Rochas has presented his Readers an Experiment which if it were punctually such as he has deliver'd it is very Notable He then Discoursing of the Generation of things according to certain Chymical and Metaphorical Notions which I confess are not to me Intelligible sets down among divers Speculations not pertinent to our Subject the following Narrative which I shall repeat to you the sence of in English with as little variation from the Literal sence of the French words as my memory will enable me Having sayes he discern'd such great Wonders by the Natural Operation of Water I would know what may be done with it by Art Imitating Nature Wherefore I took Water which I well knew not to be compounded nor to be mix'd with any other thing than that Spirit of Life whereof he had spoken before and with a Heat Artificial Continual and Proportionate I prepar'd and dispos'd it by the above mention'd Graduations of Coagulation Congelation and Fixation untill it was turn'd into Earth which Earth produc'd Animals Vegetables and Minerals I tell not what Animals Vegetables and Minerals for that is reserv'd for another Occasion but the Animals did Move of themselves Eat c. and by the true Anatomie I made of them I found that they were compos'd of much Sulphur little Mercury and less Salt The Minerals began to grow and encrease by converting into their own Nature one part of the Earth thereunto dispos'd they were solid and heavy And by this truly Demonstrative Science namely Chymistry I found that they were compos'd of much Salt little Sulphur and less Mercury But sayes Carneades I have some Suspitions concerning this strange Relation which make me unwilling to Declare an Opinion of it unless I were satisfied concerning divers Material Circumstances that our Author has left unmentioned though as for the Generation of Living Creatures both Vegetable and Sensitive it needs not seem Incredible since we finde that our common water which indeed is often Impregnated with Variety of Seminal Principles and Rudiments being long kept in a quiet place will putrifie and stink and then perhaps too produce Moss and little Worms or other Insects according to the nature of the Seeds that were lurking in it I must likewise desire you to take Notice that as Helmont gives us no Instance of the Production of Minerals out of Water so the main Argument that he employ's to prove that they and other Bodies may be resolv'd into water is drawn from the Operations of his Alkahest and consequently cannot be satisfactorily Examin'd by You and Me. Yet certainly sayes Eleutherius You cannot but have somewhat wonder'd as well as I to observe how great a share of Water goes to the making up of Divers Bodies whose Disguises promise nothing neere so much The Distillation of Eeles though it yielded me some Oyle and Spirit and Volatile Salt besides the Caput mortuum yet were all these so disproportionate to the Phlegm that came from them and in which at first they boyl'd as in a Pot of Water that they seem'd to have bin nothing but coagulated Phlegm which does likewise strangely abound in Vipers though they are esteem'd very hot in Operation and will in a Convenient Aire survive some dayes the loss of their Heads and Hearts so vigorous is their Vivacity Mans Bloud it self as Spirituous and as Elaborate a Liquor as 't is reputed does so abound in Phlegm that the other Day Distilling some of it on purpose to try the Experiment as I had formerly done in Deers Bloud out of about seven Ounces and a half of pure Bloud we drew neere six Ounces of Phlegm before any of the more operative Principles began to arise and Invite us to change the Receiver And to satisfie my self that some of these Animall Phlegms were void enough of Spirit to deserve that Name I would not content my self to taste them only but fruitlesly pour'd on them acid Liquors to try if they contain'd any Volatile Salt or Spirit which had there been any there would probably have discover'd it self by making an Ebullition with the affused Liquor And now I mention Corrosive Spirits I am minded to Informe you That though they seem to be nothing else but Fluid Salts yet they abound in Water as you may Observe if either you Entangle and so Fix their Saline Part by making them Corrode some idoneous Body or else if you mortifie it with a contrary Salt as I have very manifestly Observ'd in the making a Medecine somewhat like Helmont's Balsamus Samech with Distill'd Vinager instead of Spirit of Wine wherewith he prepares it For you would scarce Beleeve what I have lately Observ'd that of that acid Spirit the Salt of Tartar from which it is Distill'd will by mortifying and retaining the acid Salt turn into worthless Phlegm neere twenty times its weight before it be so fully Impregnated as to rob no more Distill'd Vinager of its Salt And though Spirit of Wine Exquisitely rectify'd seem of all Liquors to be the most free from Water it being so Igneous that it will Flame all away without leaving the least Drop behinde it yet even this Fiery Liquor is by Helmont not improbably affirm'd in case what he relates be True to be Materially Water under a Sulphureous Disguise For according to him in the making that excellent Medecine Paracelsus his Balsamus Samech which is nothing but Sal Tartari dulcify'd by Distilling from it Spirit of Wine till the Salt be sufficiently glutted with its Sulphur and suffer the Liquor to be drawn off as strong as it was pour'd on when the Salt of Tartar from which it is Distill'd hath retain'd or depriv'd it of the Sulphureous parts of the Spirit of Wine the rest which is incomparably the greater part of the Liquor will remigrate into Phlegm I added that Clause In case what he Relates be True because I have not as yet sufficiently try'd it my self But not only something of Experiment keeps me from thinking it as many Chymists do absurd though I have as well as they in vain try'd it with ordinary Salt of Tartar but besides that Helmont often Relates it and draws Consequences from it A Person noted for his Sobernesse and Skill in Spagyrical Preparations having been askt by me Whether the Experiment might not be made to succeed if the Salt and Spirit were prepar'd according to a way suitable to my Principles he affirm'd to me that he had that way I propos'd made Helmont's Experiment succeed very well without adding any thing to the Salt and Spirit But our way is neither short nor Easie I have indeed sayes Carneades sometimes wonder'd to see how much Phlegme may be obtain'd from Bodies by the Fire But concerning that Phlegme I may anon have Occasion to note something which I therefore shall not now anticipate But to return to the Opinion of Thales and of Helmont I consider that supposing the Alkahest could reduce all Bodies into water yet whether that water
