not I know That the way to true happinesse is Philosophy whose precepts are two to contemplate God and to abstract the soul from corporeal sense That God not Chance created the world and all creatures is evident through the reasonable disposition of their parts as well for use as defence from their care to preserve themselves and continue their kind That he hath had a particular regard to man in his body is no lesse apparent from the excellency thereof above others from the gift of speech from the excellency of his soul in Divinations and fore-saying dangers That he regards particular beings from the care of their whole kind That he will reward such as please him and punish others that displease him from his power of doing it from the belief he hath ingraffed in man That he will do it That he is professed by the most wise and civilized Cities and Ages That he at once seeth all things from the instances of the eye which at once over-runs many miles and of the mind which at once conceiveth things done in the most remote places Lastly That he is such and so great as that he at once seeth all hears all is every where and orders all Plato maintains That God is incorporeal and an unchangeable Light That the knowledge of God was the true wisdom and that we are render'd like to God through our justice and holinesse What saith Austin concerning Plato That his followers would have been Christians a few words and sentences onely being changed That the greatest happinesse consisted in knowing God and in being like to him But possibly you may reply That Plato according to what is asserted by Justin Martyr had read some Books written by an inspired pen as the Books of Moses and the Prophets Unde Plato inquit currum volantem Jovem agere in Coelo didicit nisi ex Prophetarum Historiis quas evolverit Intellexit enim è Prophetae verbis quae de Cherubim it a script a sunt gloria Dom ini ex domo exivit venitque in Cherubim sumserunt Cherubim pennas suas rotae eorum cohaerebant Dominique Dei Israel eis in Coelo coharebat gloria Hinc profectus Plato clamat his verbis Magnus in Coelo Jupiter currum volantem incitans alioquin à quo alio nisi à Mose
in the world perswades us to deny All grant quantity to have a terminus a quo and ad quem and what can these termini be else but a minimo ad maximum If otherwise a thing be supposed ultra minimum and maximum it is ultra terminum and indeterminatum or infinitum All quantitative beings are dissolveable into their minimum quod non as we may observe in distillations where water is dissolved into its least vaporous drops beyond which it vanisheth and in sublimations where the subtillest and finest points of earth are carried up to the capitellum in the least parts that nature can undergo Fire ascending Pyramidally first disperseth it self into its least points after which into nothing The Ayr is divided into its least parts as it is seated within the Pores of bodies All these Instances imply parts divided into minima actualia realia physica so that they are not minima potentialia or Negationes as Peripateticks and Nominalists do obstinately obtrude VI. Well then let us pursue these Instances Water being dispersed into its least parts in the head of a Limbeck they come to unite again into one body which is a manifest Argument that a continuum is composed out of indivisibles alone for minima's are indivisibles otherwise they could not be minima in this following manner When the whole head of a Still or only part of it is so thick and close beset with vaporous points that they come to touch one another then they do unite into a continuum and make up a body of water The same is observed in subliming earth into its indivisible points which sticking to the Capitellum of the sublimatory do no sooner return into a Clot of earth then these sands come to touch one another Is not a Line also made through union of points in the same manner as appeares in this Example take a round Ball and cast it upon a plane it first toucheth the Plane upon a point and bending further to the plain it makes another point close to the first and so on many more all which together describe a Line upon the said plane Numbers are notional Characters of real beings but they do likewise contain a minimum to wit one ergo also those real beings whereunto they are applied Is not time composed out of instants united and motion out of ex impetibus spurts joyned to one another That there are instants and spurts the Operations of Angels do confirm to us Divide a Line into two parts by another Line the divided Line is divided in its least part where again the divided particles joyned to the dividing Line is also in their least points or indivisibles which three points must necessarily make up a continuum the reason is this because that which through its being taken away doth take away the continuity must also constitute that same continuity by its re-addition Lastly Grind any matter upon a Porphir into an Alcool which if you grind longer you shall sooner grind it into clods and bigger pieces then lesser the reason is because nature is irritated by the violence and heat of grinding to call the Ayr to its Assistance which glueth its body again together I could adde many other Experiments confirming the same but to avoid prolâ—xity I shall omit their Insertion We may then without danger of any further cavil state that Indivisibles are actually contained in their whole since the whole is both constituted out of them and dissolved into them at its dissolution 2. That there is a minimum and maximum in all natural bodies whether animated or inanimated I cannot but strange at the stupidness of Authors who object certain Propositions of Euclid against this kind of Doctrine as 1. That of 1 El. 1 Prop. Where he teacheth that upon every right line given there may be an equilateral Triangle described Whence they infer that all lines are divisible into equal parts if so then it contradicts the aforesaid Positions For say they suppose a line consisted of three points it could not be divided but in unequal points or parts it cannot be divided into a point and an half because a point according to this Definition is indivisible 2. Euclid demonstrates in the 6 B. p. 10. that a line be it never so little is divisible in as many parts of the same proportion as the greatest line may be Now then supposing a line consisting of three points and another consisting of ten or more the former line is divisible into three parts only the other in many more Granting the truth of these Propositions it concludes nothing against us for these prove against the composition of a Mathematical line out of Mathematical points which we all know to be infinite and in a continuum drowning each other they cannot make up its length but these are only notional and therefore we may not thence deduct any certain Rule appliable to the natura rerum for if we should why might we not likewise infer thence that the world being a continuum consists of infinite parts and that its duration is eternal because that being a continuum must in the same manner consist of infinite parts or thus we might infer that the numbers framed by man being infinite all things upon and for which they were imposed are also infinite but this doth not hold in naturalibus although in conceptibus It is certain that man can doth conceit millions of Notions especially in the Mathematicks which never have been or shall be to wit in that same manner in nature Our case at present is concerning Physical points such as have a determinate Longitude Latitude and Profundity but the least The forementioned Propositions are related to Continuities as they contain indivisibilities potentia but these are contained actu in theirs The points which we treat of have a Magnitude and Mole which although minima yet apposed one to the other constitute majora and being augmented to the greatest number produce a maximum They remain divisible Mathematicè but naturaliter indivisible Here may be objected if these minima are quanta they are also divisible I Answer That they are divisible quoad nos but indivisible quoad naturam or as I said before they are divisible Mathematicè not naturaliter We conceive them to be divisible because they appear mensurable although with the least measure they are mensurable because they are located they are located because they have Magnitude CHAP. VII Of the Natural Matter and Form of the Elements 1. That the Elements are constituted out of minima's That they were at first created a maximum divisible into minima's 2. That supposing there were a materia prima Aristotelica yet it is absurd to assert her to have a Potentia Essentialis or Appetitus Formae 3. That the Natural Form is not educed e Potentia materiae 4. That the Actus of Local Motion is the Form of the Elements 5. The manner of knowing the first constitution
purity that is in its absolute state doth moysten less then Quicksilver which is not at all IV. The Form or first quality of water is gravity with crassitude There is no single word I can think upon in any Language that I know full enough to express what I do here intend and therefore am compelled to substitute these I explain them thus You must apprehend that gravity is a motion from the Circumference to the Center Levity is a diffusion or motion from the Center to the Circumference Now there is a gravity with density that is which hath density accompanying it Density is a closeness of minima's not diducted into a continuity but potentialiter that is Logicè porous and such is proper to earth There is also a gravity with crassitude which is a weight whose parts are diducted into a continuity or I might rather express my self whose parts do concentrate or move from the Circumference to the Center with a continuity that is without any potential pores dividing its matter as in Quicksilver diduct its body to the Circumference as much as you can yet its part will concentrate with a continuity but if you diduct earth you will perceive its porosity so that its body is altogether discontinuated Water is then weighty with a crassitude I prove it First that it is weighty or that its parts move from the Circumference to the Center Water when divided through force doth unite it self in globosity as appears in drops where all its parts falling from the circumference close to their center form a globosity 2. Water doth not only in its divided parts concentrate but also in its whole quantity This is evident to them that are at sea and approaching to the Land they first make it from the top-mast-head whereas standing at the foot of it upon the Deck they cannot The reason is because the water being swelled up in a round figure the top is interposed between the sight of those that stand upon the Deck and the Land-marks as hils or steeples but they that are aloft viz. upon the Yard arm or top-mast may easily discover them because they stand higher then the top of the swelling of the water The same is also remarkeable in a Bowl filled up with water to the Brim where you may discern the water to be elevated in the middle and proportionably descending to the Brim to constitute a round Figure Archimedes doth most excellently infer the same by demonstration but since the alleadging of it would protract time and try your patience I do omit it Lastly The Stars rising and going down do plainly demonstrate the roundness of the water for to those that sayl in the Eastern Seas the Stars do appear sooner then to others in the Western Ocean because the swelling of the water hindreth the light of the Stars rising in the East from illuminating those in the West The same Argument doth withal perswade us that the earth is round and consequently that its parts do all fall from the Outside to the Center V. Secondly That water hath a crassitude joyning to its gravity sight doth declare to us for it is impossible to discern any porosity in water although dropped in a magnifying Glass which in Sand is not It s levor or most exact smoothness expressing its continuity accompanying its weight is an undoubted mark of its crassitude whereas roughness is alwaies a consequent of contiguity and porosity There is not the least or subtilest spark of fire or ayr can pass the substance of water unless it first break the water and so make its way to get through this is the reason why the least portion of ayr when inclosed within the Intrailes of water cannot get out unless it first raises a bubble upon the water which being broke it procures its vent Nor the least Atome of fire cannot transpire through water unless it disrupts the water by a bubble as we see happens when water seeths or disperse the water into vapours and carry vapours and all with it But ayr and fire do easily go through earth because its parts being only contiguous and porous have no obstacle to obstruct them for sand we see in furnaces will suffer the greatest heat or fire to pass through without any disturbance of its parts Lastly Its respectiveness or relation doth require this form both for its own conservation and for others For the earths relative form being to meet and take hold through its weight and porosity this porosity is necessary for admitting the fire within its bowels for were it continuous as water is it would expel fire and dead it of the fire and by ballancing its lightness to preserve their beings mutually it needs the assistance of water for to inclose the fire when it is received by the earth and through its continuity to keep it in otherwise it would soon break through its pores and desert it So that you see that water by doing the earth this courtesie preserveth her self for were she not stayed likewise in her motion through the fire and ayr she would move to an infinitum VI. Moisture is not the first quality or form of the ayr I prove it Moysture as I said before is nothing else but the adhesion of a moyst body to another which it doth affect or touch Now in this moyst body there must be a certain proportion or Ratio substantiae of quantity it must neither be too thick or too thin Water therefore in its purity is unapt to moysten because it is too thick so ayr in its absolute state is too thin to adhere to any body that it reaches unto If ayr in its mixt nature through which it is rendred of a far thicker consistence is nevertheless not yet thick enough to adhere to the sides of another substance much less in its purity Who ever hath really perceived the moysture of Ayr I daily hear people say hang such a thing up to dry in the ayr but yet I never heard any say hang it up in the ayr to moysten but wet it in the water This drying Faculty of the ayr Peripateticks assert to be accidental to it namely through the permixtion of exhalations with the ayr Alas this is like to one of their Evasions Do we not know that the ayr in its lowest region is rather accidentally moyst because of its imbibition of vapours copiously ascending with the fire or heat tending out of the water to its element Is not the heat more apt to conveigh vapours that do so narrowly enclose it then earth which of it self permits free egress to fire yea where an Ounce of Exhalations ascends there arises a Pint of Vapours Waving this I state the case concerning the second Region of the Ayr or of the top of Mountains where according to their own judgment neither Vapours or â—xhalations are so much dispersed as to be capable of drying or moystning any ex rinsick body even here do wet things dry quicker then
overbalance the others but in two parts then it could hardly retain a form whereby its nature might be sufficiently distinguisht from the others if in more then in three parts it would be apparently discernable that that element was mixed if so then it must also be denominated by a mixed name for the cause why men generally impose a single name upon some beings that are mixt and compounded is because there is so little of the extrinsick body discernable that it doth not deserve to be named but if discernable then a compounded word is applied for instance there is none would say that water whereinto only a few drops of wine were instilled was wine and water or Oinolympha but they would nominate it water alone because there is so little wine in it that it is not gustable but supposing there were so much wine mingled with water as to make it perceptible either by tast or smell then no doubt they would say it was wine and water Even so it is here was there more then a fourth part of extrinsick Elements admitted to a single pure element it would be perceptible if so then we should not nominate the elements by a single name but by a compound one Now that it is not perceptible is evident for who can perceive water ayr or fire in the earth or who can distinguish water earth or air in fire c. Was there less then a fourth part it would disaptate the principal element from being an ingredient in a mixture The reason is because there must be some parts adhering to such an element whereby it may be received by the other for example had fire no ayr affixed to it as I have formerly noted it could not be received by water but would be immediately expelled Neither could the earth be disposed to receive fire and ayr but by the admisture of some parts of water some of ayr and others of fire but less then a fourth of these adherents would be insufficient That this is really in effect thus the separation of the elements is a testimony Distil Sea-water and rectifie it often but weigh it before distillation the residence or fixed Salt wherein fire ayr and earth are contained will in little less then a 6th or 8th considering that the water which is separated is not so pure yet but that it retaines some part of the perigrine elements and that another part is dispersed through the ambient ayr respond to the whole body of water Or thus Weigh Sea-water with distilled water and the one shall be a sixth part heavier then the other then imagine that the leasts which are evaporated of the peregrine elements are the remaining parts Lastly the elements being four in company it is very consentaneous to their number that each should be separated by the others in a fourth The reason why water constituting part of the fourth part of earth doth superate the ayr in one degree is because water is more agreeing and that immediately with earth then ayr because of its weight 2. Because it is nearer to the earth then the tract of ayr Fire is least in proportion because it is the remorest In the supplying the fourth of water earth and ayr are in an equal proportion because they are equally consentaneous to water for earth is agreeable to it through its weight and ayr through its continuity and because they are also of the same propinquity to water Fire is less in quantity then these through its remoteness it is more then it is in earth because it is nearer to it Ayr containes an equal part of fire and water by reason they are of an equal approximation of an equal concord with ayr the fire agreeing to it in levity water in continuity Earth is in ayr in the same proportion that fire is in water because they are equidistant to each of their allied elements and retain the same degree of Concord Fire hath the same proportion of earth which earth in its proper Region hath of fire It is sociated to more air in one degree then water to more water in the same degree then ayr to more water then earth in one degree also because their several situation is nearer to fire in one degree III. Summarily through this Division the Firmament was establisht The Firmament was the circumvallation of ayr and fire about the waters which made the earth and water firm in their present situation that is bound them up together and hindred them equally from all parts from falling from the universal Center for the ayr and fire being both light elements do as well diffuse themselves from their own center towards the universal Center as above it towards the imaginary vacuum and so by this means come to sustain the mass of the weighty elements IV. Here a grand Objection and no less Mystery offers it self viz. that it is improbable that the points of earth should be of an equal number and efficacy with the other elements which by this section are so much expanded that their magnitude is divisible into infinite points as it were in comparison to the points of earth and which in respect to the minima's of ayr and fire are but as one point to a million or more To the answering of this call to mind that the absolute form of earth is concentration through dense weight and the form of ayr and fire diffusion from the Center all these absolute forms are met and balanced thence seem to be checkt and obtused by their reciprocal relative forms Now the more these relative forms are degraded from their related form the more they acquire of their absolute forms and consequently greater and stronger motions Well then observe this great Mystery and the hitherto yet unknown Labyrinth of the greatest Philosophers The earth being degraded from her respective form through that the fire and the other elements are abstracted from her hath acquired the more of her absolute form which is to fall to her Center this then being her form no wonder if she doth come to so small a quantity The same apprehend also of water So on the other side fire and ayr being also as much advanced from their relative to their absolute forms do as much diffuse from the center as the earth and water fall to their center so that did not fire and ayr in diffusing from their center possess as great a place as earth and water in moving to the center possess a little place or the earth and water possess as little a place as the fire and ayr a great place it would be dissonant to their natures Besides the little place taken up by the earth and water is as much to them as the great place taken up by the fire and ayr their activity to the center is as much as the activity of the others to the circumference Were the earth imagined to be pure without the admixture of any of the other elements its supposed place would
yet be one fourth less and likewise fire and ayr would in their supposed purity possess a place yet one fourth larger the reason is because the fourth part of the admisted Elements to each pure Element doth so much the more augment or diminish its quantity which being prescinded must necessarily either enlarge or lessen their places Wherefore you see that it doth not hinder but that the minima's of the earth and water may be equal in number activity to the minima's of the others Neither doth it hinder but that the earth and water being expanded by the support of the light elements as appears in the Chaos might have constituted so great a mole as the Chaos was notwithstanding it appeares so small now for every natural point of water was almost half as much diducted violently as it were by the thin levity of the ayr as such a proportion of ayr is now naturally through its absolute form expanded So likewise was the air then half as much cohibited and incrassated through its relative form by the water as the water is now incrassated The like conceive of fire and earth Through these abstractions did all the temperate qualities of the Chaos cease each element did arrive almost to its absolute nature The greatest commerce which they then exercised was with each their nearest adjacent as the fire with ayr ayr with water and fire water with earth and ayr earth with water and fire with ayr In this Scheme you may see the apparition of the second Division which was the third act of Creation The fire moves circulatly by reason of the ayr the ayr is cast equally over the water the water over the earth both pursuing a circular course The Representation of the Chaos after its second Division CHAP. XII Of the Third Division of the Chaos 1. The effects of the Third Knock. Why earth is heavier then water Why water is more weighty near the top then towards the bottom Why a man when he is drowned doth not go down to the bottom of the Ocean Why a potch'd Egge doth commonly rest it self about the middle of the water in a Skillet Why the middle parts of Salt-water are more saltish then the upper parts 2. Whence the earth hapned to be thrust out into great protuberancies How the earth arrived to be disposed to germination of Plants A vast Grove pressed into the earth 3. The cause of the waters continual circular motion 4. The cause of the rise of such a variety of Plants 1. THe third Division or the fourth act of Creation was whereby the most universal Nature naturans did yet more purifie and as it were clarifie the Elements in abstracting each element from its nearer and congregating it to a proper place of its own These several acts of purification and exaltation are not unlike to the operations of an Alchymist in purifying a Mineral 1. He reduceth it to a powder and mixeth it exactly and so it was with the Chaos 2. Then it is either put into a Retort Alembick or a Sublimatory whereby the light parts are separated and abstracted from the heavy ones this hapned also in the first Division 3. He rectifieth the light parts in repeating the former operation and exalts it to a more sublime and pure nature and so separates the lightest parts from the light ones even so it was here God did yet more separate the fire from the ayr Touching the caput mortuum as the earthy parts that he dissolves in water and afterwards to purifie it he coagulates the earth and so separates it from the water in the same manner did God here coagulate the earth and parted it from the waters Further how this is effected I shall in brief explain to you The water through her gravity with crassitude doth obtain a vertue in her of squeezing which is performed by a body that is weighty and continuous for by its weight it presseth downwards to the center and through its continuity it impedes the body which it presseth from entring into its own substance and so forceth it to give way which is the manner of squeezing Now was this body weighty and contiguous only then it would be uncapable of squeezing but would rather press another substance into its own Pores Through this squeezing vertue is water rendred capable of collecting her own parts by making Groves into the earth especially being thereunto impelled by the divine Architect But possibly you may object that water cannot squeeze or press the earth because the earth is weightier then it I answer that earth is weightier then water caeter is paribus supposing that neither is obstructed or violently as it were detained for instance imagining that the mass of earth and of water were each of them placed in Scales no doubt but earth would be heavier and its parts make a greater impulse to the Center because they are single in every minimum and not continuated one to the other and therefore one part doth not hinder the force of the other but rather helpeth it As for water her impulse is lesser because her parts are continuated one to the other and so are a mutual hinderance to one another This I prove take an hour-glass and fill it with water never a drop shall pass through the center-hole the reason is evident because although its parts are weighty yet their continuity hinders them from stilling through and so one part naturally cleaving to the other doth preclude the way but sand you see easily passeth because it being weighty and contiguous only the one part giveth way to the other and impels the same through Wherefore I conclude that all conditions being equal earth is heavier then water But the one being violently detained may prove weightier then the other and so water is detained by earth for water is impeded from concentrating through the protuberance of the mass of earth which therefore causeth a more forcible innixe in water upon the superficial parts of the earth I prove it water weigheth heavier upon the top of high mountains then in the lowermost Region of the Ayr because there it is remoter from its center 2. Water presseth more atop then underneath because it is more remote from the center this is apparent by mens experience in the water for if they suffer themselves to sink down they feel the greatest force to press them from the supream parts of the water but the lower they descend to the bottom the less force they perceive Also there are many things as an Egge dropt out of the shell into the water in a Skillet and others go no deeper then half way to the bottom the reason is because the superficial parts being most remote from the center press more forcible then the parts under them Men when they are drowned in the Sea do not descend so low as to reach the ground but so far only as the superficial parts of the Sea thrusteth them besides there is reason