he sayes that he kept then some by him to verify what he delivers And though I remember not that I have had two distinct Oyles from Sugar of Lead yet that it will though distill'd without addition yield some Oyle disagrees not with my Experience I know the Chymists will be apt to pretend that these Oyls are but the volatiliz'd sulphur of the lead and will perhaps argue it from what Beguinus relates that when the Distillation is ended you 'l find a Caput Mortuum extreamly black and as he speaks nullius momenti as if the Body or at least the chief part of the Metal it self were by the distillation carried over the Helme But since you know as well as I that Saccharum Saturni is a kind of Magistery made only by calcining of Lead per se dissolving it in distill'd Vinager and crystalizing the solution if I had leasure to tell You how Differing a thing I did upon examination find the Caput Mortuum so sleighted by Beguinus to be from what he represents it I believe you would think the conjecture propos'd less probable then one or other of these three either that this Oyle did formerly concur to constitute the Spirit of Vinager and so that what passes for a Chymical Principle may yet be further resoluble into distinct substances or that some parts of the Spirit together with some parts of the Lead may constitute a Chymical Oyle which therefore though it pass for Homogeneous may be a very compounded Body or at least that by the action of the Distill'd Vinager and the Saturnine Calx one upon another part of the Liquor may be so alter'd as to be transmuted from an Acid Spirit into an Oyle And though the truth of either of the two former conjectures would make the example I have reflected on more pertinent to my present argument yet you 'l easily discern the Third and last Conjecture cannot be unserviceable to confirm some other passages of my discourse To return then to what I was saying just before I mention'd Helmont's Experiment I shall subjoyne That Chymists must confess also that in the perfectly Dephlegm'd spirit of Wine or other Fermented Liquors that which they call the Sulphur of the Concrete loses by the Fermentation the Property of Oyle which the Chymists likewise take to be the true Sulphur of the Mixt of being unminglable with the Water Ostendi alias quomodo lib. una aquae vitae combibita in sale Tartari siccato vix fiat semuncia salis caeterum totum corpus fiat aqua Elementalis Helmont in Aura vitali And if You will credit Helmont all of the purest Spirit of Wine may barely by the help of pure Salt of Tartar which is but the fixed Salt of Wine be resolv'd or Transmuted into scarce half an ounce of Salt and as much Elementary Water as amounts to the remaining part of the mention'd weight And it may as I think I formerly also noted be doubted whether that Fixt and Alcalizate Salt which is so unanimously agreed on to be the Saline Principle of incinerated Bodies be not as 't is Alcalizate a Production of the Fire For though the tast of Tartar for Example seem to argue that it contains a Salt before it be burn'd yet that Salt being very Acid is of a quite Differing Tast from the Lixiviate Salt of Calcin'd Tartar And though it be not truly Objected against the Chymists that they obtain all Salts they make by reducing the Body they work on into Ashes with Violent Fires since Hartshorn Amber Blood and divers other Mixts yield a copious Salt before they be burn'd to Ashes yet this Volatile Salt Differs much as we shall see anon from the Fixt Alcalizate Salt I speak of which for ought I remember is not producible by any known Way without Incineration 'T is not unknown to Chymists that Quicksilver may be Precipitated without Addition into a dry Powder that remains so in Water And some eminent Spagyrists and even Raimund Lully himself teach that meerly by the Fire Quicksilver may in convenient Vessels be reduc'd at least in great part into a thin Liquor like Water and minglable with it So that by the bare Action of the Fire 't is possible that the parts of a mixt Body should be so dispos'd after new and differing manners that it may be sometimes of one consistence sometimes of another And may in one State be dispos'd to be mingl'd with Water and in another not I could also shew you that Bodies from which apart Chymists cannot obtain any thing that is Combustible may by being associated together and by the help of the Fire afford an inflamable Substance And that on the other side 't is possible for a Body to be inflamable from which it would very much puzzle any ordinary Chymist and perhaps any other to separate an inflamable Principle or Ingredient Wherefore since the Principles of Chymists may receive their Denominations from Qualities which it often exceeds not the power of Art nor alwayes that of the Fire to produce And since such Qualities may be found in Bodies that differ so much in other Qualities from one another that they need not be allow'd to agree in that pure and simple Nature which Principles to be so indeed must have it may justly be suspected that many Productions of the Fire that are shew'd us by Chymists as the Principles of the Concrete that afforded them may be but a new kind of Mixts And to annex on this Occasion to these arguments taken from the Nature of the thing one of those which Logicians call ad Hominem I shall desire You to take Notice that though Paracelsus Himself and some that are so mistaken as to think he could not be so have ventur'd to teach that not only the bodies here below but the Elements themselves and all the other Parts of the Universe are compos'd of Salt Sulphur and Mercury yet the learned Sennertus and all the more wary Chymists have rejected that conceit and do many of them confess that the Tria Prima are each of them made up of the four Elements and others of them make Earth and Water concur with Salt Sulphur and Mercury to the Constitution of Mixt bodies So that one sort of these Spagyrists notwithstanding the specious Titles they give to the productions of the Fire do in effect grant what I contend for And of the other sort I may well demand to what Kind of Bodies the Phlegme and dead Earth to be met with in Chymical Resolutions are to be referr'd For either they must say with Paracelsus but against their own Concessions as well as against Experience that these are also compos'd of the Tria Prima whereof they cannot separate any one from either of them or else they must confess that two of the vastest Bodies here below Earth and Water are neither of them compos'd of the Tria Prima and that consequently those three are not the Universal and Adequate
Thoughts that sober Admonition of Galen Cum de re constat de verbis non est Litigandum And therefore also I scruple not to say Elements or Principles partly because the Chymists are wont to call the Ingredients of mixt Bodies Principles as the Aristotelians name them Elements I would here exclude neither And partly because it seems doubtfull whether the same Ingredients may not be call'd Principles as not being compounded of any more primary Bodies and Elements in regard that all mix'd Bodies are compounded of them But I thought it requisite to limit my Concession by premising the words very much to the word Inconvenience because that though the Inconvenience of calling the distinct Substances mention'd in the Proposition Elements or Principles be not very great yet that it is an Impropriety of Speech and consequently in a matter of this moment not to be altogether overlook'd You will perhaps think as well as I by that time you shall have heard the following part of my Discourse by which you will best discern what Construction to put upon the former Propositions and how far they may be look'd upon as things that I concede as true and how far as things I only represent as specious enough to be fit to be consider'd And now Eleutherius continues Carneades I must resume the person of a Sceptick and as such propose some part of what may be either dislik't or at least doubted of in the common Hypothesis of the Chymists which if I examine with a little the more freedom I hope I need not desire you a Person to whom I have the Happinesse of being so well known to look upon it as something more suitable to the Employment whereto the Company has for this Meeting doom'd me then either to my Humour or my Custom Now though I might present you many things against the Vulgar Chymical Opinion of the three Principles and the Experiments wont to be alledg'd as Demonstrations of it yet those I shall at present offer you may be conveniently enough comprehended in four Capital Considerations touching all which I shall only premise this in general That since it is not my present Task so much to assert an Hypothesis of my own as to give an Account wherefore I suspect the Truth of that of the Chymists it ought not to be expected that all my Objections should be of the most cogent sort since it is reason enough to Doubt of a propos'd Opinion that there appears no cogent Reason for it To come then to the Objections themselves I consider in the first place That notwithstanding what common Chymists have prov'd or taught it may reasonably enough be Doubted how far and in what sence Fire ought to be esteem'd the genuine and universal Instrument of analyzing mixt Bodies This Doubt you may remember was formerly mention'd but so transiently discours'd of that it will now be fit to insist upon it And manifest that it was not so inconsiderately propos'd as our Adversaries then imagin'd But before I enter any farther into this Disquisition I cannot but here take notice that it were to be wish'd our Chymists had clearly inform'd us what kinde of Division of Bodies by Fire must determine the number of the Elements For it is nothing near so easy as many seem to think to determine distinctly the Effects of Heat as I could easily manifest if I had leasure to shew you how much the Operations of Fire may be diversify'd by Circumstances But not wholly to pass by a matter of this Importance I will first take notice to you that Guajacum for Instance burnt with an open Fire in a Chimney is sequestred into Ashes and Soot whereas the same Wood distill'd in a Retort does yield far other Heterogeneities to use the Helmontian expression and is resoly'd into Oyl Spirit Vinager Water and Charcoal the last of which to be reduc'd into Ashes requires the being farther calcin'd then it can be in a close Vessel Besides having kindled Amber and held a clean Silver Spoon or some other Concave and smooth Vessel over the Smoak of its Flame I observ'd the Soot into which that Fume condens'd to be very differing from any thing that I had observ'd to proceed from the steam of Amber purposely for that is not usual distilled per se in close Vessels Thus having for Tryals sake kindled Camphire and catcht the Smoak that copiously ascended out of the Flame it condens'd into a Black and unctuous Soot which would not have been guess d by the Smell or other Properties to have proceeded from Camphire whereas having as I shall otherwhere more fully declare expos'd a quantity of that Fugitive Concrete to a gentle heat in a close Glass-Vessel it sublim'd up without seeming to have lost any thing of its whiteness or its Nature both which it retain'd though afterwards I so encreased the Fire as to bring it to Fusion And besides Camphire there are divers other Bodies that I elsewhere name in which the heat in close Vessels is not wont to make any separation of Heterogeneities but only a comminution of Parts those that rise first being Homogeneal with the others though subdivided into smaller Particles whence Sublimations have been stiled The Pestles of the Chymists But not here to mention what I elsewhere take notice of concerning common Brimstone once or twice sublim'd that expos'd to a moderate Fire in Subliming-Pots it rises all into dry and almost tastless Flowers Whereas being expos'd to a naked Fire it affords store of a Saline and Fretting Liquor Not to mention this I say I will further observe to you that as it is considerable in the Analysis of mixt Bodies whether the Fire act on them when they are expos'd to the open Air or shut up in close Vessels so is the degree of Fire by which the Analysis is attempted of no small moment For a milde Balneum will sever unfermented Blood for Instance but into Phlegme and Caput mortuum the later whereof which I have sometimes had hard brittle and of divers Colours transparent almost like Tortoise-shell press'd by a good Fire in a Retort yields a Spirit an Oyl or two and a volatile Salt besides a Caput mortuum It may be also pertinent to our present Designe to take notice of what happens in the making and distilling of Sope for by one degree of Fire the Salt the Water and the Oyl or Grease whereof that factitious Concrete is made up being boyl'd up together are easily brought to mingle and incorporate into one Mass but by another and further degree of Heat the same Mass may be again divided into an oleagenous an aqueous a Saline and an Earthy part And so we may observe that impure Silver and Lead being expos'd together to a moderate Fire will thereby be colliquated into one Mass and mingle per minima as they speak whereas a much vehementer Fire will drive or carry off the baser Metals I mean the Lead and the Copper or