for this a mans body although alive must needs be less weighty then the thick water at the bottom of the Sea I do not speak of the Seas depth near shoars but where it is of an ordinary profundity as in the Ocean Dissolve Salt into water the middle parts shall be more saltish then the superficial parts for the same reason Besides these experiments the understanding affords also an argument to demonstrate the same If the natural propension of water be concentration then the further it is remote from its center the more it must incline to it But the natural propension of water is concentration ergo II. Since then it is yielded that water is violently detained and remote from its center no wonder if it doth squeeze the extime parts of the earth whereby the earth giveth way in rotundity and is protruded either into longitude or latitude Water having formed but a small dent into the earth a greater quantity of water must needs depress thither and so through a continuated force bores a greater cavern into the earth until at last it hath perduced into her a vast grove whereinto the body of water did retire and so constituted the Ocean The earth being thus impacted by the waters must of a necessity be protruded above some part of the waters and hereby was the earth disposed to germination of plants she being now exposed to the celestial Influences and moderately irrigated and foecundated by the remaines of the water The Representation of the Chaos after its third Division IV. Through this division was the earth in part detected whereby as I said before it was rendred capable of germination or protruding plants God did also congregate the earth and separated her body from heterogeneous Elements yet not so but that there remained still some small part of them These heterogeneous Elements as I may call them for doctrines sake were coagulated into small bodies of divers figures These bodies were of a different size and proportion according to Gods intent and purpose for to effect various and divers kinds of mixt bodies The different proportion was that in some there was a greater quantity of fire in others of ayr c. The coagulation of these small bodies was a close and near compaction of the elements within one small compass Through this compaction each element was pinched in as it were which caused the same violent detention of each as you have read to be in water necessarily augmenting the force and activity of each element in fire it effected a heat which is nothing else but a greater and condensed motion of the fire look below in the Chapt. of 2d Qualit in ayr it agitated a thin swelling or bubling which proceeds from a coarctation of the ayr whereby it is constipated in its motion towards the circumference by water moving to the center Water again is incitated to a stronger motion through the detention of ayr swelling up against its compression The earth is no less compelled to require her natural place the Center then she is opposed by the fire Were all these violent motions as it were equal in their elements being formed also in one figure they might continue so for ever like as if they were all surprized by a Catoche but being coagulated in an unequal proportion and unlike figure they break through one another in some progress of time and being confused in various figures they effect also protrusions of no less variety in figures Observe that in these commistions the elements are confused in a contrary manner then they are placed without in their entire bodies For here the fire against its nature as it were is constituted in the center next the ayr then earth and water is outermost There the earth is the center next to it is water c. Herein appeares the wisdom and providence of Nature which although casting the Elements into a fight yet directs terminates them into a most perfect friendship These coagulated bodies are called seeds which are multiplied according to the number of the kinds thence budding Seeds understand in a large sense as they denominate the Rudiments and first beginnings of all mixt bodies Otherwise Seeds are strictly attributed to living Creatures alone as to Plants and Animals Although Hearbs and Plants are alone nominated by Moses to be produced through this Division yet the seeds of Minerals and of their recrements as they erroneously term them and of Stones were also implied since their Creation is no where else mentioned CHAP. XIII Of the Fourth Fifth Sixth and Seventh Division of the Chaos 1. An Enarration of the Effects of the fourth Division That Nature created the first bodies of every Species the greatest is instanced in Bees Fishes and Fowl That all Species are derived from one individuum That Adam was the greatest man that ever was since the Creation What those Giants were which the Poets faigned 2. How the Sun and Moon were created That a Lioness is not more vigorous then a Lion 3. How the Stars of the Firmament were created 4. How the durable Clouds of the Ayr were created 5. The Effects of the fifth Division 6. The Effects of the sixth Division 7. The Effects of the last Division AS there was a coagulation of the waters and earth so God did in the same manner through the fourth Division coagulate and further purifie the Elements of fire and ayr This coagulation was of the heterogeneous Elements namely of part of the adjoyned 16 parts of the peregrine Elements These being congregated did condense and unite a great portion of fire which condensation through a mixture of ayr water and earth constituted it into a flame Earth giveth a body to fire and staies its light parts ayr and water keep in the flame Look below where I have particularly illustrated the generation of a flame 1. These coagulations consisted of parts differing variously in quantity some greater others less Nature did also observe a most exact order among them to wit she first coagulated one greatest body afterwards some greater bodies lastly many little ones I prove this In all kinds there is one greatest because there is the least for where there is a least there must necessarily be a greatest Among Bees there is one which is the greatest and therefore he is the Leader and King of all the rest Among Fowl we see the same namely that there is one greatest in each kind of them which all the rest follow and fly about In a multitude of Fishes they all swim after and about one which is the greatest among them c 2. The greatest of all kinds were created at the beginning of the world because that being the Superlative degree and therefore excelling the others must have been created immediately by God he creating immediately nothing but what is the most excellent Since that all beings have their rise and origine from one it is necessary that this one should be the greatest That all
and there are so many qualities that unless they indigitate to a particular sensible quality they effect little Their vain Groapings Guessings and Ignorances depend upon the Cloud which they leave upon the nature of Density and Rarity for did they but study the true Definition of either it would not a little contribute to their Information In the first place They imagine Density to be a violent quality whereas you see it is natural 2. They make no distinction between Density Thickness for Thickness doth in the same sense although improperly contain much matter in little Dimensions notwithstanding they are different so doth Thinness contain little matter under great Dimensions as improperly as Rarity Wherein is Rarity then distinct from Thinness nevertheless do Authors affirm that many thin bodies are dense The same is attested by Cardan How then can the above-given Definition stand good A thing shall then contain at once much matter in small dimensions and little matter in great dimensions ergo a thing is thin and thick rare and dense at once No question it is also an erroneous Assertion that some thin bodies are essentially dense or that any thick bodies are essentially rare neither is Tenuity or Crassitude the cause of Density as Scaliger doth well infer in his 283 Exerc. but a contiguous Gravity VII The first power or Form of Fire is Levity with Contiguity The Second next slowing thence is Rarity which is an expansion or diduction of a body that is light with Contiguity This followeth Levity with Contiguity because a thing which is contiguously light cannot but be diducted Scaliger doth justly except against Cardan in Exerc. 4. You say that the reason or manner of a rare and dense body is taken from the multitude or paucity of matter Moreover it is not the multitude or paucity of Matter makes Density or Rarity neither doth Density cause the multitude of matter or Rarity the paucity of it The Demonstration is the same for both because the same body may be rarified or condensed without the encrease or decrease of Matter Averrhoes Lib. 4. Phys. Comment 84. doth hesitate very much in this Particular as appeares by his contradictory affirmations for in that place he asserts that Rarity and Density are contraries in quantity Again in the next following Comment he saith that Rarity and Density are not of the essence of quantity In Lib. 7. Phys. Com. 15. he affirms Rarity and Density to be qualities but in Lib. 1. Metaph. Com. 15. he refers them to the Predicament of Situs and Lib. 8. Phys. Com. 77. he saith that Rarefaction and Condensation are Local Motions Zimara doth labour to draw all these various Dictates of Averrhoes to a good sense When he seemed to place them in the Category of Situs saith he his intention was only to relate the Opinion of other men In saying that Rarefaction and Condensation were in the Predicament of quantity he meant that quantity did consecute them but not formally for a greater quantity doth follow Rarity and thence the possession of a greater place wherefore Rarefaction is primarily and essentially an alteration and a motion to quality but secondarily and by consequence it is to a greater quantity and a larger place Tolet. Lib. 4. Phys. Cap. 9. Text 84. tels us the Opinion of Aristotle upon this intricate Point He expounds his Judgment upon Rarefaction which in short implies Rarity and Density to be two contrary qualities educed out of the power of matter as others also are for when a thing is condensed or rarified that doth not happen properly because something is expelled or something doth enter or because the parts are conjoyned among themselves or are separated by reason of a vacuum voidness but because such a quality Rarity or Density is educed out of the power of matter so as that its Subject should be changed as when it is made hot or cold for the Ancients said that no part of a thing was changed in Rarefaction or Addensation but that its parts came only somewhat nearer or were removed from between themselves However Aristotles Dictates contain nothing of this but when a thing is rarefied or condensed the whole and the parts too are changed by an accidental mutation in receiving a quality educed out of the power of matter which is apparent because in a rare body every part is rare which if Rarity hapned only through the separation of parts among themselves the parts doubtless would remain dense which is false as appeares in things that are rare and most in the Elements A great deal ado about nothing That which through it self is most obvious they involve into obstruseness through their Cavils Whether Averrhoes intended his words in that meaning as Zimara comments or not which is more probable because he doth not give the least hint of an indirect sense of his words and therefore they are to be understood in their direct intention As for Zimara his reconciliation that alledging no reason and since the same might be guessed of his words although he had purposed them for a contrary signification it doth not merit any acceptance is not material either promising no truth or evidence Tolet. rejects the Judgment of the Ancients upon this Particular but hath not the ingenuity to add Reasons to consute them only from an inbred School-bending to Aristotle saith as he is told He declares then with the Philosopher that in Rarefaction and Addensation the whole and parts are changed by an accidental mutation in receiving a quality educed out of matter because in a rare body every part is rare In the first place his Reason is weak for in a rare body every part is not rare as appeares in the ayr which they term to be rare wherein many dense parts as black Clouds are contained nevertheless the whole Body is called Ayr a majori 2. Supposing that every part of the whole is rare he infers nothing but that every part or the whole is rare which is idem per idem 2. If Rarity saith he were caused through separation of parts among themselves the parts would remain dense It seems by Rarity and Density he apprehends nothing else but the diminution or augmentation of quantity for in the same Comment he writes thus You must note that to be made little out of great is to be condensed and out of little great to be rarified Here he contradicts himself before he stated them qualities now they are changed into quantities But to his Reason 'T is true as he saith if Rarity were caused through separation of parts in a mean body among themselves the parts would remain dense supposing that the light parts were separated from it But supposing the dense parts of a mean that is equally consistent of dense and rare parts body the remaining parts would be rare 2. A dense body is not rarefied through any separation of its parts or inflation of its minima's but by the adjoyning of
as it were modi consistentiae Heat is not the cause of tenuity in ayr because heat is accidental to Ayr and tenuity is essential or at least co-essential but that which is accidental and extrinsick cannot be the cause of that which is essential and intrinsick The next effect we can imagine to emanate from lightness with continuity or the greatest diduction and yet remaining continuated must needs be Tenuity Besides these there are some more qualities restant as Obtuseness and Acuteness Asperity and Levor Solidity and Liquidity Softness and Hardness Lentor and Friability It is a mistake in Authors to derive the Original of these Qualities from the Elements as they constitute a mixt body and thence to term them Qualities of a mixt body To the contrary they do emanate from the Elements as they are conceived in their absolute form as hath been proved These Qualities you may nominate third fourth and fifth according as the understanding doth apprehend the one to be before the other in Nature although not in Time The third qualities of the Elements are Obtuseness Acuteness c. I prove it because we apprehend them next to the second qualities for the understanding in discerning these sensible qualities is lead by the Senses as its Pilots now our tact or feeling being the first in esse operari is also imployed in distinguishing those first second and third Qualities and for that reason they are all called tactible or tangible qualities The first action made by any of the Elements upon the tact is local motion as Gravity and Levity for feeling any Element its weight or lightness would be the First thing we should perceive the next would be its rarity or density The third acuteness or hebetude the fourth asperity or levor the fifth hardness or softness the sixth solidity or liquidity the seventh lentor or friability There is a twofold Acuteness formally differing from one another 1. An Acuteness deriving from Density 2. An Acuteness emanating from Rarity Acuteness is a quality whereby our tact is most divided Obtuseness is a quality whereby our tact is least divided Acuteness is in Fire and Earth but in a different manner Acuteness in fire is a rare acuteness whereby it most divideth our tact through its parts being contiguously diducted or spread from the Center The acuteness inherent in earth is a dense acuteness whereby it divides our tact through a dense acuteness or minima's moving through their pressing weight to the Center Obtuseness is a quality following crassitude and tenuity whereby its subject compresseth our tact or divideth it less or least and in longer time Obtuseness in ayr is a quality immediately produced by its tenuity and continuous Expansion for were it contiguous it would be acute but being continuous one part hindreth the other from penetrating or dividing any objected body And so its parts acting together and equally they effect a compression This compression or obtuseness in the ayr is thin and subtil and more potent then that in water because it resisteth less and therefore is also less opposed and through its subtility is capable of making stronger opposition Obtuseness in water issueth out of a thick quality or from its continuous depressing vertue This Obtuseness and that in ayr as also acuteness in fire and earth are altogether different as I said before but through the narrowness of the Language I am compelled to attribute each to two several beings adding some notes of Distinction The same understand of all the other derived Qualities Asperity is a quality immediately consecuting Acuteness and Levor is a quality emanating from Hebetude or Obtuseness Asperity more plainly is an inequality or roughness in the surface of a body this experience tels us proceedeth from a sharpness or Acuteness Levor is an equality of the Surface descending from Hebetude or a continuous pressure or diduction Asperity in fire is a rare diffusing and vibrating asperity that in earth is a dense heavy contracting asperity I prove it our feeling certifieth us that fire is a rare diffusing and vibrating roughness and so feeling earth we feel a dense heavy and contracting roughness From a contiguous and dense Asperity spreades hardness which is a quality where by its subject is difficulty pressed down into it self So thin Levor begetteth softness which is a quality whereby its subject easily giveth way into it self to pressure Hardness in earth may properly be termed Rigidity or a rugged hardness because the earth doth only of all the Elements possess its center and therefore cannot introcede into it self That Rigidity is caused by Asperity its ordinary Definition among Physitians doth testifie Rigidity say they is a hardness with Asperity or a roughness that is from asperity From a continuous and thick Obtuseness derives a smooth hardness such as is conceived in Chrystal or Ice and is alone proper to water Softness in fire being unequal or rough is whereby it giveth way towards its Circumference if pressed from without Softness in ayr being equal and smooth is whereby it giveth way towards its Circumference if pressed from without Solidity is an effect of hardness through which a body is consistent that is uncapable of flowing So water is a smooth solid body because of its peculiar hardness and earth is a rugged solid body likewise because of its proper hardness Liquidity is an effect of Softness whereby a body is apt to flow or to be diducted In Fire it is rare and acute in Ayr thin and obtuse Solidity produceth Friability which is a quality whereby its parts are separable From one another in minute particles wherefore since Solidity cannot give way by flowing it giveth way through Friability Lentor is a quality produced by Liquidity and is whereby a body is rendered deductible by reason of its continuity of Parts We may otherwise apprehend these qualities to differ from one another secundum magis minus thus Asperity is a greater Acuteness of parts Hardness is a greater Asperity or thick Levor Solidity is a greater Hardness Levor is a greater Obtuseness Softness is a greater thin Levor Liquidity is a greater Softness CHAP. XV. Of the Respective Qualities of the Elements particularly of Fire Earth and Water 1. What is meant by the Respective Qualities of the Elements Why they are termed Second Qualities 2. That heat is the second respective or accidental quality of fire That fire is not burning hot within its own Region That fire doth not burn unless it flames is proved by an Experiment through Aq. fort 3. That heat in fire is violently produced The manner of the production of a Flame What it is which we call hot warm or burning How fire dissolves and consumes a body into Ashes 4. That Heat is nothing else but a Multiplication Condensation and Retention of the parts of fire The degrees of Heat in fire and how it cometh to be warm hot scorching hot blistering hot burning hot and consuming hot 5. A way
how to try the force of fire by Scales Why fire doth not alwaies feel hot in the Ayr. 6. Plato and Scaliger their Opinion touching heat 7. The Parepatetick Description of Heat rejected How fire separateth Silver from Gold and Lead from Silver 8. What the second respective quality of Earth is What Cold is The manner of operation of Cold upon our Tact. 9. The second respective quality of Water That water cooles differently from Earth 10. Aristotle and Zabarel their wavering Opinions touching Cold. That Earth is the primum frigidum 1. THe Respective Qualities of the Elements are such as do consecute the congress of the same Elements They are called Qualities per accidens in respect they are supposed to befall them after their production in their absolute Form They are withal termed Second Qualities because they are produced by the First Qualities of the Elements in their congress II. The Second Accidental Quality emanating from fire in its concurse to mixture is Heat The manner of production of heat is accidental and violent That it is accidental is evident because fire in its own Region as the Parepateticks themselves allow is seated beyond all degrees of heat or at least doth not burn It doth not burn because it flames not for nothing doth burn unless it is exalted to a flame or contains a flame within it self A red hot Iron burneth no longer then the flame of the fire lodgeth within its pores nay it doth not so much as effect warmth unless the fire that is contained within its pores flames a little but this flame is so litâ—le that it fleeth the eye-sight If a red hot Iron burneth strongly because it containes a great flame and the same Iron burneth less and less as the fire flaming diminisheth it is a certain sign that where its flame is extinguisht its heat is vanished with it Again none ever doubted but that in a flaming Torch there is an actual burning fire Now tell me when the flame is ready to go out whither that fire goeth Your Answer must be that it is dispersed through the Ayr but then the fire being dispersed through the ayr is no more hot no not warm because it doth not flame wherefore fire naturally and per se is not hot I ask you again whether there is not fire contained in Aqua fortis You will answer me affirmatively But then doth this fire burn No it doth not so much as warm your hand through a Glass If you make the fire in the Aqua fortis flame you will find that it shall not only warm but also burn your hand Powre Aqua fortis upon any Mettal as upon the Filings of Brass contained in a precipitating Glass you will soon see it change into a flame smoak and burning heat through the Glass That it flames the light which appeares within the Glass testifieth Possibly you may object that Aqua fortis if powred upon cloath or your hand will burn and yet not flame To this I answer That Cloath through the subtility of its haires doth open the body of Aqua fortis which being opened the fire cometh forth and it withheld by a thickned ayr adhering to the Cloath which causeth a subtil flame yet seldom visible although sometimes there appeares a Glance The like is effected by powring it upon your hand and then we say it doth enflame the hand because there appeares a subtil flame Wherefore Physitians say well such a part is enflamed when it burnes because there is no burning heat without a flame Nevertheless the fire contained within a mixt body may burn and yet its heat may not be sensible but then its flame is withal imperceptible The reason is because the thickness and density of the circumjacent Elements do hinder the penetration of heat out of that body as also of its light III. It is violent by reason its production is depending upon an extrinsick and violent detention The manner of it is thus Fire being violently concentrated in a mixture striveth to pass the Pores of the earth which it doth with little difficulty but being arrived to a thick ayr the fire is there detained by it notwithstanding do the other parts yet remaining within the Pores of the earth continually and successively follow one another and being all united and condensed which is violent to the fire they make a greater force for strength united is made stronger whereby they dilate and expand the incrassated Ayr this Dilatation and expansion of the Ayr by fire condensed within its belly or bladder is that which we call a Flame Now how fire begetteth heat and becometh burning I shall instantly explain First let me tell you what heat is You know that we name all things according to their natures which they manifest to us in affecting our senses So we call that a Sound which affecteth our Eares and according as it doth divide our auditory spirits and nerves we nominate it harsh or shrill c. Even so we name a thing hot when it doth in a certain manner divide our tangent spirits and Membrane or shorter we say a thing is hot when it feeles hot When our spirits are a little shaked or moved by small and loose Particles of flames then it seemes to be warm but when our tangent parts are divided by dense and forcible Particles of fire then we say it burns so that it is only a division of our tangent parts by the dividing and penetrating parts of fire which we call burning This division is different from a cut or incision which is made by a dense acute body and therefore it separates the whole part but through the acuteness of fire its ayry and waterish parts only are divided contiguously because the fire is contiguous Now the more the parts of fire are condensed the stronger it penetrates divides and consumes The reason why burning fire doth consume or dissolve a body into ashes is because it breakes through the ayry and waterish parts by its great force of contiguous lightness which parts being discontinued and expelled the earth is left alone because the ayry and waterish parts were the glâ—w of that body Fire doth only break through the ayry and waterish parts because they only do resist as it were the fire as for the earthy minims they do not so much resist the fire because being contiguous they give way to its passing IV. Secondly That heat is nothing else but a multiplication condensation detention of igneous parts I prove also hence Hold your hand at a certain distance to a fire at the first application of your hand you will feel no heat or warmth but having held it there a little while you shall begin to feel warmth and continuing your hand somewhat longer at the same distance you will feel heat the reason is because at your first application the fire not yet being sufficiently detained or condensed by your hand you felt no warmth but after a certain condensation
and gathering of the hot parts of the fire it begins to move and stir the ayry parts contained within the pores of your hand and after a further condensation it makes force and penetrates through the ayry parts of the hand Hence when you feel a pricking pain then you cry it burnes this pricking is nothing else but the passing of the fire through the ayry parts and dividing it in Points and Pricks The reason why it doth force so through your hand is because the ayry parts of it doth condense the parts of the fire So that according to the multiplication condensation and detention of the fire warmth becometh hot hot scorching hot scorching hot blistering hot blistering hot burning and burning hot becometh lastly to be consuming hot and these are all the degrees of condensation of fire V. I shall not think my labour lost if I propose a way whereby to balance and know the force of fire and to distinguish exactly what fire giveth the greatest heat In my Road let me tell you that balancing is a way whereby to know and compute the force of a thing The balancing of weighty bodies as of earth earthy and waterish bodies they call weighing because it is the trying of the force of weight that is how much stronger one thing moveth to the Center then another Upon the same ground one may as justly term the balancing of light bodies as of fire and ayr lighting which is the measuring of the force of bodies from the Center * The Scales hung perpendicular over the Fire A. B The Scales inverted D Flatness upon the gibbous side of the Scale for to place the weights upon From what hath been discoursed upon a reason may be drawn why fire that is inherent in the ayr is not sensibly warm namely because it is not enough condensed through the ambient Ayr. VI. Now that you shall not conceit that what hath been proposed is altogether my own Notion I will adduce the judgment of Plato upon this Particular who although hitting right upon many things yet they were soon dasht out by the Arrogance of the Peripateticks In the first place saith he in Timaeo let us consider for what reason fire is said to be hot which we shall soon come to know if we do but observe the Division and separation made by it That it is a certain sharpness and passion is manifest almost to all we must consider the subtility of its Angles the thinness of its sides the smalness of its Particles the swiftness of its motion through all which it is forcible and penetrating and that which it doth swiftly meet it alwaies divides and dissipates considering also the generation of its figure that dividing our bodies through no other nature and dividing it in smal parts doth induce that passion which is justly called Heat Here you see Plato hath hinted right at many things appertaining to the Notion of Heat He saith heat is a passion that is as I said before that we call heat a certain sensation induced by the division of fiery minims 2. You may observe that his opinion asserts heat to be a quality migrating out of fire into the body which it heateth but that it heateth by dividing and penetrating through the diffusion of its small parts Scaliger Exerc. 12. d. 3. maintains the heat which is in red hot Copper not to be a quality raised in it by the fire but to be fire in substance contained and condensed between its Pores Arist. Lib. 2. de gener Cap. 2. describes heat to be that which congregates such bodies as are of one Genus For saith he to segregate which is that which they say fire doth is to congregate congenited bodies and such as are of the same Genus for it is accidental that it removes strange bodies His Followers propose the same in other words viz. Heat is a quality through which homgeneous bodies are congregated and heterogeneous disgregated I object against this that fire is hot but fire doth through liquation mix Brass and Silver together Grease and Oyl Wine and Water c. But these are not bodies of one nature Wherefore fire doth not alwaies disgregate heterogeneous bodies 2. The heat of a Potters Oven congregateth Ayr Water and Earth together but Ayr Water and Earth are heterogeneous Bodies Ergo. 3. If heat congregates homogeneous Bodies then the hotter a thing is the more it must congregate homogeneous Bodies but the Consequence is false and therefore the Antecedence is false also The falsity of the Consequence appeares hence that if the body of man be hotter then its temperamentum ad justitiam requires then it gathers and breeds heterogeneous humors in the Bloud as Choler and adust Melancholy 4. The heat of the Sun raises mud and other heterogeneous bodies in the bottom of waters and causeth them to congregate and unite with the body of the same waters 5. Some of his Sectators demonstrate the reality of this effect of fire in that it congregates Gold through liquation and so separates Silver and other Metals from it To this I answer that the same heat having exactly mixed them before can as well if intended re-unite them again as it hath separated them Neither is this separation any other but per accidens although the union is per se. I prove it It is true at the first melting there is a kind of Separation of Silver from Gold and of Lead from Silver but this befalleth accidentally only for the Silver is separated from Gold and Silver from Lead because Silver being melted before Gold and Lead before Silver and the Gold remaining as yet unmelted and silver also after the Liquation of Lead they must of necessity sink down through the first melted parts of Silver and Lead as being yet unmelted for Silver which is contained within the body of Gold will be melted and attenuated within its body before the Gold it self is scarce mollified whose parts being now mollified through their dense weight squeeze the Silver out of their Pores Wherefore this separation is effected by the fire per accidens but augment your heat to such a degree as to melt your Gold then cast some more Silver to it and see whether they will not mix I believe you will find it so Lastly This is not a Description of heat but the mentioning of one of its Effects for heat formally is another thing VII The Second quality per Accidens of earth is a punctual violent compression to the Center As the earth doth meet the fire in its first quality so it doth also in its second Earth when it is violently detained from its Center it doth punctually compress that body which doth detain it towards its Center If you take up a handful of Sand from the ground doth it not compress your hand downwards Likewise the pressing downwards in all bodies proceeds from the detention of earth in their bodies Observe cast earth upon earth and it will hardly