what it was formerly yet I was not satisfi'd doubting the Earth was not dry I put it into an Oven the Second Time after the Bread was drawn and after I had taken it out and weighed it I found it to be the Same Weight So I Suppose there was no Moisture left in the Earth Neither do I think that the Pound and Halfe that was wanting was Drawn away by the Cucumber but a great Part of it in the Ordering was in Dust and the like wasted the Cucumbers are kept by themselves lest You should send for them But yet in this Tryal Eleutherius it appears that though some of the Earth or rather the dissoluble Salt harbour'd in it were wasted the main Body of the Plant consisted of Transmuted Water And I might add that a year after I caus'd the formerly mentioned Experiment touching large Pompions to be reiterated with so good success that if my memory does not much mis-inform me it did not only much surpass any that I made before but seem'd strangely to conclude what I am pleading for though by reason I have unhappily lost the particular Account my Gardiner writ me up of the Circumstances I dare not insist upon them The like Experiment may be as conveniently try'd with the seeds of any Plant whose growth is hasty and its size Bulky If Tobacco will in These Cold Climates Grow well in Earth undung'd it would not be amiss to make a Tryal with it for 't is an annual Plant that arises where it prospers sometimes as high as a Tall Man and I have had leaves of it in my Garden neer a Foot and a Halfe broad But the next time I Try this Experiment it shall be with several seeds of the same sort in the same pot of Earth that so the event may be the more Conspicuous But because every Body has not Conveniency of time and place for this Experiment neither I made in my Chamber some shorter and more Expeditions Tryals I took a Top of Spearmint about an Inch Long and put it into a good Vial full of Spring water so as the upper part of the Mint was above the neck of the Glass and the lower part Immers'd in the Water within a few Dayes this Mint began to shoot forth Roots into the Water and to display its Leaves and aspire upwards and in a short time it had numerous Roots and Leaves and these very strong and fragrant of the Odour of the Mint but the Heat of my Chamber as I suppose kill'd the Plant when it was grown to have a pretty thick Stalk which with the various and ramified Roots which it shot into the Water as if it had been Earth presented in its Transparent Flower-pot a Spectacle not unpleasant to behold The like I try'd with sweet Marjoram and I found the Experiment succeed also though somewhat more slowly with Balme and Peniroyal to name now no other Plants And one of these Vegetables cherish'd only by Water having obtain'd a competent Growth I did for Tryals sake cause to be Distill'd in a small Retort and thereby obtain'd some Phlegme a little Empyrcumaticall Spirit a small Quantity of adust Oyl and a Caput mortuum which appearing to be a Coal concluded it to consist of Salt and Earth but the Quantity of it was so small that I forbore to Calcine it The Water I us'd to nourish this Plant was not shifted nor renewed and I chose Spring-water rather than Rain-water because the latter is more discernably a kinde of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which though it be granted to be freed from grosser Mixtures seems yet to Contain in it besides the Steams of several Bodies wandering in the Air which may be suppos'd to impregnate it a certain Spirituous Substance which may be Extracted out of it and is by some mistaken for the Spirit of the World Corporify'd upon what Grounds and with what Probability I may elsewhere perchance but must not now Discourse to you But perhaps I might have sav'd a great part of my Labour For I finde that Helmont an Author more considerable for his Experiments than many Learned men are pleas'd to think him having had an Opportunity to prosecute an Experiment much of the same nature with those I have been now speaking of for five Years together obtain'd at the end of that time so notable a Quantity of Transmuted Water that I should scarce Think it fit to have his Experiment and Mine Mention'd together were it not that the Length of Time Requisite to this may deterr the Curiosity of some and exceed the leasure of Others and partly that so Paradoxical a Truth as that which these Experiments seem to hold forth needs to be Confirm'd by more Witnesses then one especially since the Extravagancies and Untruths to be met with in Helmonts Treatise of the Magnetick Cure of Wounds have made his Testimonies suspected in his other Writings though as to some of the Unlikely matters of Fact he delivers in them I might safely undertake to be his Compurgator But that Experiment of his which I was mentioning to You he sayes was this He took 200 pound of Earth dry'd in an Oven and having put it into an Earthen Vessel and moisten'd it with Raine water he planted in it the Trunk of a VVillow tree of five pound VVeight this he VVater'd as need required with Rain or with Distill'd VVater and to keep the Neighbouring Earth from getting into the Vessell he employ'd a plate of Iron tinn'd over and perforated with many holes Five years being efflux'd he took out the Tree and weighed ' it and with computing the leaves that fell during four Autumnes he found it to weigh 169 pound and about three Ounces And Having again Dry'd the Earth it grew in he found it want of its Former VVeight of 200 Pound about a couple only of Ounces so that 164 pound of the Roots VVood and Bark which Constituted the Tree seem to have Sprung from the VVater And though it appears not that Helmont had the Curiosity to make any Analysis of this Plant yet what I lately told You I did to One of the Vegetables I nourish'd with VVater only will I suppose keep You from Doubting that if he had Distill'd this Tree it would have afforded him the like Distinct Substances as another Vegetable of the same kind I need not Subjoyne that I had it also in my thoughts to try how Experiments to the same purpose with those I related to You would succeed in other Bodies then Vegetables because importunate Avocations having hitherto hinder'd me from putting my Design in Practise I can yet speak but Confecturally of the Success but the best is that the Experiments already made and mention'd to you need not the Assistance of new Ones to Verifie as much as my present task makes it concern me to prove by Experiments of this Nature One would suspect sayes Eleutherius after his long silence by what You have been discoursing that You