greater quantity is penetrated must have the greater weight or as great as it was under the greater quantity or else part of its Matter and Form must be annihilated but bodies that are incrassated or condensed have by much a less weight then they had before because the light elements which did before distend their bodies and through that distention their force of weight was intended as I have shewed before are departed Besides Experience speakes the same especially in this Instance the true reason of which was never laid down by any a man yet living or any other creature when alive is much heavier then when he is dead and this appeares in a man who whilst he was alive sinks towards the bottom into the water and is drowned the reason is because through the great heat which was inherent in that man the heavy and terrestial parts were the more detained from the Center they again being thus detained moved stronger towards the center therfore make the body heavier during their violent detention through the great heat which was in the said man when alive so that through this great weight the alive body sinkes down to the bottom now when a man is suffocated and the heat squeezed out of him by the thick compressing parts of the water then he is rendered less heavy and immediately leaves the inferiour parts of water as being less weighty then the said profound parts Nevertheless although the vital flame was soon extinguisht yet there remain ayry and some fiery parts in man which detain the earthy and waterish parts of his body so that although the vital fire is expelled yet these ayry and restant fiery parts not being overcome before a certain term of dayes in some sooner or longer occasion that a man doth not grow lighter then the water before a prefixt time varying according to the proportion and texture of the light elements and then being grown lighter then the water he swimmeth atop Every day after a man is drowned as the heat and ayry parts are expelled he is more and more elevated from the ground until he cometh to the top A strong compact well set man is at least 8 or 9 daies in ascending because his heat was deeper and in greater quantity impacted into his body but therefore sinkes sooner to the bottom as I have heard Seamen relate how that some of their men falling overboard were gone under water in the twinckling of an eye but then they were big lusty strong men as they told me On the contrary we hear how that weak and tender women have fallen into the River and have swom upon the water until watermen have rowed to them and taken them up and many weakly women that were suspected to be Witches being cast into the water for a trial have been wickedly and wrongfully adjudged to be Witches because they were long in sinking and alas it is natural the reason was because they were comparatively light for their earthy parts were not so much detained consequently moved not so forcibly downwards no doubt but their Coats conduced also somewhat to it Whence I collect that an ordinary woman is almost one third longer descending to the bottom then an ordinary man because a man from being a third stronger because he is a third heavier through the force of the light Elements but I mean not through fat or corpulency then a woman is conjectured to have one third more heat then a woman In case a man or woman is drowned in the Sea where it is deep if he be suffocated and dead before he comes to the ground he will not reach the bottom But to make this more clear I will demonstrate it through another Principle viz. the lightness of fire and ayr which is whereby they spread themselves equally from the Center to the Circumference Now that great heat burning within the body of man doth potently press down all the heavy parts of the body towards the Circumference The ambient or external parts of man are the Circumference which being so vigorously pressed must needs be very much intended in their motion downwards hence it is that when a man is in sinking he feeles a pressing within his own body whereby he finds himself to be violently as it were precipitated to the bottom and add to this the violent detention of the weighty parts and the depression of the superficial parts of the water and judge whether all this is not enough to draw him down to the bottom Pray now judge a little at the simplicity of the reason which the Peripateticks give for this They say that there is a fight between mans heat and the water and therefore the water draweth him to her innermost part where she detaines him until his heat is overcome and then the water casteth him up again Others say that mans Lungs being filled with ayr underneath after he is drowned is lifted up by it What groapings and absurdities First They suppose that the water draweth and that the fight is between the heat of man and the moysture whereas the water doth not draw neither is the fight so much between the water and heat as it is between the heat and earthy parts of the body which with the natural declination of those terrestrial parts and the assistance of the water from without doth depress a man or other living creature downwards 2. Why a man is detained such a time and no longer or shorter before he is cast up again they cannot conceive 3. How man is cast up is unknown to them it is not because his Lungs are filled with Ayr for it is more probable they are stopt up with water The reason and manner of his being cast upwards is 1. His body is rendered less weighty by the expulsion of the heat 2. His body is retcht out and diducted through the coldness of earth and especially of the water and therefore is rendered lighter for as compression and condensation is a mark of weight so diduction and extension of lightness Wherefore every particle of water being thicker and heavier then the extended body doth depress underneath it towards its center and so much the more because the dead body doth as it were detain the parts of water about it from their center and so through this depression of the water under the Corps it is lifted up by little and little Besides it is somewhat puft up with winds and vapours underneath the water which thence do lift it up towards the Element of Ayr. The reason why a Dog Cat Hare Fox Horse and other living Creatures are longer in being drowned although they have more heat inherent in them and as much earth comparatively as a man is because their haires being light close and divided do sustain them for the water being continuous doth strive against its being divided by contiguous parts which being light strive also against their depression This by the way III. Neither is the earth subject to
such a Rarefaction or greater Condensation because it consisteth as I have proved out of indivisible minima's If then we should grant a rarefaction or greater condensation we must allow the minima's of earth to be divisible for how could they either be retcht or give way into themselves else and so it would be divisible and indivisible at once which is absurd The same Argument serves against the condensation and rarefaction of fire But more of this in our Discourse de vacuo IV. Condensation Rarefaction Attenuation and Incrassation although impossible in this sense yet in another are usually received and may be allowed Condensation in a tolerable acception is when a rare body is united to a dense body and because it is then as it were made one body with the dense substance it is said to be condensed Thus when fire is united to earth it is said to be condensed but through this condensation there is nothing detracted from or added to the natural rarity of the fire 2. Condensation is also taken for the frequent and constant following of one particle of fire upon the other Now you must not conceive that the fire hereby is condensed or impacted in its rarity no but that one part pusheth the other forward and being so pusht forward one before the other they are said to be condensed that is following one another so close as that they just come to touch one another Thus we say that condensed fire warmeth or heateth the hand because many parts follow one another and so push one another forward into the substance of the hand so that condensation of fire in this sense is nothing else but an approximation of the parts of fire that were dispersed before 2. Fire burneth the hand when its parts being condensed according to both these two acceptions are received and collected following close upon one another and so do burn the hand The reason is because as the force of earth and water is intended by violent detention so is fire which being violently detained by earth and water doth move with greater force Besides through the latter of these condensations the parts of fire are more collected and united The fire is violently detained when it is detained from moving from the Center to the Circumference Besides according to these two latter acceptions you are to understand condensation above whereas I have attributed it to fire A body is said to be rarefied when it is affixed to a rare element thus they conceive earth to be rarefied when its minima's are diffused by a portion of fire A body is attenuated when it is united to a thin Element so water is attenuated when its parts are diducted through the renuity of Ayr. A body is said to be incrassated when it is adjoyned to a thick Element Thus Ayr is understood to be incrassated when it is cloathed about with water Remember that I have made use of these words in my foregoing Discourses according to the said Interpretations V. The Third Relative Qualities are such as do immediately emanate from the Second The third respective Quality of fire is Dryness A Dryness is an expulsion of Moysture which fire doth by forcing it to the Circumference and dividing ad extra its continuity Dryness in the earth is an effect of coldness through which it divides ad intra the continuity of moysture inwards and forceth it to the Center Moysture is an effect of water through which it overlaies a body with its own thick substance expanded in ayr it is a quality whereby it overlayes a body with its thin substance Aristotle in stead of describing these qualities he sets down one of their Attributes Moysture is that which is difficultly contained within its own bounds and easily within others This is openly false for the ayr is difficultly contained within the bounds of others insomuch that it striveth to break through with violence and therefore is more easily contained within its own bounds So water is easier contained within its own bounds for when it is poured upon the earth it vanisheth presently which is not a containing of it Besides granting this Attribute to them both it is only a mark of Moysture and not the Description of its formality No doubt but water is moyster then ayr because it is more apt to cleave through its thickness and adhere to a body then ayr which by reason of its tenuity is not so tenacious Wherefore it is Idleness in thâ—se who say that the ayr is moyster then water although water moistneth more because of its thickness And as concerning the primum siccum it belongeth to the earth because that obtaineth greater force in detracting waterish moysture which is the moystest That it doth so appeares hence because the waterish moysture through its weight is more obedient to the impulse of earth then of fire But if you agree to term nothing moyst but what hath a palpable Dampness and that drying which removeth the said dampness then water alone is moystning and ayr drying because ayr through its tenuity divides the crassitude of the water and so disperseth it CHAP. XVII Of Mixtion 1. What Mixtion is Three Conditions required in a Mixtion 2. Whether Mixtion and the generation of a mixt body differ really 3. Aristotles Definition of Mixtion examined Whether the Elements remain entire in mixt Bodies 4. That there is no such Intension or Remission of Qualities as the Peripateticks do apprehend The Authors sense of Remission and Intention 5. That a Mixtion is erroneously divided into a perfect and imperfect Mixtion HItherto we have sufficiently declared the absolute and respective Qualities of the Elements That which I must next apply my self unto is to enarrate the qualities befalling them joyntly in their union one with the other I. Their union is called Mixtion which is an union of the Elements in Minima's or Points Observe that mixtion sometimes is taken for the union of parts not in points but particles and is termed Union by Apposition as when you mixe Barly and Oates together into one heap Anaxagoras and many of the ancient Philosophers did opiniate that Mixtion consisted only in the apposition of little parts to one body but Aristotle hath justly reprehended them for this Assertion and confuted their Opinion Lib. 2. de Gen. Corrup Cap. 10. Properly Mixtion is effected through an exact confusion of parts and their union in Minima's or the least particles the exactness consisteth in this that there must be an equal measure sive ad pondus sive ad justitiam of parts Parts are either little or great The great are constituted out of little and the little out of the least In mixture to wit an equal one are generally three condititions required 1. A mutual contact without which there must be a vacuum in misto a mixt body 2. This mutual contact must be in points whereby every point of an Element toucheth the minimum of another hence they say well mixtio fit
per minima that mistion is caused through Minima's 3. A reaction of each of the elements whereby the light Elements receive the weighty ones and the continuous the contiguous ones These three conditions are implied in my Definition by union in minima's for union cannot happen without a mutual contact A mutual contact is attained unto through the first qualities of the Elements whereby they move one to the other and so there passeth a mutual embrace or reaction between them II. Here the Peripateticks setting aside the reality of the thing begin again to move a notional question whether mixtion and the generation of a mixt body differ from one another Doubtless there is no real difference between them for where the Elements are mixed there the generation of a mixt body is accomplishr and where there is a generation of a mixt body there is also a mistion of the Elements Wherefore it is a sound Definition that mistion is the generation of a mixt body out of the Elements Zabarel I remember makes an intentional difference between them in attributing mistion to the Elements alone because mistion hath a particular respect to the Elements as they are apprehended through this mixture to be the termini a quo but the generation of a mixt body hath more a respect to the terminus ad quem This is simple for since that mistion is by them counted a motion it must then equally have respect to the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem because there is no natural motion but it moves a quo and ad quem and besides do they not define Generation to be a mutation from non esse to esse Wherefore according to their own words generation doth equally regard the terminus a quo and ad quem ergo there is no distinctio rationis between them But they reply that mixtion is not the mixture of a mixt body but of the Elements and generation is not the generation of the Elements but of a mixt body How sinisterly This is not the question but the doubt is whether by mixture a mixt body is not as much implyed as the Elements Yes for a mixture is the union of the Elements By union understand a perduction of the Elements into an unity that is one body and is not this the terminus ad quem III. Aristotle defineth mistion to be an union of alterated miscibles to wit bodies Here the word alterated is cast as a Bone among his Disciples which each of them falleth a gnawing in interpreting it and a knorring at it in raising altercations and cavils about it Alteration say they is a mutual action and passion of the Elements through their contrary qualities through which they obtund hebetate refract immutate one another and what not And not understanding the nature of obtusion refraction or immutation but erroneously conceiving the forms of the Elements to be diminished by reason they think that the heat of the Elements is expelled refracted and diminished by cold and so of the other Elements they fall a quarrelling whether the forms of the Elements remain whole or entire in their mixtures If any body now should ask them what they mean by form they would reply that it was the first principle of motion in a body and if you ask them further what that principle of motion is they will tell you it is hidden If it is hidden I wonder how they come to know it ergo they tell you what a thing is which they do not know But to the question I affirm that the elements remain actually and entire in their substantial forms in mixt bodies I prove it the substantial form of a thing is inseparable from its matter supposing the thing to remain that which it was for if a property is inseparable much more is the form Besides the form giveth a thing to be that which it is But the elements remain elements in a mixt body because their qualities are sensible not in gradu remisso in a remiss degree but in an intense degree Who ever doubted but that earth in Gold or Lead is as weighty and more then it is in its own Region for being laid upon the earth it makes a Dent into it ergo it is heavier Questionless focal fire is hotter then fire in its own Region Oyl is moyster then ayr or water ergo according to their own Principles these qualities which they call first qualities and are forced to acknowledge to be forms are inherent in the forementioned bodies in an intense degree As for the Refraction Intention Remission or Immutation of the Elements which they take their refuge unto in declaring the reasons of Mixtion as to a Sanctuary are meer Notions there being in reality no such intension or remission of the Elements unless through access or recess of new parts IV. But let us make a deeper search into this Nicety so much disputed upon by all Ancient and Modern Philosophers and that which makes me the more willing to examine this scruple is because it hath hitherto been one of my main Principles That an Element being violently detained is intended and corroborated in its strength and power This is the deepest and furthest doubt that can be moved it being concerning the most remote power and first cause of action in the Elements I have already taken away the difficulty touching Incrassation and Attenuation and shewed that the Matter of a thick Element was not really attenuated in its own substance or increased in matter because it possessed a larger place although seemingly it was wherefore I did assume the use of those words but in an improper acception In that place the question was about the increase of matter now it is concerning the increase or intention and remission of Forms or Qualities strengths and vertues of the Elements The same I said in relation to Condensation and Incrassation I must apply to Intention and Remission that properly they are to be taken for a real increment or decrement of qualities in themselves without the detraction or addition of new parts containing the same vertue as if the same heat in the third degree should be supposed capable of being intended to the fourth degree without the additament of new heat This is impossible because of the same reasons which were given against the possibility of a proper and real Condensation and Incrassation 2. A quality may be said to be intended or remitted but improperly and per Accidens as when a force or quality is accidentally intended as by a more convenient position and yet the quality or force is neither more or less but the same it was As for example Take hold of a Hammer about the middle and strike with it with all your strength and take hold again of the same Hammer about the end and strike although but with the same force yet the last impulse shall be stronger then the first Here you see is an accidental intension of force hapened through
and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 innate some taking them for one others limiting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heat that is only proper to living creatures and applying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heat that is common to all mixt bodies and is subjected to Putrefaction as if connate heat were not subjected to Putrefaction as well as the innate Doth not the connate heat of man suffer putrefaction in a Hectick Feaver You may further read of a fourfold difference of innate heat in Argenter his Treatise of the innate heat 1. I conclude that the connate heat is elementary and not astral I prove it There was connate heat before the Stars were created ergo its Original was not thence The Antecedence is plain from Scripture Gen. 1. for there it appeares that Herbs which questionless were actuated by connate heat were created the third day whereas the Stars were not created before the fourth day 2. Where the effects and operations are alike there the causes cannot be unlike but the effects and operations of Astral heat are no others then of Elementary ergo although I granted it to be Astral it must also be elementary 2. Innate heat is said to be a spirit because its rarest substance is adunited to the least bodies of the other Elements whereby it is fortified and becomes more potent and is constituted a most subtil moveable body The purest and most potent spirits are about the Center they next to them are not so subtil others yet more remote are grosser 3. The connate heat hath a power of converting influent heat into the same nature it self is of I prove it Hippocrates teacheth that the maternal bloud and the sperm are perfused with innate heat if then advenient bloud can be united to primogeneal bloud ergo influent heat may be united to the innate heat and converted into the same nature 2. Flesh contains a part of connate heat in it but cut off a piece of flesh and Nature will restore it again if restore it again then innate heat must be restored with it if so then this innate heat must be generated out of the bloud by the innate heat of the next adjacent parts 4. Childrens teeth are regenerable but teeth contain innate heat in them ergo innate heat is regenerable 5. That which the fore-quoted Opinion stated a putrefactible innate heat is a volatick and moveable heat which not being subtil enough to be united to the fixt or connate heat is protruded to the external parts and is subjected to putrefaction so that in the body of man the food that is daily ingested its subtilest part serveth to be converted into innate heat and to be substituted into the room of the last consumed innate heat The courser parts are converted into moving and external heats By Heats Calida understand hot Particles 6. How is it possible that so little innate heat as is contained within a Dram or two of Sperm should be sufficient to heat the body of a big man XII Corruption is the dissolution of a mixt body into the Elements or into other bodies more resembling the elements then it The Cause of Corruption as I said before is the greatest putrid alteration whereby the innate heat is violently dissolved In Putrefaction the moving heat alone is altered which is reducible but if it continues to a great putrefaction then the innate heat suffers danger and is yet likewise reducible but if the greatest putrefaction seizeth upon a body then the innate heat is strongly putrified and is rendered irreducible because through it the greatest part of the innate heat is corrupted which to expel the remaining innate heat finds it self too impotent But if only a less part be corrupted and the greater abide in power it may overcome the other and reduce it self Hence a reason may be given why many men having been oft seized upon by Feavers yet have been cured and their innate heat is become more vigorous then ever it was yea some live the longer for it The reason is because in most curable Feavers the moving spirits alone are affected neither doth the Alteration reach so deep as greatly to disturb the innate heat but oft times the body being foul and the bloud altered by peregrine humours the body is cleansed and by its fermenting and expelling heat the bloud is freed from these noxious humours after which the primogenious heat is less oppressed and acts more naturally then before through which life is prolonged Here we may answer fundamentally to that so frequently ventilated doubt whether life may be prolonged to an eval duration Paracelsus and many of his Sectators do maintain it affirmatively to whom three hundred years seemed but a slight and short age and in stead of it promising a Life of Nestor to those as would make use of his Arcana Mysterious Medicines yea a life to endure to the Resurrection But these are but Fables and Flashes for since that a man is unequally mixt and that one Element doth overtop the other questionless the predominant element will prove a necessary cause of the dissolution of that Mixtum but was a man tempered ad pondus equally and as Galen hath it tota per tota his Nature would become eval all the Elements being in him composed to an equal strength in an equal proportion If then otherwise the radical heat and moysture do sensibly diminish certainly old age or gray haires cannot be prevented Possibly you may imagine a Medicine the which having a vertue of retarding the motion of the vital heat must of necessity prolong its life in the same manner as I have read in some Author I cannot call to mind which a Candle hath been preserved burning for many years without the adding of Moysture to it by being placed in a close and cold Cave deep under ground Here if true a flame was retarded in its motion by the constringent cold of the earth and thereby the Tallow was saved by being but a very little dissipated through the motion of the fire I say then could the natural heat be retarded by such a constrictive medecine as to catochizate it and hinder its motion life might be protracted to some hundreds of yeares But again then a man could not be suffered to eat or drink in that case because that must necessarily stirre up the heat which excited if it were not then ventilated by the substracting the forementioned constrictive Medecine whereby it might dissipate the acceding moisture must incur into danger of extinction But this prolongation of life pretended by Theophrast Par. is attempted by hot Medecines such as they say do comfort and restore the natural Balsom of man which is so far from retarding old Age that it rather doth accelerate it for if the heat is augmented then certainly it must acquire a stronger force whereby it procures a swifter declination as hath been shewed Besides Experience confirms this to us Many having accustomed themselves to take a Dram
spirits How the Air happens to burst through a sudden great light That a sudden great Light may blind kill or cast a man into an Apoplexy 8. How Light renders all Objects visible Why a piece of Money cast into a Basin filled with water appears bigger than it is The causes of apparent Colours Why a great Object appears but small to one afar off The difference between lux and lumen What a Beam is What a Splendour is That the Lights begot by the Stars and other flames are not distinguished specie How the Coelum Empyreum is said to be Lucid. I. VVE are now to ennumerate and unfold the remaining qualities risen from the mixture of the Elements such are Light Colours Sounds Odors and Sapors We will first begin with Light as being the excellentest among them Light is a quality emanating from flaming fire A flame is nothing else but incrassated Air expanded and deducted in rotundity by condensed fire which is detained and imprisoned within the foresaid qualified Air. The difficulties requiring illustration are 1. How the fire comes to be condensed 2. How imprisoned 3. Why the Air doth immediately surround it 4. How light is propagated and the manner of its action As to the first Fire I have told you will not burn unless it be condensed for being naturally rare it penetrates through the incrassated Air with ease but being condensed it doth not because it is adjoyned to a heavy gross body namely the minima's of the Earth and Water which doth put a stop to its pass but nevertheless the force of fire is stronger by reason of those adjoyned heavy minima's For fire being violently detained by them is grown stronger 2. Fire being to divide another thick body makes use of the compressing accuteness of Earth to divide it which it effects by protruding those dense parts before it for through its single rarity it could not 2. Fire flying out and being expulsed out of a mixt body if it doth not meet with incrassated Air to retain it will pass and vanish but hitting against incrassated Air it strives to pass the Air again being continuous doth maintain her continuity with all her force and thirdly the fire moving circularly makes a circular dent into the mass of the said thickned Ayr which it beats against the advenient Ayr also striving from all parts to recover its situation and therefore necessarily surrounding the fire The Ayr again is also become stronger because of its violent detention notwithstanding the fire being the more potent doth diduct it into an oval or round Figure in the same manner as Wind striving to pass the water doth blow it up into a bubble Fire being thus condensed imprisoned and surrounded with thick ayr and diducting the same ayr into an oval or round Figure is called a flame II. The properties of a flame are 1. to be burning hot 2. to be an lux illuminans illuminating light The burning proceeds from the particles of condensed fire violently striking through the moisture of a mixt body whereby it divides it into ashes or a black crust tending to ashes Before I shew the manner of emanation of Light let us first examine what it is we call Light Light is that which is visible and renders all things about it visible Wherefore you do mark that Light is nothing but that which affects and moves the eye-sight If then I make it appear to you whereby it is that fire doth affect the Eye-sight therein I shew you the manner of emanation or operation of Light You must apprehend the optick spirits to be a thin continuous body equally interwoven through all its parts with a proportion of thin yet a little condensed fire for were it not a little dense it could not heat so that it is very like to the ambient ayr in substance and its other qualities 2. Supposing it to be an ayr we must conceive it to be continuous with the ambient ayr when the eyes are open This premitted I infer light to be nothing else but a continuous obduction of the Ayr caused by a flaming fire But let me here intreat your serious intention upon what I shall discover concerning the nature of Light it being one of the difficultest mysteries of all Philosophy and although its effects are luminous to the Eye yet its nature is obscure to the Understanding The search of this moved Plato to leave Athens and set saile for Sicily to speculate those flames of the mount AEtna Empedocles the Philosopher hazarded himself so far for to make a discovery of the nature of a flame and its light that he left his body in the Mongibell fire for an experiment although much beyond his purpose It is almost known to all how that the Learned Pliny took shipping from the promontory Misenas to be traversed to the Mount Pomponianus whither curiosity had driven him to fathom the depths of the Vesuvian flames but before he could feel the heat the smoak smothered him III. First then I prove that Light is an effect of a flame There is no flame but it causeth light and by the light we know it is a flame Ergo Light is an inseparable accident and a propriety quartimodi of a flame the Antecedence is undoubted Doth not a Candle a Torch a focall flame cause lights Or did you ever see light and doubted of the flame of it What is the reason when we hit our fore-heads against any hard thing we say there strikes a light out of our eyes It is because the violence of the stroke did discontinuate the optick ayr through which the condensed fire did unite and diduct the intrinsick ayr which was incrassated through the same stroke and so made a flame or rather a flash which is a sudden flame that is quickly lighted and quickly laid Secondly Light is not a single quality inhering in fire alone for were it so then where ever fire is there should be light but to the contrary we find that there is fire inherent in the ayr and many other bodies yet the ayr remains dark after the descent of the Planets 2. Were fire naturally light we could never be in darkness because the vast Region of fire is so large that it could not but illuminate thrice the extent of the ayr Thirdly Light is not fire rarefied and exporrected throughout all the dimensions of the ayr for who could ever imagine that a Candle being so small a flame should serve to be drawn out through the ayr and fill it with light to the extent of six or eight Leagues for a Candle may be seen at Sea in a clear dark night six or eight Leagues off or further so that it is absurd to imagine this and unworthy of a Philosophers maintaining it 2. It is impossible that fire could be so exactly mixt with ayr in an instant for so large an extent 3. There is never a particle of illuminated ayr but it is light to the full extent
of the illumination if so then there must be a penetration of bodies Fourthly Light is not fire rarefied for were it so then that fire which is most rarefied should be lightest but the consequence is false Ergo the Antecedence also I prove the falsity of the consequence Fire in Brimstone or flaming Brandy is more rare than the fire of a Candle and yet it doth nothing near enlighten so much as the flame of a Candle Fire most rarefied as it is naturally is not at all light Lamps have burned in Tombs for many years together and have enlightned the same for as many years but it is absurd to conceive that fire could have lasted or been sufficient to be rarefied through the ayr for so many years some simply deny the possibility of it although the same may be brought to pass at this present time 4. Where light is there is not alwaies heat near to it for if the contrary were true then an equal light must have an equal heat but this is averred to be false in Greenland where in their day-season it is as light as it is in the East-Indies and lighter thâ—n it is in the Indies in the Winter and yet the heat in the Indies is infinitely more intense than it is in Greenland for here it is never hot although less cold at some times above others Some Author makes use of a musical Instrument of Cornel. Drebbel to prove against all sense and reason that where ever Light is there is also heat These kind of Instruments are common enough now adaies they were Organs and Virginals that played by themselves All which saith the Author depended upon the rarefaction and condensation of some subtil body conserved in a Cavity within the bulck of the whole Instrument for as soon as the Sun shined they would have motion and play their parts And there is no doubt but that grew out of the rarefaction of the subtil Liquor he made use of which was dilated as soon as the ayr was warmed by the Sun beams Was ever a wise man so much wronged as to be made to believe that a little subtil Liquor could blow the bellows of Organs and that the beams of the Sun should penetrate through Boards and Iron and rarefie the Liquor contained therein and that the interposition of a cloud should lessen the sound of the Instrument if so why should not the interposition of a board rather lessen the sound for a boord shall keep away more heat from a thing than the interposition of a thin cloud The business is this there was no heat required to the motion of the said Instrument for had there been so a fire made in the Room could have supplied the action of the Sun after its descension The Instruments were made to move by a piece of Clock-work which was placed near to the keyes the work it self was moved by weights hung to it or otherwise by a thing made within it like to the spring of a Watch now when the wheels are almost run about then the keyes strike feebler and so the sound is diminished this he calls the interposition of a cloud neither is there any such rarefaction as he imagines to himself and therefore is infinitely mistaken throughout his Book in the nature of rarefaction and condensation Wherefore this is no proof that the Suns light is alwaies hot 2. The same Philosopher argues That the reason why we do not feel the warmth of Light is because it is not hot enough to move our tact for that which moves our tact by hear must be of the same warmth or hotter This is another supposed subtility of his That which is not warm cannot be said to be hot because heat is a degree above warmth now in case there is so little warmth in a mixt body that the cold of earth or water doth overcome it that body is not to be called hot or warm but cold even so it is here in case that Light hath not so much heat as to warm but rather cools as we feel it enough in the Winter it is not to be said to be hot but cold VVho could imagine that a Candle should heat the Ayr twenty or thirty Leagues about its light extending about in circumference to little less IV. Light is a continuous obduction or thrusting up or puffing up of the ayr which puffing up is as it were an opening to the whole body of the ayr in the same manner almost as wind being puffed under water raises and puffs up the whole body of it to a large extent by which the water seems to be opened throughout all its body I say it is continuous for were it a disruption of the ayr and not continuous it would cause a sound A continuous obduction is an equal drawing up or support of the ayr to the Circumference That which doth originally cause this obduction is the fire condensed which bears the ayr up equally and circularly like as when you blow sudds up into bubbles which likewise seems to create a light The ayr being obducted originally about the light its whole body is also obducted to a far extent at the very same moment For supposing that the ayr is continuous and that there is no such condensation as the Vulgar imagines as is effected by penetration of parts or diminution of quantity the ayr being trust up at one place must also be trust up all about to a certain extent The same is manifest in water by puffing a thick wind through a Reed underneath it which little wind although unproportionate to the heavy body of water which it raises puffs up all the parts of water at once that is in a moment the reason is because the water being continuous and nothing between it throughout all its dimensions but what is continuous lyeth as continuately close which is the nearest closeness as can be conceived wherefore puffing one part up you must necessarily at the same instant puff up all the other parts about it because they cannot introcede into one another Or otherwise the reason why so improportionate a body should suffice to bear up so heavy a body as the water for a puff of wind if it be blown deep under the water will raise fifty pounds of water more or less according to its force is because the wind having moved the neerest parts of water they bear one another up continuately unto the very Surface So it is with the ayr being puffed up by the fire which at the same instant doth puff up all its parts about Here you may object If the ayr be obducted in that manner by the flame of the fire and that it giveth way continuately throughout its whole body without an intrinsick incrassation then the least fire must stir the whole tract of Air about it I answer That the Air is partially incrassated and not thorowly throughout all its dimensions wherefore when it is so puffed up it is
consequently is the deeper coloured But that which is continuous although very thick yet it gathers nothing near so much as a continuous body because its continuity hinders its pass and so the light reflects upon it and produces a splendor whereas a contiguous body divides the ayr and giveth way for its entrance and so it pinches and next darkneth it Wherefore Gold being continuous that is consisting of much water condensed and ayr incrassated reflects the light and so produces a splendor Now that Gold consisteth of those moist parts I prove it because Gold contains a Lentor in it which is a concomitant of water and ayr as I shewed you before for cast a piece of Gold into the fire and let it lye there for some proportionate time and being taken out you may diduct it into any form or figure and turn or bend it any way Since that Gold consisteth of a proportion of continuous parts it is thereby rendred splendid and yellow from the proportion of contiguous parts contained within it Wherefore if you reduce Gold into a Calx you deprive it of its splendor because you have taken away its continuity of parts IV. Give me leave to demonstrate to you the reasons of all the various colours which Mercury attains to through its various preparations and thence you may collect the reasons of Colours befalling all other bodies whether Mineral or Vegetable through their several preparations Mercury is 1. splendid because of its thick continuity of parts 2. It s Silver-like colour derives from its paucity of contiguous parts which it containing in that small quantity doth render it a little darker than white and is the cause why it is not pellucid like unto water 3. The reason why Mercury becometh white like unto a white frost by being dissolved by Aqua Fort. is because it is diducted and attenuated through all its dimensions and therefore collecting and pinching the light a little only it appears white 4. Mercury changeth into a yellow colour after it hath been dissolved by oyl of Vitriol and being separated from the dissolvent by exhalation it abides white but being cast into water it changeth yellow The whiteness which remains in Mercury after the evaporation of the oyl is the colour of the corosive salt coagulated into an attenuated body by the Mercurial vertue The casting it into water doth deprive it of the forementioned salt which is dissolved into water that which doth remain is the courser part of the salt incorporated with the Mercury whose substance contains such a proportion of earth as to gather somuch of the obtended ayr and to pinch it into a yellowish colour 5. The whiteness of Mercury sublimate corrosive and of Mercury sublimate Dulufied derives more from the attenuated salt than the body the Mercury 6. The same corrosive Mercury sublimate dissolved into fair water and precipitated by oyl of Tartar changeth into a clay red Here you must not imagine that it is the oyl of Tartar in a drop or two doth colour the whole substance of the precipitated body for it self is of another colour besides were it of the same it is improportionate to colour a whole body by a drop or two It happens then through the deprivation of the thinner parts of the corrosive salt swimming in the water That which the oyl of Tartar performed in this preparation is nothing but to free the body from its detaining spirit which it doth by attracting it to its own body and uniting it self with it into a small body the red colour depends upon the quantity of thickned earth of the precipitate I shall not importune you with the relation of colours befalling through other preparations since you may easily infer a reason of them from what hath been proposed concerning the variation of colours in Mercury V. From this discourse I do further infer 1. That the formality of colours doth mainly consist in a respectiveness and relation to our sight and is no hing else but what man by his sight discerns it to be for had man no sight there would be no colours although there would be an alteration upon the ayr extended Likewise light would not be light but ayr obtended So that I say the Absolutum fundamentum Relationis suppositae would be there but not ipsa relatio because the Correlatum is defective The like understand of sounds sents or tasts which as to us are nothing but certain realities moving our animal spirits by certain respective modes which realities moving the senses in certain modes are called such or such sensible qualities what they may be further really in themselves we know not because we perceive no more of them than what we call such and such the others although real yet we suppose them to be non entia because we do not perceive or know them But I prove the Proposition All positive and absolute beings perform their actions responding to their modes But none of these fore-mentioned qualities may be so termed sensible qualities to wit colours sounds unless modifying the senses 2. That a mixt colour is not an intentional quality produced by the coloured object in the ayr but a real quality really inhering or effected in the ayr by the original action of a fundamental colour What shall an intentional quality act really Ergo Quiddam esset in effectu quod prius non fuerit in causa which contradicts that Maxime concluding the contrary Besides colour would be affected with two sorts of accidents one really inherent in the object the other in the ayr 3. It supposeth accidents to migrate è subjecto in subjectum which is impossible Nevertheless Scaliger pretends to prove Light to be a quality produced in the ayr and distinct from the efficient that is that Lumen is really distinguisht from Lux if so then Lumen could exist when Lux is separated and removed from it but that cannot be ergo there is no real distinction between them According to the same rule we might raise a real distinction between the coloured object immediately altering the ayr and the colour or lumen produced in the ayr from that colour being a Lux in comparison to the other This real distinction is rejected by the same Arguments because a colour in the ayr or a Lumen cannot exist when the colour or Lux in the object is removed 3. That notwithstanding the respective formality there is a real foundation in coloured bodies which is a certain degree of temperature whereby they being somewhat contrary to our sense move and act but mediately upon its temperament 4. That through this absolute foundation a colour doth move or act really upon the ayr and through it upon other inanimate bodies yet not as it is a colour but as it is an absolute foundation or a degree of temperament This motion is not very considerable for although it may move a light thin body out its place yet it will hardly move locally a thick or
dense body wherefore it is ridiculous to opinionate that lumen of the Stars otherwise termed their Influences should be the causes of so great effects upon great bodies as are adscribed to them VI. Colours are generally divided by the Peripateticks into two sorts viz. into true and apparent True Colours are such as do really inhere in their subjects in the same manner as they are represented to the eye Apparent ones are those which are not really inherent in their subjects in the same manner as they seem to be to our sight such are the colours of a Rainbow or of a Peacocks feathers or of the Sea-water because these according to the several distances and position of the eye seem divers The cause they impute to the light Lumen which according to its various aspects renders the said colours various the errour of this Doctrine will appear from these Conclusions 1. All Apparent colours are real and true colours as for their being real colours but few do doubt of it because they do really move the sight That they are true colours I prove hence That which is a real colour must be a true colour because a being and true are convertible ens vernm convertuntur wherefore if it be a colour it must be a true colour or else none for it doth as really and truly move the sight as that which is strictly called a true colour or how should we see it else To this you reply that you do not deny it to be true a colour in one sense namely metaphysically but in another and in respect to a true colour strictly so called it is not true I answer That all the difference I find between them is that the one is more durable or less changeable than the other which doth not make the one more or less true than the other for did an apparent colour move the sight otherwaies than it doth it would be no true colour but it moves the senses as it is and to most mens sight it is the same continuing its duration For when we see a Rainbow its colours do appear the same to all standing in the same place but were they not true they would appear in one shape to one and in another to another As for their different appearances and shapes at several distances and positions is as well incident to those which they call true colours as to apparent ones For a Picture where the colours are all real and true will vary at several distances and positions You will say That a Picture will not vary in colour if you look upon it from the right opposite place where the light is cast in a due proportion I answer Neither will that which you call the apparent colour of a Picture vary keeping the same place and distance And what difference can you then make between them The only difference between them is their more or less durability and changeableness which proceeds from its greater or less compactness of mixture The colour of a Rainbow is as true a colour at that position and distance as of any other object it differing alone in durability for suppose a colour to be altered by a reduplication or over-casting of another colour in substance but the same in appearance as for instance a painted face having its natural colour hid under a painted colour certainly you will say that the latter is only an apparent colour if so wherein is the latter different from the former being a true colour as you call it but in durability To wit the paint wears off and the other abides The same is observable in the clouds whose lasting colour is blewish their fading or painted colours are the rayes of the Sun incorporated with their bodies really and truly altering their lasting colours nevertheless this latter is as true a colour as the paint was upon a painted visage VII The differences and number of colours are various and many for every temperament hath a several colour attending it But as it was not every insensible alteration of temperament that constituted a new temperature saving that alone which is sensible so neither doth every insensible alteration of colour constitute a new colour but only such a one as is sensible Colours are either durable and less mixt mixti è paucioribus non vero minus mixti or changeable and more mixt that is with extrinsick heterogeneous bodies So that a durable colour arises from a compact temperament of the Elements included by extrinsick bodies the other depends upon a less compact union of the Elements Changeable colours are various also according to the lights reflection or refraction and its various incidencies upon objects which causeth them to appear either whiter or blacker or otherwise lighter or darker A changeable colour is sometimes accidental to a persistent colour as appears by the fore-mentioned instance of a painted face Colours are extreme or intermediate Extreme ones are such as cannot be intended or heightned in their action as black I mean that which is blackest cannot be heightned that is it cannot be supposed to pinch and drown the light more than it doth These extreme colours depend upon the extreme or greatest proportion of the superating Element in reference to the whole So that in case fire is the greatest predominant its body is white if the earth its subject is black According to this supposition there are four extreme colours because there are four extreme proportions of the Elements Which are these White Black Crystalline and Pellucid This is made known to us 1. In that Sea-coal consisting of most earth is black 2. A Flame consisting of most fire is white to wit the Sun 3. The Ayr consisting most of ayry parts is Pellucid 4. Ice consisting most of waterish parts is crystalline I will further prove this by reason If blackness be proper to earth and earthy bodies whiteness must be proper to fire and fiery bodies they being opposite correspondents to one another in all qualities The colour which is in water and waterish bodies is neither white or black ergo it must be an extreme colour of it self for since that each Element obtains distinct extreme qualities the same must also be in colours Who would say that water is white or black or partakes of any white or black from fire or earth wherefore Theophrastus was to be blamed for adscribing yellow to fire and white to the three others That which moved him to appropriate yellow to focal fire was because for the most part in flaming or burning it seems yellow and reddish To this I answer That the colour of focal fire is not an extreme colour because fire is not inherent in focal fire in its greatest proportion and predominance it having much earth to obscure its extream whiteness and so it is turned to a yellow or red but where fire is in his greatest predominance and least counterpoised by earth there it seems alwaies white as appears in the colour
it becomes as it were two Bodies and is reflected also in a double Species but were it continued in equality it would be expressed but as one single Species The reason why an inequality in one continuous body causes a refraction is because every protuberance contracts the Species of an object reflected upon it and consequently must represent each of them in a several Species Wherefore a Prism doth represent the same colours of each side of its angle because of the Refraction of the Light arriving through the Inequality of the Angle The ground of the other appearances of a Prism you may easily collect without any further repetition The Sun appears as manifold in the water as the water is rendered unequal through undulation There is no Refraction without a Reflection wherefore Refraction is erroneously divided into simple and mixt supposing simple to be a Refraction without a Reflection which is scarce imaginable The eye of man consisting of continuated equal crystalline parts as Membranes and Humours doth not refract Objects reflected upon it because of the said continuous equality but in case any of the Humours are discontinuated by an interjacent Body Objects appear double because of the Refraction in the eye happening through the inequality of the said interjacent Body A Scheme representing the Derivation of Colours CHAP. XXIII Of Sounds 1. The Definition of a Sound That the Collision of two solid Bodies is not alwaies necessary for to raise a Sound 2. Whether a Sound be inherent in the Air or in the body sounding The manner of Production of a Sound 3. Whether a Sound is propagated through the water intentionally only That a Sound may be made and heard under water 4. That a Sound is a real pluffing up of the Air. How a Sound is propagated through the Air and how far Why a small Sound raised at one end of a Mast or Beam may be easily heard at the other end Why the Noyse of the treading of a Troop of Horse may be heard at a far distance 5. The difference between a Sound and a Light or Colour That it is possible for a man to hear with his eyes and see with his ears likewise for other Creatures to hear and see by means of their feeling 6. The difference of Sounds Why the Sound of a Bell or Drum ceaseth assoon as you touch them with your finger Why an empty Glass causes a greater Sound then if filled with water 7. The Reasons of Concords in Musick 8. The Causes of the variation of Sounds Why celestial bodies Rain and Hail do make but little noyse in the Air. 9. How Sounds are restected How Sounds are intended and remitted 10. The manner of Refraction of Sounds What an undulating Sound is 11. How a Voyce is formed I. SOund is a Quality whereby a natural body moves the Hearing This is a Formal and Relative Definition of a Sound because we call that a Sound which moves the auditory Spirits or internal air of our hearing Besides this it hath a fundamental Essence which is nothing else but a Concussion and Conquassation of the air or otherwise it is the air suddenly and violently concussed or conquassated vibrated or rather pluft up by an extrinsick continuous body be it hard or sof liquid or solid single or double that is between two In the first place I might here question whether a soft or liquid body is apt to make a Sound since Aristotle in his 26. T. de Anim. Chap. 8. states a Sound to be the percussion or collision of two solid hard bodies and particularly that soft bodies as a Sponge or wool do make no sound Notwithstanding this Assertion of Arist. which afterwards I shall make appear to be false I prove that liquid and soft bodies make a sound Poure water to water and hearken whether they make no sound beat one Sponge against another and listen to their sound throw one Pack of woollen cloath upon the other and hearken whether they make no sound II. Next let us enquire whether a sound be a quality inherent in the solid bodies or in the air Not in the solid bodies because they give very little sound in a small compass of air and consequently none without air Wherefore it must rather inhere in the air I prove it a sound is a Passion but it is the air that receives this Passion ergo the sound is in the air The passion is to be krutcht pluft up or shaked 2. A sound sometimes is made when the air is immediately pluft up by one body as when we make a noise by switching the air we hear a sound is made in the air The Definition of a sound asserts it to be a violent and sudden concussion for if you do concuss the air although pent between two hard bodies softly and retortedly it will make no sensible sound because the air gets out from between them by pressing gradually upon its adjacent parts without being pluft up or being kept in by them and so escapes making a noyse But when it is suddenly and violently pressed upon by one or two bodies it is forced to pluffe up because the adjacent air doth not give way fast enough The air being pluft up or concussed is continuated to the ear by reason that one part pluffes up another so the parts of air lying close in continuation one upon the other are soon pluft up continuated to the auditory air within the ears which it moves likewise with the same degree and property of pluffing as the degree of percussion was first made upon it by the property of the percutient How air is pluft up may easily be aprehended viz. by two bodies suddenly violently squeezing out the air which was between them by their sudden collision against one another For instance clap your hands hard together you may by the subtil feeling of your face perceive the air pluft up from between them Or else a pluffing may also be caused by a smart impulsion of the parts of air upon one another by a Stick Board or any other single continuous body The Reason of a sounds celerity and extent of motion to such an improportionable distance you may apprehend from the cause of the swiftness of the lights diffusion treated of in the foregoing Chapt. But withal mark that Light and diffusion of colours are by far swifter then sounds because a Flame being a most subtil and forcible body doth much swifter obtend the air besides the air doth rather accur in an obtension to prevent its disruption then recede whereas in making a sound the air is longer in being obtruded or pluft away from the percutients because it retrocedes and the force percussing doth not compass it circularly from all sides but adversly only Hence it is that at a distance we see a Hatchet driven into Wood long before we hear the sound of it or that we see Lightning before we hear the Thunder III. I remember it is an