because insipid must be Elementary may not groundlesly be doubted For I remember the Candid and Eloquent Petrus Laurembergius in his Notes upon Sala's Aphorismes affirmes that he saw an insipid Menstruum that was a powerfull Dissolvent and if my Memory do not much mis-informe me could dissolve Gold And the water which may be Drawn from Quicksilver without Addition though it be almost Tastless You will I believe think of a differing Nature from simple Water especially if you Digest in it Appropriated Mineralls To which I shall add but this that this Consideration may be further extended For I see no Necessity to conceive that the Water mention'd in the Beginning of Genesis as the Universal Matter was simple and Elementary VVater since though we should Suppose it to have been an Agitated Congeries or Heap consisting of a great Variety of Seminal Principles and Rudiments and of other Corpuscles fit to be subdu'd and Fashion'd by them it might yet be a Body Fluid like VVater in case the Corpuscles it was made up of were by their Creator made small enough and put into such an actuall Motion as might make them Glide along one another And as we now say the Sea consists of VVater notwithstanding the Saline Terrestrial and other Bodies mingl'd with it such a Liquor may well enough be called VVater because that was the greatest of the known Bodies whereunto it was like Though that a Body may be Fluid enough to appear a Liquor and yet contain Corpuscles of a very differing Nature You will easily believe if You but expose a good Quantity of Vitriol in a strong Vessel to a Competent Fire For although it contains both Aqueous Earthy Saline Sulphureous and Metalline Corpuscles yet the whole Mass will at first be Fluid like water and boyle like a seething pot I might easily Continues Carneades enlarge my self on such Considerations if I were Now Oblig'd to give You my Judgment of the Thalesian and Helmontian Hypothesis But Whether or no we conclude that all things were at first Generated of Water I may Deduce from what I have try'd Concerning the Growth of Vegetables nourish'd with water all that I now propos'd to my Self or need at present to prove namely that Salt Spirit Earth and ev'n Oyl though that be thought of all Bodies the most opposite to Water may be produc'd out of Water and consequently that a Chymical Principle as well as a Peripatetick Element may in some cases be Generated anew or obtain'd from such a parcel of Matter as was not endow'd with the form of such aprinciple or Element before And having thus Eleutherius Evinc'd that 't is possible that such Substances as those that Chymists are wont to call their Tria Prima may be Generated anew I must next Endeavour to make it Probable that the Operation of the Fire does Actually sometimes not only divide Compounded Bodies into smal Parts but Compound those Parts after a new Manner whence Consequently for ought we Know there may Emerge as well Saline and Sulphureous Substances as Bodies of other Textures And perhaps it will assist us in our Enquiry after the Effects of the Operations of the Fire upon other Bodies to Consider a little what it does to those Mixtures which being Productions of the Art of Man We best know the Composition of You may then be pleas'd to take Notice that though Sope is made up by the Sope-Boylers of Oyle or Grease and Salt and Water Diligently Incorporated together yet if You expose the Mass they Constitute to a Graduall Fire in a Retort You shall then indeed make a Separation but not of the same Substances that were United into Sope but of others of a Distant and yet not an Elementary Nature and especially of an Oyle very sharp and Faetid and of a very Differing Quality from that which was Employ'd to make the Sope so if you Mingle in a due Proportion Sal Armoniack with Quick-Lime and Distill them by Degrees of Fire You shall not Divide the Sal Armoniack from the Quick-Lime though the one be a Volatile and the other a Fix'd Substance but that which will ascend will be a Spirit much more Fugitive Penetrant and stinking then Sal Armoniack and there will remain with the Quick-Lime all or very near all the Sea Salt that concurr'd to make up the Sal Armoniack concerning which Sea Salt I shall to satisfie You how well it was United to the Lime informe You that I have by making the Fire at length very Vehement caus'd both the Ingredients to melt in the Retort it self into one Mass and such Masses are apt to Relent in the Moist Air. If it be here Objected that these Instances are taken from factitious Concretes which are more Compounded then those which Nature produces I shall reply that besides that I have Mention'd them as much to Illustrate what I propos'd as to prove it it will be Difficult to Evince that Nature her self does not make Decompound Bodies I mean mingle together such mixt Bodies as are already Compounded of Elementary or rather of more simple ones For Vitriol for Instance though I have sometimes taken it out of Minerall Earths where Nature had without any assistance of Art prepar'd it to my Hand is really though Chymists are pleas'd to reckon it among Salts a De-compounded Body Consisting as I shall have occasion to declare anon of a Terrestriall Substance of a Metal and also of at least one Saline Body of a peculiar and not Elementary Nature And we see also in Animals that their blood may be compos'd of Divers very Differing Mixt Bodies since we find it observ'd that divers Sea-Fowle tast rank of the Fish on which they ordinarily feed and Hipocrates himself Observes that a Child may be purg'd by the Milke of the Nurse if she have taken Elaterium which argues that the purging Corpuscles of the Medicament Concurr to make up the Milke of the Nurse and that white Liquor is generally by Physitians suppos'd to be but blanch'd and alter'd Blood And I remember I have observ'd not farr from the Alps that at a certain time of the Year the Butter of that Country was very Offensive to strangers by reason of the rank tast of a certain Herb whereon the Cows were then wont plentifully to feed But proceeds Carneades to give you Instances of another kind to shew that things may be obtain'd by the Fire from a Mixt Body that were not Pre-existent in it let Me Remind You that from many Vegetables there may without any Addition be Obtain'd Glass a Body which I presume You will not say was Pre-existent in it but produc'd by the Fire To which I shall add but this one Example more namely that by a certain Artificial way of handling Quicksilver You may without Addition separate from it at least a 5th or 4th part of a clear Liquor which with an Ordinary Peripatetick would pass for VVater and which a Vulgar Chymist would not scruple to