the cause of Discords and Concords between Sounds The reason of Concords in Colours is because such a distance or opposition of colour doth set off another according to that Maxime Contraria juxta se invicem posita magis elucescunt Whereas were this distance but of one degree it would rather detract from one another as being defective in setting one another off So a little sour added to much sweet makes an unpleasant tast Likewise in Sounds an Unison and a Second make Discords because there is too little Treble or altitude in a Second to respond to the deep Base of an Unison and hence you may easily conceive the Grounds and Causes of all Concords and Discords The cause of the different sounds of Trebles and Bases is the thickness of the String or percutient vibrating the air in such a degree of obtuseness or such a degree of thinness of the String percussing the air acutely or thus the Bubble which a course String plufs up must needs be thicker then that of a fine one VIII Sounds vary according to the qualification of the percutient in consistency bigness and action A percutient being thick makes a thick Sound so the Base String of an Instrument makes a thick or course Sound A thin percutient beats a thin or sharp sound hence a smal string sounds sharply So that according to the greater or lesser courseness or thickness thinness or sharpness of a percutient the Sound is made more or less course and sharp The rarity of a percutient or its density cause little or no noyse if any a very dumb one because the air is obtruded by neither of them but is only percolated through them A great percutient makes a great noyse a small one little The percussion of a percutient being continuous or interrupted slow or quick smart or feeble raises a continuous or interrupted slow or quick smart or feeble Noyse The Heavens that is the fiery bodies moving with a rapid motion through or with their own Region of fire make some noyse but so little that it would scarce be audible supposing a man were near to them They make some little noyse because they being bodies somewhat continuous and obtruding that little ayr which is admitted to the fire in some measure they must consequently make a noise but such as is soon deaded through the contiguity of the fire Among these Bodies the Moon makes the greatest noyse because its body is more continuous its situation is neerest to the region of the air Supposing two celestial bodies should extraordinarily meet dash against one another they would make an indifferent audible noyse because the peregrine air being thereby more pent its obtrusion must necessarily be the greater A Stella cadens or a falling Star yields no noyse because the air gives way in it self as fast as the other can make way down but did it fall down swifter then the air could give way then of necessity it must obtrude it and raise a sound or did it fall upon air being pent by it and another Body it would do the same with more efficacy Clouds Rain and Hail make a small noyse in the air although not very sensible because the air is loose and free whereby it giveth way but where ever it is pent by them and other Bodies they raise a sound hence Hail and Rain make a noyse when they shrowd the air between themselves and the earth hence it is also why Streams or a Channel of water is not heard unless where it beats smartly against it self or against shallows of Gravel or Pebble Focal fire glowing or any thing within it makes no noyse in it self unless its body being rendered more continuous in a flame is beated against the air or the air is obtruded against it by another continuous Body as by a fan or wind out of Bellows A hissing noyse is made in the air when it is smartly percussed without being pent by any other Body but by its own parts and the percutient Hence it is that a Bullet shot or the switching of the air with a Switch make a hissing noise but their noyse is much altered where the air is pent by it and another solid body A quaking noise as of an Earthquake or the quavering upon an Instrument proceeds from the interruption repetition of the percussion By how much the more the air is pent from all parts the greater and violenter sound it makes Hence it is that the noise of a Gun or of any thing bursting is of that lowdness This also proves a cause why a soft whispering or blast of wind makes a great sound improportionable to so soft a percussion in a Trunk or any other close round long passage Hence a Trumpet or a Hunters Horn do make so great a noyse and is so far propagated IX A sound is either reflexe or refracted A reflexe sound is when it is propelled against a continuous body by which it is repulsed or whence it doth rebound so that the reflection of a Sound is nothing else but a rebounding of it from a continuous body Sounds acquire an increase or a lowder noyse from their rebounding in a like manner as Light is intended by its reflection The greater this reflection is the greater noyse it makes The greatest Reflection is when a Sound is reflected by a circular reflecting continuous body because the sound being circularly propagated for a noyse made in the open air is heard round about is equally reflected from all parts and its parts do as it were reflect back again against one another whereby the sound is majorated to its greatest intention Hence it is that Chappels being circularly rooft reflect a great Sound and were their Bottom also circular the sound would be by far more intended By the way take notice that an Eccho is not a reflection alone of a sound neither is it caused by it alone for all grant that there is a great reflection of a Sound in Chappels and yet there is no Eccho All sorts of Metals formed into a Concave as Pels Bowls made of metal all sorts of drinking Glasses give a great sound for their tinging noise is nothing else but a great intended reflext quaking noise because the percussed sound is reflext circularly within upon the connuated parts of the said Metals Glasses From the same reason it is that all hollow continuated bodies as most sorts of Instruments viz. Virginals Viols Lutes c. make so great and improportionable a sound to so small a percussion A man would imagine that the sound caused by striking of a String of an Instrument should come all from within the Instrument and that there were no sound at all above but it is otherwise 'T is true the greater sound is protruded from within nevertheless there is a sound also without but it being the lesser is overcome and drowned by the protrusion of the greater sound from within This is evident in
which is the raising of a feeling It is moved by being diducted either by depression or weight or any other thick continuous diduction So that whatever is thin light or rare doth effuge the sense of the tact hence it is that the air thin vapours exhalations or spirits are not immediately felt That which doth gently stir quaver these tangent spirits is said to feel pleasing and delightful Hence it is that kissing seems to feel so pleasing to many because that hapning to a thin part being withal of an exquisite feeling where the spirits being gently stirred and quavered by the application of other lips doth cause a delightful feeling That this is so is testified by most who kiss for a delight in that they do at that instant of the application of lips feel a creeping quaking spirit in their lips The same delightful feeling happens also to a Dog applying his chops to a Bitches taile A soft object doth gently stir the tangent spirits of the extremities of the fingers and is perfectly pleasing and therefore many men love to handle and feel boys and girles cheeks That which doth so much diduct the tactile spirits as to divide and burst them doth subvert the tact and causes a pain As for the other differences of tangibles they are taken from the degree and property of raising feeling in tangibles so we say a thing feels heavy light hot cold moist dry fiery waterish earthy hard soft rough smooth c. the description of all which I do omit as having set them down above A gentle titillation is one of the delightful tangibles which gentleness if otherwise exceeding and inferring violence doth become painful as appears in the French scab or manginess Titillation sometimes insers violence not by dividing the tangent spirits through it self and immediately but by accident through gathering the spirits too much together through its light appulse to which they do accur in great quantity and oft do as it were thereby overstrain or overreatch themselves It seldom happens that ones proper feeling doth tickle any part of his body as his knee or palm of the hand But if another do gently touch it it tickles him the reason is because that which toucheth a part must be of a certain distant temperament from the part felt which is not in a mans own self but in every other man besides ones fansie adds much to it Natural Philosophy The SECOND PART The Second Book CHAP. I. Of the Commerce of the Earth with the other Elements 1. The Authors purpose touching his Method in the Preceding Book and a further Explication of some terms made use of there 2. That the Earth is the Center of the world Copernicus his Astronomy examined 3. The Earths Division into three Regions and their particular extent 4. What Bodies are generated in the third Region of the Earth and the manner of their Production That the Coldness of the Earth is the principal efficient of Stones and Metals How a Stone is generated in the Kidneyes and in the Bladder A rare Instance of a Stone takenout of the Bladder The generation of a Flint Marble Jaspis Cornelian Diamond Ruby Gold Copper Iron Mercury Silver The places of Mines 5. Of the transmutation of Metals Whether Silver be transmutable into Gold Whether Gold may be rendered potable The Effects of the supposed Aurum potabile and what it is 6. Of earthy saltish Juices The Generation of Common Salt Salt-Gemme Saltpeter Allom Salt-Armoniack and Vitriol and of their kinds 7. Of earthy unctious Juices viz. Sulphur Arsenick Amber Naptha Peteroyl Asphaltos Oyl of Earth Sea-coal and Jeatstone of their kinds and vertues 8. Of the mean Juyces of the Earth viz. Mercury Antimony Marcasita Cobaltum Chalcitis Misy and Sory Whether any of these mean Juices are to be stated Principles of Metals I. HItherto I have discoursed of the Elements their Production Forms Second and Third Single and Mixt Qualities with intention to have declared their Dissolution from the Chaos and separation from one another and therefore I did only mention so much touching their nature as might suffice to discover the reason and causes of their effects produced by them through their dissolution At that time and place I thought it unseasonable to demonstrate the causes of their only apparent contrary motions and effects whereby they return to one another and exercise a mutual commerce between each other and seem but really do not to change into one anothers Nature all which together with the particular relation of each Element as they are consisting at present of local motion in general and in particular of Attraction and Repuision and of Meteors I shall endeavour to propose to you by a sensible Demonstration Why I judged it unseasonable to treat of these Particulars above was because I would not oppress your Phansie with seeming contrary Notions but really agreeing to a hair and so might have endangered the Conception and Retention of the precedent ones which now I may with more safety attempt supposing you to have weighed the Reasons and to have narrowly searcht into their meaning Neither shall I repeat any thing of what hath been set down already but proceed where I left off only since now I may with security discover my meaning of these Expressions of moving from the Center to the Circumference and to the Center from the Circumference both which I have hitherto made use of for to perduce you to a true apprehension of the Chaos and its dissolution By moving from the Center to the Circumference was not intended a deserting of the proper Center of those Elements that were said so to move but 1. To move so from their Center as to tend and be diffused thence to the Circumference into the greatest tenuity or rarity but not to desert their proper Center for then they could not move at all because all motions are peracted upon an immoveable which must be a Center 2. To move from the circumference to the center is not to desert the circumference be reduced by penetration into a central point as Mathematicians do imagine but to be contracted to a Center from a circumference for to gain the greatest dense weight or weighty crassitude like others are diffused for to gain the greatest rarity or tenuity and that naturally for density or crassitude cannot be attained by any other manner then by a contraction to a Center and rarity and tenuity but by a diffusion from a Center 3. Intending by moving from a Center to a Circumference to signifie a tendency to the greatest contiguous rarity or continuous levity I do not exclude but that such light Elements in a confusion with opposite Elements as it happened in the Chaos may also tend from a Center of Magnitude because they are expelled by the overpowering weighty Elements expelling them from their Center and so in this signification I have sometimes intended by moving from the Center a deserting of the Center
of Magnitude or sometimes of the universal Center 4. None but the whole body of the Elements do tend to or strive for the universal Center but particular or mixt bodies for their own particular Center as you may read further in the Chapter of Local Motions II. The earth is and must necessarily be the Center of the world or of all the other Elements within which it is contained like the Yolk of an Egge within the White and the Shell I prove the Proposition If the nature of Earth be to move conically from the Circumference to its own Center through a contiguous gravity and the nature of Air Fire be to be equally diffused from the center through their levity ergo the earth must needs fall to the midst of them all its parts tending circularly and conically to their Center The earth being arrived to the center it resteth quiet and unmoveable the Reason you shall know by and by Return back to the explanation of the manner of the dissolution of the Chaos which cannot but demonstrate the evidence of this Point to you Nevertheless let us consider that old Phansie of Pythagoras Plato Aristarchus Seleucus Niceta and others upon this Matter revived by Copernicus in the preceding Centenary and weigh its probability 1. He imagineth the fixed Stars and their Region to be the extremity of the world and both to be immoveable 2. That the Figure of that Region doth appear to us to be circular but for what we know our Sense may be deceived 3. That the Sun is the Center of the aspectable world being immoveable as to its ex ernal place notwithstanding since through help of the Telescopium is observed by the discerning of the motion of its Spots to change his face about although still remaining in the same external place its own Axis in 27 daies 4. Between these two immoveables the Planets are said to move and among them viz. between Mars and Venus the Earth is imagined as a Planet to move about the Sun and to absolve her Circuit in twelve Moneths 5. That the Moon is seated between the Earth and Venus and is thought to move through its own particular motion about the earth between that space which there is granted to be between her and Venus and between her and Mars Besides the Moon doth also move with the Earth as if she were her Page about the Sun absolving her course much about the same time In like manner are the four Stars first discovered through a Telescopium by Galilaeus said to follow the motion of Jupiter and to move with it about the Sun in twelve years there being besides another motion adscribed to them whereby they move about the Same Jupiter between the space which is between it and Saturn and between it and Mars the innermost whereof absolves its course about it in a day and a quarter the next in three daies and a half the third in three daies and four houres the last in sixteen daies and eight houres besides these they have found out by the help of the said Telescopium Stars which are Concomitants to each Planet 6. That the space between Saturn and the fixed stars is almost immense That the Region of the fixed stars is immoveable he takes for granted without giving any probable proof for it for which notwithstanding may be urged Omne mobile fit super immobili that all moveables do move upon an immoveable which if granted doth not inferre that therefore the Region of the fixed starres must be immoveable since he hath stated one immoveable already namely the Sunne what need is there then of more Further if we do grant two universal immoveables we must also grant two universal contrary motions whereof the one is moved upon one immoveable the other upon the second but the universal diurnal motion of the stars we see is one and the same ergo but one universal immoveable is necessary Lastly He cannot prove it by any sense only that it must be so because it agrees with his supposition and what proof is that to another The holy words in Eccles. do further disprove his position where it is said that God moved the Heavens about within the compass of his Glory His second Position denotes him no great Naturalist The third Position infers the Sun to be the immoveable Center of the world 1. This doth manifestly contradict Scripture which doth oft make mention of the Suns rising and going down And in Isaiah 38. 8. the Sun is said to have returned ten degrees back And in another place Let not the Sun move against Galbaon 2. The Sun is accounted by most and proved by us to be a fiery body or a flame and therefore is uncapable of attaining to rest in a restless Region which if it did its flame would soon diminish through the continual rushing by of the fiery Element tearing its flames into a thousand parts whose effects would certainly prove destructive to the whole Universe but especially to all living Creatures 3. Were the Sun immoveable and enjoying its rest ergo that rest must either be a violent detention or a natural rest not the first because that could not be durable or what can there be thought potent enough to detain that vast and most powerful body of the Sun for that must also be sensibly demonstrated and cleared otherwise you do nothing Neither can it be the latter for were it natural it must not only have a natural principle of rest but also be contained in a vacuum or else in a Region whose parts have likewise attained to a natural rest through the enjoying of their Center It is a property of a Center to be as a point in comparison to the Circumference but nothing can be contracted to a point but Earth and water as I have shewed above whereas according to their own confession the Sun is a vast great body and its Beams spreading and dilating ergo it must be only Earth and Water Now what sign of predominance of Earth and Water is there apparent in the Sun for were it so the Sun would shew black and give no light The Moon is liker if any to be the Center it consisting by far of more earth then the Sun as her minority in body motion and degree of brightness do testifie Lastly Is it not more probable that our sight should hallucinate or be deceived in judging the Sun not to move then in judging it to move all Astronomical Phaenomena's being so consentaneous to this latter Judgment Besides how is it possible for us to judge whether the Sun doth move or rest since that according to this supposition we are carried about with that swiftness By the same reason we may doubt of the motion of all the other Planets The fourth Position concludes a most rapid motion of the earth What principle of motion can the earth consist of Of none certainly but of fire and air which are admitted into her body in
rendred of a very unequal temperature where the extraneous Elements uniting together do raise a hollowness in the earth and infinuate into one anothers substance or body to which the coldness of the earth is very much conducing thereby gathering or coagmenting the said Elements together and impelling them into one anothers body and then closing them firmly all which it performs through its coldness Through coldness understand its compressing weighty minima's Wherefore do not still abide in your obstinate conceit that it is the Sun which is the efficient cause of Minerals and Stones For that is absurd I prove it That which is the main efficient of Stones and Metals must be a contracting condensing and indurating substance but the Sun is no contracting condensing or indurating substance Ergo the Sun cannot be the efficient of Stones and Metals The Major is undeniable I confirm the Minor by proving the contrary namely that the Sun doth mollifie because its flame is soft and all heat is soft for softning is nothing else but to dispose a body to bend easily into its self if pressed from without But earth rarefied by fire doth easily bend into it self if pressed from without Ergo The Minor is evident because whatever is throughly hot fiery is soft as we see in red-hot Iron in alive flesh and all Vegetables So that by how much the more heat a body hath by so much the softer it is provided quod caetera sint paria Further What heat is there under the Earth I confess there is more and less coldness under it but no predominating heat What heat can there be in Greenland especially under the earth and yet it is certain that many rocks and stones are generated there They may as well say that fire is the efficient cause of all those Islands of Ice Again so much as a substance consisteth of coldness and earth by so much it participates of hardness or by how much the less heat a body consisteth of so much the lesse hardnesse it partakes of The matter of a stone in the kidneys or in the bladder was sofe when it fluctuated within the vessals but being detained in the kidneys its heat is diminished either through the intense heat of the Kidneys which doth dissipate and attract the lesser heat from the matter retained in the cavity of the kidneys through which ecess of heat the terrestrial and thick waterish parts are coagulated and are closed together through the depressing coldness of the intrinsick earth and water The same matter being retained in kidneys of a cold temperament doth immediately through that degree of coldness coagulate and grow hard The stone in the bladder is generally harder than the stone in the kidneys because the one is of a far colder that is less hot temperament than the other That in the kidneys is more friable whereas the stone in the bladder is affected with a continuous firm thick waterish hardness This I can witness by a stone being taken from a Patient by section which that most learned and expert Physitian Dr. George Bate shewed me six or seven years ago This stone was perduced to that hardness that I am confident an ordinary smart stroak of a hammer could scarce break it Yet when it was within the bladder it was far distant from such a hardness for a piece of the Catheter was unawares run into the body of the stone and broke in it which was afterwards taken out with it but after it had been exposed a little while to the air it grew immediately to that hardness What could be the cause of this but the hotter parts of the stone exhaling into the air whereby the cold parts fell closer and thereby arrived to a greater hardness The errour of Fernelius is obvious in that he stated the intense heat of the kidneys to be the cause of a Lithiasis for it happens as freqently in kidneys of a cold temperament neither is it an insita renum arenosa calculosaque dispositio a parentibus contracta hereditary fixt fabulous and calculous disposition as the same Author conceives which doth consist in a degree of temperament of the solid parts of the kidneys for stones have been generated in kidneys of all kinds of temperaments neither can it be said to be hereditary for many a man hath been troubled with the stone whose Issue never was so much as disposed to it and on the other side many a man hath been miserably tormented with the stone or Duelech as Paracelsus terms it whose Parents never discerned the least symptom of a stone within their bodies Nevertheless as I said before the temperature of the kidneys adds much to the accelerating of a Lithiasis It is then certain that the greatest cause of lapidation or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is internal depending upon the predominance of earth or coldness over the other Elements in a mixture The Focus or Uterus as Van Helmont terms it that is the place where a stone or gravel is generated must be a close hollow place wherefore nothing can arrive to this close hollow place unless it be liquid for a thick or course body will be intercepted before it can reach thither This liquid matter being now lodged within this cavity the hot parts do exhale because now through the hollowness of the place they have got liberty to dislate and free themselves from the heavy terrestrial and thick aqueous parts whereas before when they were kept close together through channels and lodges shutting close upon them the hot parts were firmly contained within and bound up This is necessarily and certainly demonstrative and infers that where ever close hollownesses are groved and that liquid matter containing terrestrial and aqueous parts in it may reach to them there certainly stones and metals can and may be generated By vertue of this position I shall prove and shew by and by that stones and metals may be generated in most hollow parts of the body of man But to persue my discourse The hot parts being now freed from the terrestrial parts and inhering in subtil ayry serosiries do with more ease and force procure their passage through this close and hollow prison than they made their way thither leaving the terrestrial and aqueous parts behind them for a Ransom which by degrees are coagulated more and more according to the expulsion of the fiery and ayry parts Understand also the reasons of the qualification of the Focus or womb of stones and Metals 1. It must be hollow the reason of this is set down already 2. It must be close for were it not close but open the terrestrial and aqueous matter could not be detained there but would have as free a passage as the thin parts Besides closeness conduceth to keep out extrinsick heat which otherwise would again dissolve and mollifie the work wherefore the hardest stones and metals are found some degrees below the Surface of the earth and I dare confidently assert that if metals
were digged for deeper under the ground their labour would be richly answered by finding purer and better metals 3. The coldness of these places must be a proportionable coldness for if the places be too cold then the liquid parts will be detained from arriving to cast up hollownesses by being too much incrassated and condensed whereby the energy of their rare and subtil parts is suppressed 4. The liquid matter must also have a due proportion of the Elements whereby to constitute certain kinds of stones and metals If the matter be thick and terrestrial not containing many subtil and rare parts then it will generate into a course stone The reason of the courseness is because the terrestrial and aqueous Elements are but rudely mixed by reason they wanted internal heat whereby their parts might be divided into lesser particles and so become the more concocted and harder In case the matter be more subtil and rare and that the course parts are united in less particles then the said stone will according to its degree of fineness and concoction prove flinty Marble Jaspis Cornelian c. In case there be more thick water than earth the body thence generated becomes crystalline as Crystal Diamonds Rubies c. In these water doth retain almost its natural consistence as I shall tell you immediately In case there be an equal part of earth and water and these well concocted and intirely mixt together it produces Gold If there be something more of water than earth and they well percocted and permisted they ingender Silver If there be an equal proportion of water and earth and they only rudely concocted and but half mixt it generates Copper If there be more earth than water and but half mixt and concocted it constitutes Iron If there be more water than earth and they but rudely mixed and rawly cocted the effect will prove Lead or according to the proportion of the ingredients and coction Pewter Mercury is generated out of water being rendred fluid through much air and fire containing withall a small part of earth These do not only differ in proportion of materials but also in degree of internal heat and of the temperament of their Matrix otherwise termed a vein from its Cylindrical Figure Gold had the strongest heat whereby the parts were firmly united in minima's which heat did after the performance of its office exhale by degrees nevertheless suppose that there was a degree of heat left the matrix of Gold must be very close for to retain that intense heat so long until the constituting parts are well permisted and concocted As for the external temperament of the climate it is little material to the business since we see that Gold Silver c. are generated in cold countries as well as in hot in moist as well as in dry It is the internal temperament of the earth which supplies fit matter for the generation of metals The Matrix of Silver is less close the matrix of Brass more open than it and so gradually in the others Mines or mineral veines are usually found to be in hills or mountains because these do generally contain hollownesses especially if they appear dry and sandy without Those mountains are for the most part best disposed for the generation of metals that are situated at a convenient nearness to a pure crystalline river Easterly mountains are most to be suspected provided the River which is not far distant from them be easterly withall The clearness of sky is no small token A long Bar of Iron thrust into the ground after having digged to some depth if it changeth whitish or yellowish gives no small suspition of Gold or Silver A long trunk peirced likewise into the ground where suspected as deep as may be and afterward applying the ear to it if it renders a tinging or sibulous boyling noise is a sign of some hidden treasure under that soile That the generation of Metals is such as I have proposed may be demonstratively proved by sense from their colour consistency difficulty of liquation from the theorems of concoction the which since you may easily collect from what hath been hitherto discoursed upon I shall omit any further proof V. The present occasion doth urge me to touch somewhat upon the transmution of Metals The difference which there is between them you may collect from their matter degree of coction and disposition of matrix However there is more agreement between themselves than there is between them and stones wherefore the question is Whether Silver is transmutable into Gold Here I propose the doubt according to its most probable appearance there being less difference between Gold and Silver than between Gold and any of the others I answer That naturally it cannot be because it is impossible that after Silver hath once acquired its form it should be convertible into a perfecter form Because heat is deficient for it is exhaled neither was there ever at its highest internal heat enough to have concocted it into the nature of Gold or had there been heat enough there would have been too much water and air The case is less probable after its constitution specification individuation that it should change into another species or another individuum If the transmutation to a greater perfection of all other species and individua be impossible so must this also But the Antecedence is true ergo the consequence likewise I grant that it is possible to reduce it to a more imperfect and base species that being plain in all corruptions Wherefore I say that it seems more possible to reduce Gold into Silver Silver into Brass or Pewter Brass into Iron and Iron into Mercury by means of an artificial corruption because the finer Metal may be thought to contain the courser as an inferiour degree whence it is ascended but the finer cannot contain that in it self which is finer than it self is Neither can our proposed transmutation be effected by any art of man unless he knew a means wherby to detract such a proportion of the redundant waterish parts of the Silver as that there might remain just as much as is required to constitute Gold besides the work will need a strong and vehement internal concoction and that to a certain degree and for a certain duration It will require also a justly disposed matrix all which I conceive impossible to art They may as well strive to make a Ruby or a Diamond out of a Flint Happily you will object That some have converted Silver and Brass into Gold through the admission of some volatil subtil penetrative particles which were of that force as might be supposed to have divided the whole mass of Silver and penetrated into and through all its minima's whereby the gross parts fell closer to one another and become perfectly concocted so as through their consistency to represent the true weight and colour of Gold which might really pass our censure upon a Touchstone I answer That
because steel is purified from its grosser parts which did before somewhat hinder the ingress of the Influence of the Loadstone and cohibite the Effluvia of the affected body Sixthly It attracts Copper or Brass because of the likeness of its Pores and mixture to Iron whence it doth aptly receive the Energy of the Loadstone The Reason of the Seventh may be drawn from the Third 8. The Magnete happens to lose its strength through Rust because its decoction is thereby stayed and its temperament subverted Moysture and its being exposed to the air do lessen its vertue because the latter doth so much disperse its emanations and accelerate its decoction the former dissolves its temperament Spices weaken its attraction because through their heat they disperse and discontinuate the emanating spirits the like may be said of the juyce of Garlick and Onions Mercury doth also destroy the temperament of the stone It s vertue happens at last to relinquish it through the natural course of Decoction The Reason of the Eighth is because the emanations do in that position easily joyn together slowing in like course and figure from their bodies Many more Conclusions might be deduced from the Experiments of the Loadstone whose solution may easily be stated from what hath been already proposed VI. It s Nautical Vertue is the great wonder of Nature to all Naturalists to whom the Cause is no less stupendious This Property is whereby one part of the stone moveth towards the South the other to the North. Bodintu Lib. 2. Theat Nat. proposeth an Experiment relating to this Property somewhat different to what others have observed An Iron Needle saith he being gently rubbed against that part of the Magnete where it lookt towards the North whill◠it stuck to the Rock and placed in a Balance doth place that extremity which was rubbed against the stone towards the North. The same vertue it exerciseth towards the South if the Needle be rubbed against the South part of the Loadstone Neither is the strength of the Magnete less in its Eastern and Western part although the stone cannot turn it self towards the Regions of the world yet the Iron Needle can What we have said cannot be understood unless it be experimented for if you lay a piece of the Magnete upon a Board swimming in the water and lay that side of the Magnete which looked towards the South before it was removed out of its natural Seat against the side of another Loadstone which before it was cut out lookt likewise towards the South then will the swimming stone flee to the other side of the Vessel in the water If you should turn the North part of the Magnete to the South part of the other Magnete swimming in the water the swimming part would suddenly come near and through a wonderful consent be both joyned to one another although the wood of the Vessel be between The same will also happen if you put an Iron Needle into a Glass full of water being run through a piece of a Reed and hold a piece of a Magnete in your other hand one side of the Magnete will attract the Needle the other will repel it Thus far Bodinus The last Property of attraction doth not appertain to this place the cause of which may nevertheless be made clear to you by what is foregoing The former touching its Vergency is observable if it be true but I doubt he hath not made tryal of it Besides none else do make mention of it which were it real they would not omit the Observation That which may next be disputed upon is whether the Loadstone turns to the South or North Pole of the earth or to the said Poles of the Heavens or to neither In the first place I wonder what they intend by a North and South Pole of the Earth Those that agree to Copernicus hold that they are the extream points of the Axeltree whereon the Earth doth move Others who deny Earth a motion affirm them to be those points of the Earth that are responding to the Poles of the Heavens that is which do lie perpendicularly or diametrically under the said Poles The former Opinion states the Poles of the Earth different from those of the Heavens Among the latter some have consented to believe the Poles of the Earth to be where the extremities of the Compass-Needles do diametrically point to the arctick and antarctick Poles that is where the length of the Needle is according to a right Line coincident with the imaginary axletree of the Poles of the world The onely place of coincidence is concluded to be near the tenth degree beyond the Fortunate Islands but that is false since the same coincidence is also observed in other places from whence for that reason most do continue their mensuration of the Earths Longitude But grant the Poles of the Earth be at the points forementioned why shall we apprehend the Loadstone rather to move towards the Poles of the Earth then of the Heavens What the Earth say they attracts the points of the Loadstone to her Poles An Absurdity why should not the Earth through the same principle of attraction draw other terrestrial bodies to it or what is it they intend by a principle of attraction I had thought that among the wandering Philosophers nothing but Fire and Air had been attractive Moreover did the Magnete alwaies incline towards the Poles of the Earth then it must be exempted from all deviation which it is not for in divers Meridians it hath divers respects to the Poles of the World and consequently to those of the Earth In Nova Zembla it deflects 17 degrees towards the East In Norway 16. About Neurenburgh 10. So in the Southwest Climates its deviation is no less various Wherefore after all this we must be constrained to assert the Magnete not to incline directly either to the South or North Pole of the Heavens or of the Earth although as I said before its Vergency is towards the North and South The points of the Magnets Vergency are directly tending to the Poles of the Air That is The Poles of the Loadstone are directly coincident with those of the Air. You see its Poles are primarily neither perpendicular to those of the Heavens or of the Earth Ergo its Poles do appropriate a particular situation But before I prove their seat it will not be improper to prefer the probation of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of their Poles The emanations of the Loadstone move circularly ergo they must have real Poles or immoveable points for a Body is uncapable of a circular motion in all its parts A real Axis is no less necessary It being impossible to conceive two extream immoveable points in a globous body without being fastned or continuated to other fixt points which must likewise remain void of the same circular motion and so on from one extream point to the opposite extream point That the steames of the said stone affect a
a Porringer Poole or Lake striving no longer for a Center for it enjoyes one there doth not move downwards of it self or is thence circularly reflected as water is when it is deprived from its Center wherefore that motion downwards which is in the water in a Porringer Lake or Pool is not caused intrinsecally through a bent for a center but by an extrinsick impulse of the air striving downwards for it center and meeting with thick water which it cannot easily pass it bends and forceth the stronger upon it that so it may give way But the air in a Compass box is still detained from its center especially by the intercurrent emanations of the Needle about whose extremity both air and Magnetical steames move circularly together as upon one of the Poles More than all this the air within the Box is still continuated to the whole tract of the air whereby it is assisted and furthered in its circular motion Whereas water is discontinuated from its intire body But you may instance That the Box together with the glass atop doth interrupt the continuation of the air within the Compass from its Elementary body without or if that did not certainly the whole Compass Box being thrust deep under water would and nevertheless the Needle would point South and North. I answer That a thousand glasses or boxes would scarce be sufficient to hinder the communication of the air since they are all pervious Yet I cannot but grant that the water may which if it doth it doth only diminish the strength of the Needles Vergency but doth not quite abolish it unless the air within begins to be incrassated by water entring in vapours and then its circular motion and consequently the Needles Vergency is quite lost and abolished Wherefore I conclude That the air in the Box although under water doth continue in a circular motion because of its detention from a center untill it is incrassated by water XII But before I come too near to the conclusion of this Chapter let me take the leasure to balance what Cartesius sets down upon this matter After the enumeration of the properties of the Magnete he observes that there are striated particles that are sent down from the South part of Heaven and bowed quite into another kind of shape different from those that rain down from the North whence it is that the one cannot enter into those Channels and passages which the other can He further observes that the South particles do pass directly from their seat through the midst of the earth and when passed return back again with the air that is cast about the earth because the passages through which they pass are such that they cannot return back again through the same The like is to be understood of those particles that press through the earth from the North. In the mean time as many new parts as there do alwaies come on from the South and North part of the Heavens so many there do return or fall back through the East and West parts of the Heavens or else are dispersed in their journey and lose their Figures not in passing the middle Region of the earth because there their passages are made fit for them through which they flow very swiftly without any hinderance but in returning through the air water and other bodies of the outward earth wherein they find no such passages they are moved with much more difficulty and do constantly meet with particles of the second and third Element by which they labouring to expel them are sometimes diminisht Now in case these striated particles hit against the Loadstone lying in its natural position then they find a clear passage and go through because he saith a Loadstone is pervious in the same manner as the earth is and therefore calleth the Earth also a Magnete The Poles of the Loadstone he states to be the middle points of its passages on both ends That which is the middle point between those passages that are disposed to receive the particles descending from the North part of the Heavens is the North Pole and its opposite point is the South Pole But when the striated particles that come from the Poles of the Earth hit against the passages of the Magnete lying athwart then they do by that force which they have of persevering in their motion according to right Lines impell it untill they have reduced it to its natural position and so they effect that its South Pole provided it be not detained by any external force turns towards the North Pole of the Earth and its North Pole towards the South Pole of the Earth Because those particles that tend from the North Pole of the Earth through the air to the South came first from the South part of the Heavens through the midst of the earth and the others that return to the North came from the North. Here you have the chief of the forementioned Authors fansie upon the demonstration of the properties of the Loadstone In the first place how can any one probably conceive that there are striated parts sent down from Heaven for consider the immense distance which he agrees to the interposition of thick clouds filled up with dense exhalations and the continuous depth of the air Is not the air potent enough to dissolve all bodies contained within its bowels doth it not dissolve the thick frozen clouds into snow hail and thick rain Doth it not dissolve the coagulated exhalations of the earth that are so tenacious Much more those striated parts which he himself confesses are dissipated at their return through the force of the ambient air that in so short a time passage Why should these striated particles descend more from the polar Regions of the Heavens than from the East and West parts Are not the Poles of the Heavens immoveable of the least efficacy Are not those parts of the Firmament alwaies discerned to be clearest and most freed from obscure bodies Is not the North and South air so much condensed and congealed that it is impossible for it to give passage to such subtil bodies as the pores of the Magnet do require I say impossible to subtil bodies because they need force to press through and so much the more because they are discontinuated But had our Author asserted them to rain down from the East and West parts where the air is thinnest and less nebulous and where the Coelestial bodies exercise their greatest influences it would have deserved a freer reception but then his Chimera would have been rendred monstrous and unfit to explain the reasons of the Magnetical vertues The south streaks saith he are intorted in a form different from those of the North whence had he that news what Because one Pole of the Magnete inclineth to the North and the other to the South therefore these streaks must needs be sent down from the North and South Is this a Mathematical Demonstration to conclude
substantia agens acting substance which if so then an accident is not really distinguisht from a substance and a substance must be conceived to act immediately through her self Aristotle lib. de respir. describes life to be the permansion or abiding of the vegetable foul with the heat From which that of Scaliger exercit 202. sect 5. is little different Life is the union of the soul with the body Here the Philosopher appears only to describe life to be a duration which is but an accident neither doth Scaliger's union signifie any thing more 2. They distinguish the soul really from the heat and body which in the same sense are identificated The matter and form of life of a living substance or a Plant are originally the matter and form of the Elements That the matter of living substances is Elementary there are few or none among the wandring Philosophers but will assert it with me yet as for their form their great Master hath obliged them to deny it to be Elementary and to state it to be of no baser a rice than Coelestial Give me leave here to make inquiry what it is they imply for a form Is it the vegetable soul which Aristotle makes mention of in his definition of life Or is it the soul together with the heat wherein it is detained which is accounted of an extract equally noble with her Be it how it will the soul is really distinguisht by them from the matter and from the Celestial heat here they take heat in a sense common with Physicians for Calidum innatum that is heat residing it the radical moisture its subject and acknowledged for a form So likewise the heat Calidum innatum is diversified from the matter and from the soul wherefore it is neither matter or form What then Their confession owns it to be a body Celestial and therefore no Elementary matter Were I tied to defend their tenents I should answer that there was a twofold matter to be conceived in every living body the one Celestial and the other Elementary But then again one might justly reply That beings are not to be multiplied beyond necessity They do answer for themselves That it is to be imagined a tye vinculum whereby the soul is tied to the body So then according to this Doctrine of theirs I should understand the vegetable soul to be immaterial and of the same nature in respect to its rice and immortality with the rational soul for even that is in like manner tied to the body by means of the Calidum innatum and are both apprehended by Aristotle to be Celestial of no mixt body and really differing from their matter If so the vegetable soul must be received for immortal as being subject to no corruption or dissolution because it is Celestial and consequently a single Essence without any composition and to which no sublunary agent can be contrary But again how can it be a single essence since it is divisible and therefore consisteth of a quantitative extension and is a totum integrale Such is their Philosophy full of contradictions and errours In the next place I would willingly know how this innate heat together with its primogenial moisture may properly be termed Celestial since it is not freed from corruption and dissolution whereas all Celestial bodies are exempted from dissolution and therefore the Philosopher takes them for eternal Are not coldness and dryness as much necessary per se for life as heat and moisture Are heat and moisture sole agents without coldness or dryness or are fire and water sufficient principles for actuating life In no wise for as you have read they are uncapable of existing in one subject unless accompanied by air and earth II. Wherefore I say That the form of life is spirits or subtilities of the Elements united in mixtion and a just temperament Spirits are derived from the word spiro I breathe as being bodies no less subtil than a breath Their constitution is out of the best concocted temperated and nearest united parts of the Elements in which parts the Elements embracing one another so arctly minutely and intimately do of a necessity separate themselves from the courser parts of the mixture and so become moveable through the said course parts they acquire withal a great force through the predominancy of fire condensed by earthy minim's and glued together by incrassated air The force and agility in motion of the influent Spirits depends upon the compression of the weighty parts of the body depressing the said spirits out of their places because they hinder the weighty parts from their center which being through their incrassated air naturally gendred glib and slippery do the easier yield to slip out and in from one place to another The efficient of spirits is the universal external heat viz. The Celestial heat mainly proceeding from the greater mixt bodies contained within the heavens For although the peregrin Element's contained within the earth are capable enough of uniting themselves and constituting a mixt body through their proper form yet they remain unable of uniting themselves so arctly as thereby to become spiritous and constitute a living substance wherefore they do stand in need of the external efficiency of the Celestial bodies which through their subtil heat do accelerate their most intimate union in uniting the internal heat before dispersed through the parts of a body to a center whereunto they could not reach without the arct and firm adherence of some incrassated aerial and terrestrial parts which here are yet more closely united into one and refined from their grosser parts Hence it is that Vegetables are no where generated but where a sufficient influence may arrive from the Celestial bodies and for this reason the earth at a certain depth doth not harbour any living Creature as any Vermine or Plants but only near to its Surface The qualification or gradual distinction of this heat partially effects the difference of living bodies for to such a Vegetable only such a degree and qualification of Celestial heat is requisite and to another another and withal observe that this efficient heat doth not become formal neither doth it unite it self to the intrinsick heat of a Plant but exhales after the execution of its office The reason is because it is in many particulars unlike to the internal spirit of a Vegetable and therefore being unfit to be united to it must consequently after the performance of its function expire The spirits predominating in fire reside in an incrassated air the which being continuated throughout the whole matter is the immediate subject whereby the spirits are likewise extended throughout the same body and are although mediately rendred continuous III. The properties of a vegetative form are to be moveable forcible actually warm mollifying attractive recentive concocting expulsive nutritive accretive and plastick The two former I have touched just before Touching the third I say those spirits are actually warm but not sensible to our
greater apposition of fewel This fewel at its first apposition to the fire is not yet attracted or become a fit nutriment for it before it succeeds the incrassated air by a continuation and through an impulse of the ambient air and then being attracted it is concocted and its aerial parts are gradually adjoyned to the former air where its formal parts to wit its latent fire being adunited to the form of the former fire doth accrease the former fire and form which accretion must necessarily attract yet more nutriment which nutriment acceding doth each time increase its form and matter Even so it is with Plants attracting much nutriment the which the gradual increasing of their form and matter doth dispose to a greater attraction which again a greater supply of formal material parts do necessarily consecute But seeing that all Plants do accrease no further than to a determinate quantity of formal and material parts it will not prove amiss to give the reason of it which we shall do hereafter In order to a further explanation of this definition let us first shew you the Homonymia of accretion 1. It is taken for an augmentation of number in naturals animals or others Thus a heap of Corn of Beasts or of Men is said to be augmented because it is increased by access of a greater number of individuals of the same species 2. It is strictly appropriated to the augmentation of an Element through the apposition of another Element or of its own namely to rarefaction For example Water is said to be accreased when it is rarefied according to my intention attenuated by the apposition of air 3. It is understood for an accrease proper to living creatures that is such as is performed through an introsusception as they vulgarly term it of nutriment whereby a body is increased throughout all dimensions 4. Erroneously for an accretion by adgeneration or apposition so fire is said to accrease by apposition of fewel but this kind of accretion is the same with that caused through rarefaction 5. Philosophers intend it sometimes for an increase of vertue or perfection in a body as of heat in a fire or cold in a frost whence they term it a vertual accretion 6. For the accretion of material parts only or of the Mole or body of a thing wherefore it is vulgarly agreed to call it a dimensive accretion To distinguish accretion as it is treated of here you are to apprehend it for the accrease of a Vegetable in matter and form or as they term it both for a dimensive and virtual accretion Accretion is otherwise called auction or augmentation which notwithstanding in a proper sense do differ from one another in largeness and strictness of signification Auction is common to all the forementioned kinds of accretion Augmentation is restricted to that which happens through apposition but Accretion is only proper to living substances or to such as is performed by an introreception of Elementary parts and whereby they are extended into all dimensions Accretion comprehends in it all the kinds of motion viz. alteration auction and Local motion A Vegetable is increased virtually or in its qualities and likewise the nutritive actions are performed by alteration That it is related to auction the name and definition it self doth convince Local motion is likewise necessary for the effecting of Accretion because by its means the aliment is attracted to the central parts of a living substance By the precedents we may easily be resolved whether a vegetable accreaseth through a penetration of Dimensions or by the admission of a Vacuum I answer through neither but by the giving way of the parts and their being extended by the succeeding aliment Notwithstanding you may reply the doubt to remain the same still for the succeeding nutriment is either received in a full body or in an empty or void one If in the former then a penetration of dimensions must be allowed if in the other a vacuum must be admitted I answer That in one sense the nutriment is received in a vacuum that is void of such nutriment as is to be next received but not in a vacuum simpliciter for it is replenisht with vapours or air or excrements which are protruded by the advent of the nutriment and so it is received in pleno 2. Whether Augmentation be effected through extension of parts or pulsion I answer through both The first is requisite because without it Accretion is impossible since thereby a body is extended into all dimensions Neither can the second be wanted since the succeeding parts may be conceived to impel one another forward and the formost of them to propel the preceding nutriment VI. The first and last of a Plant is its first generation and its last propagation By the first generation I intend the first rice and production of a Plant out of the Earth without being derived by propagation from any preceding Vegetable or in one word its sementation Although by course of my method I ought to have treated of this before yet knowing that the premitted notions would add much to the explanation of this matter it did prevail with me to subjoyn this to them The earth we spy to be the universal Mother of all Vegetables being within her self divided into several wombs within which she is apt to conceive divers genitures or seeds and retaining he fame untill their perfection she then casts them forth from her I shall first make observation upon the Wombs of the Earth next upon her Conception then upon the Protrusion of her Foetus The Surface of the Earth is divided into numerous Wombs of various Figures and various dispositions of temperament bigness c. The Wombs of the Earth that are destined for Vegetables are small and narrow Cavities formed by the transcursions of exhalations and vapours though their passage impressing that variety of Figures These formed are actuated with a prolifick heat Calidum consisting out of part of the heat of the through passed subtilities and part of the influent heat The Cavities graven within are left rough and close filled up with air or other thin substances as vapours these must needs be rough because where ever we see the Earth excavated it alwaies appears rough which contributes much to the conception and retention of the seed or geniture and so doth its closeness These Wombs do not remain long ventous without being gravidated with some spermatick matter which is constituted out of the most subtil and active parts or spirits of passing exhalations being so arctly knit and united into a subtil temperament of their Elements that they might be termed volatil bodies actuated most by fire and air These spirits or volatil bodies cannot divagate without meeting with some moisture which doth unite them and cohibite them into one body nevertheless they continue in making their way untill they arrive to some Cavity where they may be harboured or else they may be stayed by so much