declar'd or at least how they can be mingl'd as our Peripateticks would have it For whereas Aristotle tells us that if a Drop of Wine be put into ten thousand Measures of Water the Wine being Overpower'd by so Vast a Quantity of Water will be turn'd into it he speaks to my Apprehension very improbably For though One should add to that Quantity of Water as many Drops of Wine as would a Thousand times exceed it all yet by his Rule the whole Liquor should not be a Crama a Mixture of Wine and Water wherein the Wine would be Predominant but VVater only Since the Wine being added but by a Drop at a time would still Fall into nothing but VVater and Consequently would be turn'd into it And if this would hold in Metals too 't were a rare secret for Goldsmiths and Refiners For by melting a Mass of Gold or Silver and by but casting into it Lead or Antimony Grain after Grain they might at pleasure within a reasonable Compass of time turn what Quantity they desire of the Ignoble into the Noble Metalls And indeed since a Pint of wine and a pint of water amount to about a Quart of Liquor it seems manifest to sense that these Bodies doe not Totally Penetrate one another as one would have it but that each retains its own Dimensions and Consequently that they are by being Mingl'd only divided into minute Bodies that do but touch one another with their Surfaces as do the Grains of VVheat Rye Barley c. in a heap of severall sorts of Corn And unless we say that as when one measure of wheat for Instance is Blended with a hundred measures of Barley there happens only a Juxta-position and Superficial Contact betwixt the Grains of wheat and as many or thereabouts of the Grains of Barley So when a Drop of wine is mingl'd with a great deal of water there is but an Apposition of so many Vinous Corpuscles to a Correspondent Number of Aqueous ones Unless I say this be said I see not how that Absurdity will be avoyded whereunto the Stoical Notion of mistion namely by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Confusion was Liable according to which the least Body may be co-extended with the greatest Since in a mixt Body wherein before the Elements were Mingl'd there was for Instance but one pound of water to ten thousand of Earth yet according to them there must not be the least part of that Compound that Consisted not as well of Earth as water But I insist Perhaps too long sayes Eleutherius upon the proofs afforded me by the Nature of Mistion Wherefore I will but name Two or Three other Arguments whereof the first shall be that according to Aristotle himself the motion of a mixt Body followes the Nature of the Predominant Element as those wherein the Earth prevails tend towards the Centre of heavy Bodies And since many things make it Evident that in divers Mixt Bodies the Elementary Qualities are as well Active though not altogether so much so as in the Elements themselves it seems not reasonable to deny the actual Existence of the Elements in those Bodies wherein they Operate To which I shall add this Convincing Argument that Experience manifests and Aristotle Confesses it that the Miscibilia may be again separated from a mixt Body as is Obvious in the Chymical Resolutions of Plants and Animalls which could not be unless they did actually retain their formes in it For since according to Aristotle and I think according to truth there is but one common Mass of all things which he has been pleas'd to call Materia Prima And since t is not therefore the Matter but the Forme that Constitutes and Discriminates Things to say that the Elements remain not in a Mixt Body according to their Formes but according to their Matter is not to say that they remain there at all Since although those Portions of Matter were Earth and water c. before they concurr'd yet the resulting Body being once Constituted may as well be said to be simple as any of the Elements the Matter being confessedly of the same Nature in all Bodies and the Elementary Formes being according to this Hypothesis perish'd and abolish'd And lastly and if we will Consult Chymical Experiments we shall find the Advantages of the Chymical Doctrine above the Peripatetick Title little less then Palpable For in that Operation that Refiners call Quartation which they employ to purifie Gold although three parts of Silver be so exquisitely mingl'd by Fusion with a fourth Part of Gold whence the Operation is Denominated that the resulting Mass acquires severall new Qualities by virtue of the Composition and that there is scarce any sensible part of it that is not Compos'd of both the metalls Yet if You cast this mixture into Aqua Fortis the Silver will be dissolv'd in the Menstruum and the Gold like a dark or black Powder will fall to the Bottom of it and either Body may be again reduc'd into such a Metal as it was before which shews that it retain'd its Nature notwithstanding its being mixt per Minima with the other We likewise see that though one part of pure Silver be mingled with eight or ten Parts or more of Lead yet the Fire will upon the Cuppel easily and perfectly separate them again And that which I would have you peculiarly Consider on this Occasion is that not only in Chymicall Anatomies there is a Separation made of the Elementary Ingredients but that some Mixt Bodies afford a very much greater Quantity of this or that Element or Principle than of another as we see that Turpentine and Amber yield much more Oyl and Sulphur than they do Water whereas Wine which is confess'd to be a perfectly mixt Bodie yields but a little Inflamable Spirit or Sulphur and not much more Earth but affords a vast proportion of Phlegm or water which could not be if as the Peripateticks suppose every even of the minutest Particles were of the same nature with the whole and consequently did contain both Earth and Water and Aire and Fire Wherefore as to what Aristotle principally and almost only Objects that unless his Opinion be admitted there would be no true and perfect Mistion but onely Aggregates or Heaps of contiguous Corpuscles which though the Eye of Man cannot discerne yet the Eye of a Lynx might perceive not to be of the same Nature with one another and with their Totum as the Nature of Mistion requires if he do not beg the Question and make Mistion to consist in what other Naturalists deny to be requisite to it yet He at least objects That as a great Inconvenience which I cannot take for such till he have brought as Considerable Arguments as I have propos'd to prove the contrary to evince that Nature makes other Mistions than such as I have allowed wherein the Miscibilia are reduc'd into minute Parts and United as farr as sense can discerne which if