moisture as may force them through their intumescence to raise a womb where they meet where being arrived they are immediately cherished and further actuated united and condensed by the close and cold temperature of the womb This actuation conceives a flame because through it the fire happens to be united and thence dilated by the incrassated air whose immediate effect is a flame now being come to a flame they attract nutriment out from their matrix in the same manner as was set down before The spiritous parts of this advening nutriment is united to the central parts of the flame which it doth increase it s other parts that are more humorous and less defecated are concreased by the lesser heat of the extreme parts or a heat lessened through the greater force of the extrinsick cold That which is worthy of inquiry here is Why the heat or vital flame strives to maintain the central parts moreover this seems to thwart what I have inserted before viz. That it is the nature of fire to be diffused from the center 2. Whence it is occasioned that the weighty parts as the dense and humoral ones are expelled to the Circumference For solution of the first you are to call to mind that the Elements in that stare wherein they are at present do war one against the other for the Center which if each did possess this motion would cease in them the fire then being now in possession of the Center contracts it self and strives to maintain its place nevertheless it doth not forbear diffusing its parts circularly to the circumference because through its natural rarity it is obliged to extend it self to a certain sphere The reason of the second is Because the igneous and ayry parts being united into a flame and into a greater force do over-power the other Elements and impell them to the Periphery where they being strengthned by the ambient coldness of the Matrix are stayed and do concrease into a thick skin by this also the internal flame is prevented from dissipating its life and the better fitted to elaborate its design which is to work it self into shapes of small bodies of several Figures and of various Properties and in those shapes to diffuse each within a proportion of other Elements likewise variously tempered And so you have in brief a perfect delineation of the Earths conception and formation of Seeds whose spirits being now beset with thick dense parts are catochizated that is the flame is maintained in such a posture which it had when it had just accomplisht the plasis of the internal organical parts or in some the flame may be extinguisht through the near oppression by heavy parts which afterwards being stirred and fortified by an extrinsick heat relaxing its parts returns to a flame Whence it happens that seeds may be kept several months yea years without protruding their parts but being committed to the ground especially where the mild heat of the heavens doth penetrate perfused also with a moderate moysture do soon after come to a germination The same may be effected by any other mild heat like we see that many seeds are perduced to a growth before the spring of the year in warm chests or in dunged ground Eggs are frequently harched by the heat of an Athanor or by being placed between two Cushions stuft with hot dungs Silk-worms Eggs are likewise brought to life by childrens heat being carried for two or three weeks between their shirts and wascoats all which instances testifie that the heat of the Sun is no more then Elementary since other Elementary heats agree with it in its noblest efficience which is of actuating and exciting life within the genitures of living bodies possibly it may somewhat exceed them as being more universal equal less opposed and consequently more vigorous and subtil The time when the Earth is most marked with Matrices is in the Spring and Fall because the astral heat is then so tempered that it doth gently attract great quantity of exhalations and humours neither is it long after before they conceive the influences of the Stars being then pregnant in subtilizing and raising seminal matter The cause of the variety of Seeds and Plants thence resulting I have set down above and withall why it is that Non omnis fert omnia tellus every kind of Earth doth not produce all kinds of herbs but why herbs of the hottest nature are sometime conceived within the body of water might be further examined In order to the solution of this Probleme you must note that the seeds of such herbs as do bud forth out of the water were not first conceived within the water as water but where it was somewhat condensed by Earth as usually it is towards the sides where those Plants do most shew themselves for water in other places where it is fluid is uncapable of receiving the impression of a womb excepting only where it is rendred tenacious and consistent through its qualification with glutinous or clayish earth And this shall serve for a reason to shew that herbs germinate out of water although they are not conceived within it The ground why the hottest herbs as Brooklime Watercresses Water crowfoot c. are generated in the water is in that the spirits informating those Plants are subtil and rare easily escaping their detention by any terrestrial matrix as not being close enough by reason of its contiguity of parts but water be the spirits never so subtil or rare is sufficient to retain stay congregate and impell them to a more dense union whence it is that such substances prove very acre and igneous to the pallat by reason of its continuous weight Next let us enumerate the properties of a vegetable Seed 1. Is to be an abridgment of a greater body or in a small quantity to comprehend the rudiments of a greater substance so that there is no similar or organical part of a germinated plant but which was rudimentally contained within its seed 2. To be included within one or more pellicles 3. To lye as it were dead for a certain time 4. To need an efficient for the kindling of its life whence it is that the Earth was uncapable of protruding any plants before the Heavens were separated from the Earth through whose efficiency to wit their heat living substances were produced 5. To need an internal matrix for its production and germination which is not alwaies necessary for the seeds of animals as appears in the Eggs of Fowl and Silk-worms 6. Only to be qualified with a nutritive accretive and propagative vertue 7. To consist intrinsecally of a farinaceous matter VII The germination of a plant is its motion out of the Seed to the same compleat constitution of a Being or Essence which it hath at its perfection Motion in this definition comprehends the same kinds of motion which Accretion was said to do and withall is specified by its terminus a quo the seed and a
1. That the disburdening of the Eastern Rivers into the Ocean is not the cause of its Circulation neither are the Sun or Moon the principal causes of this motion 2. The periodical course of the Ocean The causes of the high and low waters of the Ocean 3. How it is possible that the Ocean should move so swiftly as in 24 hours and somewhat more to flow about the terrestrial Globe 4. A further Explanation of the causes of the intumescence and detumescence of the Ocean The causes of the anticipation of the floud of the Ocean 5. That the Suns intense heat in the torrid Zone is a potent adjuvant cause of the Oceans Circulation and likewise the minima's descending from the Moon and the Polar Regions I. HAving in one of the Chapt. of the precedent Book posed a demonstrative and evident ground of the universal course of the great Ocean and the straitness of that Chapt. not permitting the finishing of the fabrick intended by us upon it Therefore this present plain shall serve for to compleat the delineation thereof but encountring with some rocky stones thereon it is requisite they should be rowled aside before the said Atlantick waves may procure a necessary assent of the true cause of their dayly circular floating The conceit of some Philosophers hath induced them to state the copious irreption of many large and deep Rivers into the Eoan Sea for the principal cause of its circulation the which tumefying its body do thereby press it westward This solution seems void of all reason the evacuation of the presupposed Rivers having no proportion to the replenishing of so extended a body as the Ocean scarce of a Lake or an inland Sea as we have observed of the lake Haneygaban and the Euxian Sea Besides many great Rivers disburdening themselves into the Occiduan Sea might upon the same ground return the course of the Ocean Eastward But imagine it was so why should not the said tumefaction rather incline the sea westward than further eastward Others rejecting the former opinion have in their fansie groven the ground whereon the sea beats deeper and deeper towards the west and so the ground being situated higher in the East shelving down gradually to the west the sea doth through its natural gravity rowl it self to the deeper lower Plane but then the eastern waters being arrived to the west how shall they return to the east again for to continue the said motion Wherefore this opinion may take its place among the Castles in the air Shall we then ascribe the cause of this motion to the rarefaction of the sea through the beams of the Sun which as it is successively rarefied doth swell and press its preceding parts forward As touching the Moon she cannot come into consideration here as being rather noted for condensation than rarefaction First I deny that the Sun doth any whit rarifie the Eastern Ocean because according to their Tenent the rarefaction of the sea happens through the commotion of the subsidencies and terrestrial exhalations contained within the bowels of the sea and scattered through its substance whereby it becomes tumefied which I grant in case the Sun casts its beams obliquely into the depth of the Ocean but I prove the contrary supposing the Sun doth cast its beams directly into the Eastern waters In AEgypt it seldom rains because the Sun casting its beams directly into the waters doth through the same degree of heat through which it might raise vapours dissolve them again likewise in the East Ocean the Sun subtilizing the waters doth doubtless through its heat commove exhalations and subsidencies but the waters being through the same heat attenuated are rendred uncapable of sustaining those terrestrial bodies wherefore they sinking deeper to the ground rather cause a detumescence of the sea I have alwaies observed that waters swell more through the cold than heat and that inundations happen for the most part after a frost besides it is obvious that Rivers are much tumefied when they are frozen and that by reason of the foresaid tumefaction inundations happen more frequently in the winter than at any other time of the year Des-Cartes imagineth the compression of the Moon together with the Earths motion about her own Axis to be the cause of the waters circular motion pressing it from East to West and the variation of this pressure to depend upon the various removal of the Moon from the Center of the Earth effecting the anticipation and various celerity of the waters motion So that where the Earth is obverted to the face of the Moon there the waters must be at their lowest being pressed towards the next quarter of the Surface where they are at their highest whence they are carried about through the Earths proper motion c. 1. I deny his supposition of the Earths motion as being fabulous which we have confuted elsewhere He might as well assert that there be as many Neptunes under water moving it circularly as Aristotle stated intelligencies to drive the Heavens for even this he might excuse by saying it was but an Assumption to prove a Phaenomenon of the water 2. What needs he to affirm a tumour of the water for since he assumes the Earth to move circularly we cannot but grant that the water must also move with it as constituting one Globe together 5. Why doth he in vain reassume in the 55 Sect. that out-worn Doctr. of Aristotle touching the Moons driving of the water which argues him to be very unconstant with himself 4. His stating the air to be so complicable and soft a body renders it very unfit for compressing and driving so vast and weighty a body as the Ocean 5. Can any one rationally or probably conceive that the Sun much less the Moon being so remore and whose forcible effects are so little felt by sublunary bodies should be capable of driving so deep so large and so heavy a body as the Ocean which is as powerful to resist through its extream gravity as all the Celestial bodies are potent to move through their extream lightness What because the Ocean and the Moon move one way therefore the one must either follow or move the other What can a passion so durable and constant and so equal depend upon a violent cause Since then such phansies are ridiculous and not to be proposed by any Philosopher let us now proceed in the unfolding of so difficult and admirable a matter as the course of the Ocean which we have formerly demonstrated to flow about the earth once in 12 hours and somewhat more II. Moreover besides this single motion making a sharper inspection into the drift of the Ocean it will appear to us to absolve a compounded periodical course in a perfixt time namely in 15 daies which space may be called a marinal or nautical month The meaning hereof is imagining a part of the Ocean to flow circularly from a certain point or more plainly a Bowle to rowl circularly
under water over the bottom of the Sea along with the course of the Ocean from any noted point that the same part of the Ocean or Bowl shall in the space of 15 natural daies arrive to the same point and exactly at the same time begin its next periodical course thence when it departed from that term the month before Nevertheless the Ocean doth not omit its single course in fluctuating about the Earth in somewhat more than twelve hours but then it doth not dayly arrive to the supposed point of a compounded periodical course at the same minute when the latter viz. the compounded begins its progress Expresly the great Ocean through its diurnal course flows the length of 348 degrees about from East to West performing also the same circuit through its nocturnal course That is every twelve AEquinoctial hours it absolves 348 degrees of the terrestrial AEquator Wherefore for to flow 360 degrees it requires 24 24 2â— minutes of an hour above the foresaid twelve hours that is the Ocean flows about the terrestrial AEquator in twelve hours and 24 14 2â— minutes absolving every hour 29 degrees How this swiftness is possible to the Ocean we shall make further declaration of it anon Besides a single diurnal and a periodical compounded monthly motion another must also be added which I call an augmentative motion through which the Ocean doth gradually accrease every high water to some certain cubits of which more fully hereafter Since that time is nothing but a measure of motion and that one time is made known to us by another it is thence occasioned that we come to know the time of the Ocean by comparing it with the time of the Moon and of the Sun as being general marks whereby to calculate the seasons of the Ocean This premised it states a ground reason of the measure of this great Sea viz. That it is usually high water in the Ocean under the AEquinoctial and Ecliptick as also upon the shores of the same at six in the morning and evening when the Moon is in opposition to or conjunction with the Sun and at the same hours about the Moons quarters the waters there are at their lowest On the other side it is as common among Mariners to measure the motion of the Sun and Moon by the Tides or motions of the Seas they being exquisitely skill'd in discerning the hour of the day and night or the season of the several aspects of the Moon by the said tides Wherefore it may be thought as equal a consequence that the Moon in her motion depends upon the course of the Ocean as pressing the air through her tumefaction which again doth impel the Moon forward as that the Moon should tumefie the air and thereby impel the waters forward But I pass by this as ridiculous Although the Ocean keeps so constant and exact a rule and measure in its course as likewise the Sun and Moon yet we must not therefore conceive the one to depend upon the other because two great marks of their time that is one of either viz. The greatest height of waters and the greatest aspect of the Moon are concurring in one day that rather happening because the Ocean began its course at that instant when the Moon after her creation being placed in opposition to the Sun began hers But possibly you will propose this instance to evince that the highest water doth depend upon the greatest compression of the Moon because when she is at her Full she may cause some compression and commotion of air and water she then being in her greatest strength and situated in Perigaeo of her eccentrical Aspect and therefore nearest to the water and so may add somewhat to the enhightning of its stream I answer That it is a mistake to apprehend the Moon to be nearest at the Full most Astronomers asserting her rather to be remotest then and to be nearest when she is in her quarters Ergo according to that rule the highest waters should happen at the Moons quarters and the lowest at the Full of the Moon Or otherwise how can the Moon further the said motion when she is upon the extremity of her decrease her rayes drowned by those of the Sun and she in Apogaeo deferentis Certainly none can be so obtuse as to maintain her in that capacity to have a power of compressing the air when she being most remote the air doth most enjoy its freedom yet nevertheless some are so obstinate to assert that the greatest altitude of the Sea because it hapneth then doth likewise depend upon the compression of the Moon What is more constant certain periodical and equal than the course of the Sea Whereas the Moon is vulgarly maintained to be subjected to anomalies then in this part of the Heavens then in another now in Apogaeo perigaeo concentrical excentrical then swift slow c. if so then a constant and equal effect cannot consecute the efficience of an unequal cause III. Against our discourse touching the diurnal course of the Ocean might be objected That it seems very improbable that the Sea should move so swift as in a little more than 12 hours to overflow the whole terrestrial Globe whereas a ship through the advantage of her sails and a prosperous wind and weather being supposed to out-run the Tide can scarce accomplish that course in a Twelvemonth Hereunto I reply that the water takes the beginning of her motion from underneath for as I have formerly proved that the formal cause of the waters perennal motion is her gravity which bearing down upon the Earth for to gaine the Center is resisted by her and nevertheless continuing in its motion is necessarily shoven there to the side and so the same hapning to the succeeding parts are all impelled through a natural principle of gravity sidewards like unto an Arrow being shot against a stone wall and there resisted is shoven down the side VVhence it is apparent that the waters take beginning of their motion underneath not far from the ground where being pressed by the great weight of many hundred fathoms of water lying upon them must needs cause a very swift course of waters removing underneath and withdrawing from that of the Surface which is prevented of a swift motion because it sinks down to that place whence the subjected parts do withdraw themselves which gives us a reason why the superficial parts of the Sea do not flow by many degrees so swift as the subjected ones Nevertheless some small motion is visible upon the Surface which may accelerate or retardate the course of a ship but not comparable to the waters in the deep This instance will further certifie you touching the truth of the matter before said a flat-bottomed Kettel filled up with water having a hole at the bottom near to the side of the said Kettel doth emit the water underneath spouting out with a very great swiftness through the hole whereas the
of the squeezing Ocean do return into the Ocean The universal intumescence passing twice every naturall day doth cause a double change of the polar Tides in the same time That swiftness which befalls our Tides in these parts is likewise caused through the shallowness of waters which are necessarily impelled swifter forward than if they being imagined to be deep where consequently waters being in a great confluence more weighty must move slower Hence we may learn the reason why the tide in some places doth move swifter than in others namely because the Sea is more shallow there and therefore Ships arriving near the shore make a greater benefit of the Tide than far from it The Floud is commonly weaker and slower near the shores and within the compass of these narrow Seas but the Ebb is stronger and swifter because the waters do clime upwards being forced against their natural impulse and therefore resist more potently but returning do descend fortified with their own natural inclination into places detumefied and therefore meeting with no resistence On the contrary in the middle of the Ocean the floud or rather intumescence is stronger and swifter than the ebb or detumescence because the universal bore which is the cause of the floud or intumescence of the water doth cause a greater impulse of the water atop through her presence than when she is quite passed Hence it is that Ships sailing from East-India Westward do over run a larger tract in one six houres of the intumescence than the other six of detumescence Those Seas which are derived directly northerly from the Ocean do suffer a greater commotion of tides than others than are indirectly thence descending Hence it is that the Irish Seas being directly opposite from the North to the Ocean do undergo more violent Tides than others because they receive the squeezing or impulse of the Ocean directly upon them whereas in the Channel North sea and the Bay of Biscay the waters do perform their Tides more moderately because they floating under the North the Oceans universal impulse is much mitigated by the defence of the Promontories of France England and Spain That which doth further augment the violence of Tides in the Irish Seas is the shallowness of the water and the meeting of Tides viz. First they receive the impulse of the Ocean directly from the Southwest passing between the West of England and the East of Ireland towards the North then the same Ocean continuing its impulse against the west Coasts of Ireland the Sea sets about the Northwest Cape of Ireland towards the VVest of Scotland and the stronger because it is refracted and as it were somewhat pinched by the shallowness of the Hebrides and other Islands Through this thwart setting off of the Tide it meets with the Tide passing through between England and Ireland which it beats back and that more forcibly towards the latter end of the Floud The Tides then meeting here and reflecting must necessarily cause very rough Seas besides this the German Seas seem to set off somewhat towards the Northwest of Scotland where meeting with the Irish Sea do much intend the aforesaid roughness This also causes the duplication of Tides in several parts of the Irish Seas It will not be unprofitable to observe the streams of the Tides where Sea-men do state a general rule viz. That the Tide sets off athwart wherever it beats against a great Promontory Hence it is that throughout the Channel the Tide sets off athwart in many places from the French Coast towards the English where the Land sticks out in great nooks As from the great Promontory of France in the mouth of the Channel and from that which is opposite to the Isle of Wight and from before Calis c. II. The Promontories do very much weaken the Tides and clip them off from waters streaming in the No theast whence it is that there is no Tide in the East or Baltick Seas besides 1. Because the Tide of the German Sea is clipt off by the peninsule of Denmark or Jutland and the narrowness of the Sound 2. The course of the German Sea is the easier kept off because it floats to the Northward whereas the Baltick Sea opens into it from the East Hence it is also that a great part of these Seas consists of fresh waters because the North Sea is not disburdened into it Touching the first production of this Sea to wit the East Sea it is very probable that it derived its rice from a great Lake risen in the deepest and broadest place of the said Sea which by continuance of pressure hath bored through that large tract vvhich novv is That this is so I prove 1. Had the German Ocean bâ—red this Cavern then a greater part of it vvould have been salt and heavy like unto the same 2. It would then have been more deep than it is and have had a greater opening vvherefore it must needs have had its beginning from a Lake and for that reason is very improperly called a Sea more justly deserving the name of a Sinus or Gulph III. In many places the Sea is taken notice to rise to the height of a Pike as before the River of Seyne vvhose rising they vulgarly call the Bare or bore taking its beginning vvith the advent of the Floud and aftervvards overflovving a great length of that River as far as Roan in a great height but gradually diminishing The cause of this is to be attributed to the depth of a Cavern encompassed by shelves and banks wherein the Sea is collected and stayed until such time that it doth gather it self into a bare whereby it lifteth it self up and climbs up the banks and being attended with the same force whereby it did elevate it self is protracted as far as Roan Here again we have an evident testimony of the Seas moving underneath confirming what I have proposed touching the universal Bore If the waters here took their beginning of motion from their superficial parts then a bare were impossible to arise here because the waters are free and in no wise stopt in their motion atop Ergo being stopt underneath it is undoubted that the waters take their beginning of motion thence The same bares you have here and there in the Seas which occasion the oversetting of many a Ship or the casting of them upon rocks and shelves which they could not escape because of the violence of the same bores This bare is seldom visibly perceived in the Seas because it seems to be drowned by the waves nevertheless in many places it is The cause of the breaking of the Sea upon banks you may easily know out of the precedents IV. The Mediterranean Sea undergoeth an intumescence and detumescence although not very strong or swift the reason of the latter is because it being situated Easterly escapes the strength of the course of the Ocean flowing westwards Only the Ocean through its continual passing by doth continually impell the
ground swimming atop it in the forme of clay or mud they having little or no sandy ground within their dikes or bankes Hence it appears that towards the constitution of a Hill these conditions must be required 1. A great quantity of water must be bored underneath the Earth for a small quantity would prove invalid to lift it up 2. They must form their Cavern very deep for near the Surface they would sooner break through than raise the earth 3. The ground under which they bore must be very dense dry and sandy for to keep in the water for were it moist or loose it would not rise but sooner break Besides this density and sandiness of the earth doth serve to concentrate and conclomerate the earth into one body whereby it is gradually raised and lifted up From this discourse observe why hills are sandy and dry although containing such a bulk of water underneath them viz. because of the closeness or density of the minima's or sands of the earth compelling the water under them 2. The reason why all hills do not emit fountains of water is because the water is lodged very deep under them or because of the extream density of their terrestrial minima's V. This cannot but confute that improbable opinion asserting hills to be formed through the violence of the waters after the Deluge carrying great pieces of the earth along with them in returning to their receptacle another reason against this is because great torrents tumbling down with a tempestuous fury and causing an Inundation or Deluge wherever they touch scarce leave any sign of inequality of the earth behind them 2. Here may then be demanded from them how and whence those hills before or after the Deluge of Noah or of Ogâ—ges or Deucaleon it is the same received their formation Hills there were before for besides the Bible Josephus Abydenus Berosus and others make mention of a very high hill in Armenia major called Barin by others Chardaeus whereupon a pious man should have saved himself in an Ark. So Ovid speaks of the Mount Parnassus whose height should have preserved Deucaleon with his wife Pyrrha from the rage of the Deluge Others to save the matter have conceited the Stars to have attracted lumps out of the earth and so raised them into hills but this opinion is so absurd that it needs no confutation The Vulgar observing most hills to be sandy do beyond all reproof believe that they are nothing else but congestions of sand or earth heaped up by the winds I shall not think it much to insert their judgment touching a very high hill in Holland situated a mile off from the Hague towards Shiveling and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 called the High Clift which about a hundred years ago they say was of that height that one might have washt his hand in the clouds upon the top of it but now is diminisht to one third to what it was and I my self can remember that it was much higher than now it is The cause of this diminution they adscribe to the winds blowing down the sands out of which they say all those small hills that are about it were formed But to rectifie their apprehensions who can rationally judge that winds are forcible enough to remove hills of that weight and bigness or that winds should be strong enough to heap up such a Mountain Any one would sooner imagine the winds to blow them down If then winds have not the power to raise a Mountain certainly they are too weak to pull one down Or thus If winds be so powerful why did they not blow down such hils before they came to that height 2. Hills in many Islands of the West-Indies are raised much higher where the winds are much more out ragious Wherefore the cause of the diminution of the fore-mentioned High Clift must be adscribed to the removal of the water underneath whereby the hill doth gradually sink and grow lesser and boring further into several places about hath raised those other hills VI. But since hills are so numerous Lakes and Rivers not scarce a disquisition must be made whence and how such a vast quantity of water doth redound within the bowels of the earth The peregrin Element of water within the earth bears no proportion of affording a competent moisture towards the casting up of so many monstrous Mountains or scattering such large perennal Fountains and Rivers or of depressing the Surface of the earth by such vast Lakes Wherefore I say nothing appears full enough to effuse such dimensions of water but the Ocean alone whose belly being oppressed with an inexhaustible plenitude is constantly irritated to vomit up its superfluities into the weaker and lower parts of the earth Reason will incline us to this truth that must be the original of waters whereinto they are disburdened for otherwise if the Sea did retain all those waters evacuated by Rivers it would manifestly increase but since it doth not it is an argument that the Sea expels as much as it receives but that is the Ocean Ergo. 2. Many Lakes Fountains and Rivers although remote from the lips of the Sea do notwithstanding participate of the flowing and ebbing thereof as that Fountain in the Island Gades another near Burdeaux c. ergo the sea doth press water thither 3. The divine words of Solomon confirm the same to us Eccl. 1. 7. Unto the Place from whence the Rivers come thither do they return again but that is into the Sea Ergo. 4. The ancient Church-men do also subscribe to this viz. Isidor lib. 3. de Orig. Cap. 20. Basil. Hom. 4. Hex Jerom upon Eccles. 1. Damasc. lib. 2. de sid orth c. 9. Hugo de S. Vict. upon Gen. Dionys. upon Prov. 8. c. The manner of the Seas conveyance or passage to the innermost parts of the earth is by screwing pressing and penetrating through the lowermost parts for there the Sea is most potent exercising its weight refracted to the sides whereas atop it is too weak or were it strong enough it would break forth before it had passed any considerable way Besides its own weight the saltness of the Sea doth very much conduce to the intending of its force for those salin particles are apt to undergo a dividing and cutting pressure VII Places that are bordering upon the Sea are alwaies and every where cast up into high hills or mountains because they receive the first impulse of the Sea waters pressing underneath Hence it is that every where about the Coasts are encompassed by hills Mountains are oft higher and greater within the Land than near the Sea because they are raised by the meeting of great quantities of water impelled from two Seas So the Alpes are cast up by the water impelled from the Venetian Gulph of the one side and the Tyrrhenian Sea of the other both meeting under them The Peak of Teneriffe is thrust up to the height of threescore miles through casting up all that
ground into whose room a great depth of water is succeeded undermining it all about The Island Ferro is not irrigated atop with any fluent moisture as Lake River or Springs except only with the abundant droppings of a tree drawing moisture from a great depth or by collecting the dew of the air which sufficeth to quench the thirst of all the Inhabitants and their Cattel because consisting throughout of high Mountains their sand lying very close deep and heavy doth detain the water underneath them The earth is much more depressed under the torrid Zone and as much more raised towards the Poles because the Ocean being gathered into a vast body under the forementioned Zone depresseth all the land under it and near to it with one collected and united force of weight towards the Poles which doth undoubtedly assure me that under both Poles Artick and Antartick the firm land doth stick out far above the waters And questionless Greenland is protracted quite throughout the Northern polar Region The Mountain Serra Leona in AEthiopia bearing up to the height of the clouds wherewith the top is alwaies beset although raised within the torrid Zone is suffulted by a great gulph collected through the meeting of two or more parts of the Sea under ground And whole Africa seems to be inflated into high mountains from the limits of AEgypt until the farthest part of the Atlantick mountain through communication of Lakes which again arise out of the concourse of waters propelled from the Mediterranean Eruthrean AEthiopian and Atlantick Seas Arabia is likewise lofty through hills vaunting upon waters immitted from the Persian and Arabian Gulphs Muscovia and Lithuania are for the greater part Champian Countries because their soil is too much soakt for to be raised up into hills 2. By reason of the multiplicity of Lakes and Rivers through which the subterraneous waters are vented Sweden Norway Scania are very abundantly watered with Lakes and Rivers the Sea upon those Coasts exceeds in depth the length of Ships Cables The reason is because those waters are very much intended in their pressure downwards through the vast number of cold and frosty minima's raining down from the North Pole VIII Before I digress from the subject of this Chapter I am only to shew you the possibility of Marin waters their pressure out from the depth of the Ocean in to the innermost parts of the earth This I shall easily accomplish in mentioning that the force of fresh waters within the land have moulded through the ground the length of many Leagues if so the same is much more possible to salt water The River Niger bores through a heavy dense and deep ground the length of 60 miles before it evacuates it self into the Lake Borno The River Nuba doth likewise force a Cavern many miles long into the earth The Spaniards vaunt excessively of a long Bridge whereon ten thousand Goats and Sheep reap their pasture and is nothing else but the passing of the River Anas alias Guadiana the dimension of 8 or 9 Leagues underground beginning to disappear near Medelina The Tigris runs her self under ground on one side of the mount Taurus and comes up again on the other side and beyond the Lake Thorpes hides it self again within the earth 18 miles further Camden in his Britannia makes observation of the River Mole in Surrey diving under ground near white hill and appearing again a mile or two thence near Letherhed bridge Historians tell us that the Alphaeus floats secretly under ground as far as Sicily where with its appearance makes choice of a new name viz. Arethusa famous for gulping up of offals that had been cast into the Alphaeus at the Olimpick Games usual every fifth year The Danow runs some miles under ground before it flows into the Sava Upon the top of the mount Stella is a certain Lake near 12 Leagues distant from the Sea which oft vomits up wracks of Ships that were cast away at Sea CHAP. XII Of the causes of the effects produced by Fountains 1. Whence some Fountains are deleterious The cause of the effect of the Fountain Lethe of Cea Lincystis Arania The causes of foecundation and of rendring barren of other Fountains The causes of the properties of the Fountain of the Sun of the Eleusinian waters of the Fountains of Illyrium Epyrus Cyreniaca Arcadia the Holy Cross Sibaris Lycos of the unctious Fountain of Rome and Jacobs Fountain 2. The causes of the effects of Ipsum and Barnet Wells 3. Whence the vertues of the Spaw waters are derived 4. Of the formal causes of Baths 1. THe Fountains of Thrace Arcadia Sarmatia Armenia Lydia and Sicilia are deleterious through the permixtion of crude arsernical juyces transpiring out of the earth The same causes operate the same effects in the Founts of Wolchenstein Valentia Berosus c. The Lethe of Boeotia owes its effects to crude Mercurial vapours immixt within its substance Another in the same Countrey produceth a contrary effect through a succinous exhalation The Fountains of Cea and Susae differ little in causality from the Lethe The Lincystis inebriates the brain through repletion by sulphurous exhalations The Fountain of Arania makes use of crude nitrous juyces for the accomplishing of its effects The Fountain which Solinus affirms to conduce to foecundity must be a thorowly attenuated and well concocted water like to that of the Nile The other opposite to this in operation must be very Saturnal A sulphureous Nitre or a mixture of Sulphur and Nitre into one close juyce dispersed through the waters of the Fountain of the Sun among the Garamantes renders them very cold in the day time because the Nitre then predominating condenseth and incrassates the waters the more because its sulphureous parts which do otherwise rarefie them are through the Suns beams extracted disunited and dispersed Whereas in the night season the sulphureous parts benâ—g united through the condensing cold of the night and condensation of the nitrous particles turn into an internal flame causing that fervent heat The Eleusinian waters are irritated to a fermentation of heterogeneous mineral juyces through the percussion of the air by a sharp musical string whereby through continuation the waters are likewise percussed and its contenta stirred In the same manner is the next related fountain cast into an exestuation through the shrill acute vibrating and penetrating percussion of the air by the lips whereas the walking about stirring the air but obtusely cannot effect such a penetrative or acute motion The Fountain of Illyrium contains secret Vitriolat sulphureous flames within its substance whereby it proves so consuming The Fountains of Epyrus and Cyreniaca vary in heat by reason of the greater or lesser dispersing and rarefying or uniting and condensing of their sulphureous flames Springs remain cool in the Summer through the rarefaction of their fiery spirits exhaling and passing out of the ground in the Summer they produce a small warmth through the condensation of their igneous
with bodies discontinuating its substance doth press those heterogeneous bodies together into clouds through its vertue of moving to an union and not through its coldness for air of it self where it doth in any wise enjoy its purity is estranged from cold and is naturally rather inclined to warmth The reason why clouds are less apt to concrease where the Sun hath power is because the parts of the air there are weakned through the rarefaction and discontinuation by torrid minima's These clouds according to their mixture vary in continuation viz. some are thicker and more concreased than others which through their greater renixe are propelled from the others of a less renitency Clouds containing much earth and thence rendred dense appear black if they are much expanded according to their diduction they refract the light variously appearing red white blew c. The clouds through their gradual proportion of renitency being disrupted and sinking gradually under one another refract the light of the Sun according to their graduall situation seeming to be illuminated with several and gradual colours whose appearance is called a Rainbow viz. The lower being more thick and dense than the rest refract the light blackish that above it being less dense brownish that above this purple or greenish the other reddish yellowish c. A Rainbow is not seen by us unless we be interposed between the Sun and the Clouds reflecting and refracting that is we must stand on that side of the clouds that is irradiated In Thomas's Island the Moon doth sometimes cause a light kind of a Rainbow after a rain Touching the figure of a Rainbow it is semicircular because the air is expanded in a circular figure and moved circularly towards us Many do make a scruple whether there ever appeared any Rainbow before the Floud gathering their ground of doubting from Gen. 9. 13. I do set my Bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a Covenant between me and the earth Hereunto I answer That these words do not seem to make out any thing else but that God did assume the Bow for a sign rather implying that the Heavens had been disposed to the susception of Rainbows from the Creation For even then were the Heavens filled up with clouds fit for the reflection of such a light That a Morning Rainbow doth portend wet and an Evening one fair weather is vulgarly reported which nevertheless is very uncertain For the most part it either doth precede rain or follow it The reason is because the forementioned gradual declination and incrassation doth cause a rain Rain is the decidence of clouds in drops Clouds although incrassated and condensed gathered and compressed by the ambient air striving to be freed of them yet cannot be expelled and protruded all at once because their extent is too large and their circumference obtuse whence they are unfit to be protruded at once unless they were most condensed into an acute or cutting Surface Why they cannot be compressed into a less compass and a greater acuteness is because of a great quantity of air contained within them Touching their diruption into drops it is to be imputed to the external compression of the clouds squeezing the internal air into particles which as they burst out do each protrude a drop of rain Or thus Suppose the clouds at such times to be puft up with bubbles of internal air and the diruption of each bubble to send down a drop of rain Oft times with rain a great wind blows down along with it which is nothing else but the air pent within the said clouds and bursting out of them A windiness doth oft hold up the rain because it shatters and disperses the parts of the said dense clouds wherby their consistency is broken Rains are very frequent in the Autumn and the Winter because the Sun casting its rayes obliquely towards those Countries where the seasons of the year are manifestly observed doth raise a greater abundance of vapours more than it can dissolve or disperse besides a great number of clouds are sent from other places where the Sun doth through its Summer heat raise such a great quantity of vapours which meeting and being impacted upon one another and etruded cause great rains at those times of the year The Moon hath also great power in dissolving a cloud into rain for she sending down and impelling great abundance of dense weighty minims doth very much further the descent of drops Frosty minims exercise a strong vertue in stifning the air whereby it is rendred more firm to contain the clouds and hinder their precipitation besides they do also disperse the clouds through their effective crassitude Whence it is that it rains so seldom in frosty weather But as soon as the thow is begun likely the clouds meet and fall down in a rain Which if sometimes pouring down in great showers is called a Nimbus if in small drops but descending close is called an Imber The cause of this difference depends upon the density of the clouds and the proportion of air pent within them Those rainy clouds do sometimes contain a great quantity of earthy minims which meeting are through a petrisick vertue changed into stones raining down at the dissolution of the said clouds Other contents consisting of reddish or whitish exhalations drawn up from the earth may give such a red or white tincture to the clouds which when dispersed into rain may appear bloudy or milky Frog or Fish-spawns have sometimes been attracted up into the air being inclosed within vapours where within the matrix of a close cloud they have been vivified and afterwards rained down again A Nebula is a small thin cloud generated in the lower Region of the air out of thin vapours The reason why those vapours ascended no higher is because they were concreased in the lower parts of the lower Region of the air through the force of the air in the night being rendred potent through the absence of the Suns discontinuating raies A mist is the incrassation of vapours contained in the lowermost parts of the air The dew is the decidence of drops from subtil vapours concreased through the privative coldness of nocturnal air III. Snow is the decidence of clouds in flocks whose production depends upon the concrescence of drops by frosty minima's and their attenuation through aerial particles whence they are soft and do reflect the light whitish It usually falls after a degelation when the congealed clouds are somewhat loosened It dissolves or melts through deserting the frosty minima's Hail is the decidence of drops in hard small quadrangular bodies Their congelation is also occasioned through the detention of frosty minima's within the drops of water Their hardness is from a less commixture of air whence the water doth the more enjoy her own crassitude and hardness IV. Wind is a violent eruption of incrassated air pent within the clouds puffing disrupting and taring the Element of air asunder Hence when
we are to apply it as it relates to the other Elements and is the proper cause of her Commerce with them Water although appearing fluid yet naturally that is absolutely conceived by it self is void of all fluor but partakes of the greatest weight hardness crassitude smoothness and consistency that is imaginable I prove it Water the more it is remote from the intense heat of the Sun the more heavy thick hard smooth and consistent it is Have you not Mountains of Ice of great weight thickness c. in Greenland in the Summer much more in the Winter yet more directly under the Poles and most of all if apprehended absolute by it self and deprived from extrinsick air and fire when we cannot but judge it to be of the greatest weight thickness and consistency that is apprehensible The Scripture seems to attest the same Job 38. And the waters are hid as with a stone and the face of the deep is frozen By the deep here is meant the Chaos ergo the waters were naturally at their first creation thick and hard Lastly As there are two fluid Elements viz. fire and air So it is also necessary that they should be balanced and met with two opposite consistent ones namely Earth and Water The first being contiguous and hard responds to fire the other being continuous and hard responds to air being continuous and soft Whence we may safely conclude that it is the advent of the fire together with the air that renders the water thus thin and fluid as we see it is II. How Water first gained such a body together as the Sea is our exposition of the worlds creation will advise you The Sea is the greatest collection of water by the Latinists it is called Mare from Meare to go or to flow and not from amarum or the word Marath among the Caldeans signifying bitter as some have thought so it is likewise called Oceanus the Ocean from Ocior amnis a swift current It procures various distinctions from its beating against several shores from those of the East and West India it is surnamed the East and West Indian Ocean of the Mount Atlas the Atlantick Ocean from those of Sarmatia the Sarmatick Ocean near Madagascar the rough Sea from the quicksands that are frequently thereabout of Spain and Brittain the Spanish and Brittish Ocean c. And from the Plage whence it doth flow it is called the East West South or North Ocean The same spreads it self into many particular Seas or great Bayes whereof these are the more principal 1. The Mediterranean Sea so named because it flows through the middle of two great parts of the Earth viz. between a great part of Europe Africa and Asia Or more particularly between Spain France Italy Dalmatia Greece and Natolia of the one side and AEgypt and Barbary of the other Where it toucheth the Spanish coast it is called the Iberick sea and more forward the French Balearick Ligustick near Genoa Tyrrhenian or Tuscan about Sicily Sardinian Sicilian Adriatick Cretick Libyan Phoenicean Cyprian Syriack sea c. its mouth is called the Straits 2. Pontus Euxinus the Euxian sea otherwise named the black sea or Mare Majus whose mouth is called the Hellespont from its narrowness its throat Propontis and the Thracian Bosphor so called from bos an Oxe as if an Oxe were too big to pass through that narrowness 3. The Arabian and Persian sea 4. The Gangetican sea so named from the river Ganges which is disburdened into it 5. The Red sea deriving that name not from the colour of the Sea but of the red sand over which it floweth The Baltick Sea alias the Sinus Coddanus or Suevick Sea from the Suevi a Nation that formerly inhabited those coasts at the mouth it is called the Sound flowing 150 leagues far between Denmark Finland Sueden Prussia Liefland Pomerania and Saxony The pacifick sea is so called from the gentleness of the waves or the South sea because it lyeth to the Southward of the Line limited by the coasts of Asia America and terra Australis or the Country of Megallan III. A Lake is a great and perennal collection of water cirrounded by the Earth whereby it is cut off from the Sea It is distinguisht from a Pool in that the one is perennal the other is apt to be dryed up sometime by the heat of the Sun and driness of the earth and to be filled up again with rain Some of these being famous for their extent others for their admirable qualities I shall willingly insert 1. The greatest Lake in the Universe is the Caspian sea in Asia otherwise called the great sea the Albanian Hircanian Pontick Tartarian Sea the Sea of Sala Bachu Abachu Terbestan or Giorgian It diffuseth it self into three Bayes or Gulph viz. near the Mouth into the Hircanian on the right side into the Caspian and on the left side into the Scytick Gulph It bears the name of a Sea very improperly since it is incompassed by the Earth Nevertheless it is saltish and full of fish 2. The Lake Asphaltites in Judaea otherwise called the dead Sea from its immobility because as Corn. Tacit. relates that scarce any wind be it never so violent is strong enough to lift it up into Waves is noted for sustaining weighty bodies especially if anointed with Alume water that are cast into it in a manner that a man his hands and legs being tyed and cast into it shall swim it breeds no fish nor any other living creatures The Lake of the lesser Armenia and the Lake Aposcidamus in Africa and of Sicily are almost of the same strength On the contrary the Lake Avernum in Campania and that of AEthiopia are unable to sustain the weight of a leaf fallen into them from a tree and according to Pliny there is no fowl that flies over them but falleth dead into them There is a Lake near Lerna and another in Portugal which are so attractive and depressing that they do immediately draw and press down to the bottom whatever is cast into them in such a manner that a man having thrust his hand into either must use force to draw it out again Pomponius Mela and Solinus make mention of a Lake in AEthiopia which to the eye appearing crystalline and sweet to the pallat doth so besmear those that bath in it as if they had been duckt into a bath of oyl In the west of the Isle of Iseland travellers have discovered a great Lake fumous very cold in a short space changing whatever is cast into it into a stonish or rockish body a stick being thrust right up into the bottom that part which is under water is in two daies changed into an Iron substance the other above remaining what it was Hect. Boeth writes of another in Ireland which after some months renders that part of a stick that is thrust into the ground Iron the other part that is under water fliuty the upper part
above the water continuing wood In Thrace it is said there is a Lake whose water proves mortal to any that do drink of it or do bath therein Many of the Troglodites have forfeited their reason for venturing to taste of the water of a pernicious Lake in that Country The Lake Clitorius effects sobriety in men and excites them to a hatred against Wine and Drunkenness The Lake Gerasa in the Country of the Gadarens whereinto the Herd of Swine animated with those dispossessed devils of whom we read in Luk. 8. 33. violently ran down is at present so venomous that it causes the hair and nails of all those to come off that have at any time drank of it The Lake Laumond in Scotland imbracing thirty Islands breeds fish without finnes and is cast sometimes into a most raging tempest although there be little or no wind stirring One of those Islands is said to fluctuate up and down in her The Lakes of Chirchen in China is said to change Iron into Copper Scotland is noted for a Lake whereof the one half yieldeth to be hardned by the frost the other maintaining her fluidity the whole Winter So likewise in Norway although Saturn is felt to be very furious there yet many Lakes lye open all the Winter The like is observable in a Lake near New Castle which in some part refuseth concretion although in the coldest weather There is a Lake near Nidrossa whose waters atop are extreamly cold but the mud near the bottom is constantly boyling hot insomuch that if you tye an Egg to a string and let it sink down to the bottom you may soon draw it up ready boyled Not far from Jensu a City in China is a Lake which is very cold in the Summer and scalding hot in the Winter The same is said of the Lake Jen near Chinchen in the same Country The waters of the Lake Anien at first feel extream cold but after a little while they begin to feel warm they also generate stones out of any matter received from without The Lake of Vadimon shews it self sometimes suddenly very turbulent without giving any manifest token of the cause of it The same is said of the Lake of Geneve or Lausanne Italy is dignified with one of the most famous Lakes in the world called Benaco its plaisance is supplied by a sight of Olive trees growing upon its borders and beautified about the sides with gardens planted with Citron and Pomgranate trees fertilized with rare fish having its water so bright and clear that you may plainly see the bottom through it except in the middle where it is almost not to be fathomed but notwithstanding so fair a complexion in good weather yet appears much more humourous in foul in such a manner that it doth then cast it self into raging high waves whereby it proves no less dangerous and dreadful than a tempestuous sea The Lake Larius by the Hetrusces styled the Prince of Lakes is much swelled in its belly through the swallowing up of the River Abda alias Abdua tumbling down from the Rhetian Alpes through the Valley Voltilena Boaring with a swift stream through the said standing water which gives it passage without the least commotion of its body neither permits it self to be mingled with those rapid and most limpid streams The said River persisting in its Velocity breaks out again near Leuk a Village In like manner doth the River Rhene stream through the Lake Acronius and the River Danow through part of the Surian Sea Hispaniola is watered with a great Lake named by the Inhabitants Haneygaban into which many great Rivers are disburdened and to the admiration of many is nothing engrossed although visibly venting no part of what it hath imbibed The same is observed of the Caspian sea receiving the copious evacuations of the Rivers Volga Janick Abiamu Chesel and many others Lucerna a Town in Switzerland is situated near to a Lake whereinto a stone or piece of wood being cast doth set it into so vehement a commotion that it fluctuates upwards in roaring waves and surmounting its borders happens somtimes to cause an inundation of the next adjacent fields wherefore for the prevention of such inconveniencies it is decreed by the Magistrate that none shall offer to cast any thing into it upon a severe penalty The Inhabitants impure the foresaid exestuation to the pernicious infection which the Lake received from the pestilent Carcass of that hellish Judge Pontius Pilate who after his banishment was thought to have drowned himself therein whence it is that they vulgarly call it Pilat's Pool There is a Lake not unlike to this upon the Mount Tidalu near Chaoking in China whereinto if one throws a stone or any other heavy thing he will immediately hear a roaring noise like thunder and soon after the sky about it grows gloomy and casts down rain In Carniola near the chief City Laubach every year about the Autumn there appears a Pool between some mountains about a league and half in compass and abounding with fish none apprehending whence this quantity of moisture should derive and towards the Spring it begins to dry up after which the ground is copiously fertilized and is haunted with a number of Deer IV. A Fountain or Spring is a pereunal eruption of water out of the Earth The differences of these is no less various than of Lakes to wit in quantity quality motion and situation Furthermore some are artificial others natural We shall only instance the admirable properties of some of the latter Aristotle writes of a Fountain in Thrace whereunto another in Arcadia named Styx as also one in Sarmatia and that of Armenia Lydia and Sicilia are like in vertue which casteth the drinkers of it into a mortal Syncope breeding fish working the same effect upon those that eat them The waters of the Founts of Valentia in Spain Wolchenstein Trecha the Kingdom of Crobus upon the Alpes Berosus and of Manglo in China are all deleterious corrosive and extreamly venomous Boeotia spouts out two springs whereof the one called Lethe effects forgetfulness the other cures it The water of the Fountain in the Island Cea as Pliny relates being drank dulleth a mans understanding and makes him sottish The Fountain of Susa in Persia loosens the teeth and causeth them to fall out Pliny speaks also of another in Germany on the other side of the Rhene effecting the same A draught of the water of Lyncistis filleth a mans brain and makes him drunk The Fountain of Arania a part of Arcadia makes one loath Wine Isidorus and Solinus write of two Fountains whereof the one procures fruitfulness in women the other barrenness The Garamants make mention of a Fountain among them called the fountain of the Sun whose extream coldness in the day renders it importable and in the night is so excessive hot that it proves scalding Aristotle relates of the Fountain Elusine which naturally being quiet and clear is affected with the noise of