be admitted in such Cases as I have proposed there would not be an Union but a Destruction of mingled Bodies which seems all one as to say that of such Bodies there is no mistion at all I answer that though the Substances that are mingl'd remain only their Accidents are Destroy'd and though we may with tollerable Congruity call them Miscibilia because they are Distinct Bodies before they are put together however afterwards they are so Confounded that I should rather call them Concretions or Resulting Bodies than mixt ones and though perhaps some other and better Account may be propos'd upon which the name of mistion may remain yet if what I have said be thought Reason I shall nor wrangle about Words though I think it fitter to alter a Terme of Art then reject a new Truth because it suits not with it If it be also Objected that this Notion of mine concerning mixtion though it may be allow'd when Bodies already Compounded are put to be mingl'd yet it is not applicable to those mixtions that are immediately made of the Elements or Principles themselves I Answer in the first place that I here Consider the Nature of mixtion somewhat more Generally then the Chymists who yet cannot deny that there are oftentimes Mixtures and those very durable ones made of Bodies that are not Elementary And in the next place that though it may be probably pretended that in those Mixtures that are made immediately of the Bodies that are call'd Principles or Elements the mingl'd Ingredients may better retain their own Nature in the Compounded Mass and be more easily separated from thence yet besides that it may be doubted whether there be any such Primary Bodies I see not why the reason I alleadg'd of the destructibility of the Ingredients of Bodies in General may not sometimes be Applicable to Salt Sulphur or Mercury 'till it be shewn upon what account we are to believe them Priviledged And however if you please but to recall to mind to what purpose I told you at First I meant to speak of Mistion at this Time you will perhaps allow that what I have hither to Discoursed about it may not only give some Light to the Nature of it in general especially when I shall have an Opportunity to Declare to you my thoughts on that subject more fully but may on some Occasions also be Serviceable to me in the Insuing Part of this Discourse But to look back Now to that part of our Discourse whence this Excursion concerning Mistion has so long diverted us though we there Deduc'd from the differing Substances obtained from a Plant nourished only with Water and from some other things that it was not necessary that nature should alwaies compound a Body at first of all such differing bodies as the fire could afterwards make it afford yet this is not all that may be collected from those Experiments For from them there seems also Deducible something that Subverts an other Foundation of the Chymical Doctrine For since that as we have seen out of fair Water alone not only Spirit but Oyle and Salt and Earth may be Produced It will follow that Salt and Sulphur are not Primogeneal Bodies and principles since they are every Day made out of plain Water by the Texture which the Seed or Seminal principle of plants puts it into And this would not perhaps seem so strange if through pride or negligence We were not Wont to Overlook the Obvious and Familiar Workings of Nature For if We consider what slight Qualities they are that serve to denominate one of the Tria Prima We shall find that Nature do's frequently enough work as great Alterations in divers parcells of matter For to be readily dissoluble in water is enough to make the body that is so passe for a Salt And yet I see not why from a new shufling and Disposition of the Component Particles of a body it should be much harder for Nature to compose a body dissoluble in Water of a portion of Water that was not so before then of the Liquid substance of an Egg which will easily mix with VVater to produce by the bare warmth of a hatching Hen Membrans Feathrs Tendons and other parts that are not dissoluble in VVater as that Liquid Substance was Nor is the Hardness and Brittleness of Salt more difficult for Nature to introduce into such a yielding body as VVater then it is for her to make the Bones of a Chick out of the tender Substance of the Liquors of an Egg. But instead of prosecuting this consideration as I easily might I will proceed as soon as I have taken notice of an objection that lies in my Way For I easily foresee it will be alledged that the above mentioned Examples are all taken from Plants and Animals in whom the Matter is Fashioned by the Plastick power of the seed or something analogous thereunto Whereas the Fire do's not act like any of the Seminal Principles but destroyes them all when they come within its Reach But to this I shall need at present to make but this easy Answer That whether it be a Seminal Principle or any other which fashions that Matter after those various manners I have mentioned to You yet 't is Evident that either by the Plastick principle Alone or that and Heat Together or by some Other cause capable to context the matter it is yet possible that the matter may be Anew contriv'd into such Bodies And 't is only for the Possibility of this that I am now contending THE SCEPTICAL CHYMIST The Third Part. WHat I have hitherto Discours'd Eleutherius sayes his Friend to Him has I presume shew'n You that a Considering Man may very well question the Truth of those very Suppositions which Chymists as well as Peripatericks without proving take for granted and upon which Depends the Validity of the Inferences they draw from their Experiments Wherefore having dispach't that which though a Chymist Perhaps will not yet I do look upon as the most Important as well as Difficult part of my Task it will now be Seasonable for me to proceed to the Consideration of the Experiments themselves wherein they are wont so much to Triumph and Glory And these will the rather deserve a serious Examination because those that Alledge them are wont to do it with so much Confidence and Ostentation that they have hitherto impos'd upon almost all Persons without excepting Philosophers and Physitians themselves who have read their Books or heard them talk For some learned Men have been content rather to beleeve what they so boldly Affirm then be at the trouble and charge to try whether or no it be True Others again who have Curiosity enough to Examine the Truth of what is Averr'd want Skill and Opportunity to do what they Desire And the Generality even of Learned Men seeing the Chymists not contenting themselves with the Schools to amuse the World with empty words Actually Perform'd divers strange things
seasonable for me to mention it fully anon yet in the mean time I shall tell you thus much of it That out of two Distill'd Liquors which pass for Elements of the Bodies whence they are drawn I can without Addition make a true Yellow and Inflamable Sulphur notwithstanding that the two Liquors remain afterwards Distinct Of the other Experiment which perhaps will not be altogether unworthy your Notice I must now give you this particular Account I had long observ'd that by the Destillation of divers Woods both in Ordinary and some unusuall sorts of Vessels the Copious Spirit that came over had besides a strong tast to be mot with in the Empyreumaticall Spirits of many other Bodies an Acidity almost like that of Vinager Wherefore I suspected that though the sowrish Liquor Distill'd for Instance from Box-Wood be lookt upon by Chymists as barely the Spirit of it and therefore as one single Element or Principle yet it does really consist of two Differing Substances and may be divisible into them and consequently that such Woods and other Mixts as abound with such a Vinager may be said to consist of one Element or Principle more then the Chymists as yet are Aware of Wherefore bethinking my self how the separation of these two Spirits might be made I Quickly found that there were several wayes of Compassing it But that of them which I shall at present mention was this Having Destill'd a Quantity of Box-Wood per se and slowly rectify'd the sowrish Spirit the better to free it both from Oyle and Phlegme I cast into this Rectify'd Liquor a convenient Quantity of Powder'd Coral expecting that the Acid part of the Liquor would Corrode the Coral and being associated with it would be so retain'd by it that the other part of the Liquor which was not of an acid Nature nor fit to fasten upon the Corals would be permitted to ascend alone Nor was I deceiv'd in my Expectation For having gently abstracted the Liquor from the Coralls there came over a Spirit of a Strong smell and of a tast very piercing but without any sourness and which was in diverse qualities manifestly different not only from a Spirit of Vinager but from some Spirit of the same Wood that I purposely kept by me without depriving it of its acid Ingredient And to satisfy you that these two Substances were of a very differing Nature I might informe you of several Tryals that I made but must not name some of them because I cannot do so without making some unseasonable discoveries Yet this I shall tell you at present that the sowre Spirit of Box not only would as I just now related dissolve Corals which the other would not fasten on but being pour'd upon Salt of Tartar would immediately boile and hiss whereas the other would lye quietly upon it The acid Spirit pour'd upon Minium made a Sugar of Lead which I did not find the other to do some drops of this penetrant spirit being mingl'd with some drops of the blew Syrup of Violets seem'd rather to dilute then otherwise alter the colour whereas the Acid Spirit turn'd the surup of a reddish colour and would probably have made it of as pure a red as Acid Salts are wont to do had not its operation been hindered by the mixture of the other Spirit A few drops of the compound Spirit being Shaken into a pretty quantity of the infusion of Lignum Nephriticum presently destroyed all the blewish colour whereas the other Spirit would not take it away To all which it might be added that having for tryals sake pour'd fair water upon the Corals that remained in the bottom of the glass wherein I had rectifyed the double spirit if I may so call it that was first drawn from the Box I found according to my expectation that the Acid Spirit had really dissolved the Corals and had coagulated with them For by the affusion of fair Water I Obtain'd a Solution which to note that singularity upon the bye was red whence the Water being evaporated there remained a soluble Substance much like the Ordinary Salt of Coral as Chymists are pleas'd to call that Magistery of Corals which they make by dissolving them in common spirit of Vinager and abstracting the Menstruum ad Siccitatem I know not whether I should subjoine on this occasion that the simple spirit of Box if Chymists will have it therefore Saline because it has a strong tast will furnish us with a new kind of Saline Bodies differing from those hitherto taken notice of For whereas of the three chief sorts of Salts the Acid the Alcalizate and the Sulphureous there is none that seems to be friends with both the other two as I may e're it be long have occasion to shew I did not find but that the simple spirit of Box did agree very well at least as farr as I had occasion to try it both with the Acid and the other Salts For though it would lye very quiet with salt of Tartar Spirit of Urine or other bodies whose Salts were either of an Alcalizate or fugitive Nature yet did not the mingling of Oyle of Vitriol it self produce any hissing or Effervescence which you know is wont to ensue upon the Affusion of that highly Acid Liquor upon eit her of the Bodies newly mentioned I think my self sayes Eleutherius beholden to you for this Experiment not only because I forsee you will make it helpful to you in the Enquiry you are now upon but because it teaches us a Method whereby we may prepare a numerous sort of new spirits which though more simple then any that are thought Elementary are manifestly endow'd with peculiar and powerfull qualities some of which may probably be of considerable use in Physick as well alone as associated with other things as one may hopefully guess by the redness of that Solution your sour Spirit made of Corals and by some other circumstances of your Narrative And suppose pursues Eleutherius that you are not so confin'd for the separation of the Acid parts of these compound Spirits from the other to employ Corals but that you may as well make use of any Alcalizate Salt or of Pearls or Crabs eyes or any other Body upon which common Spirit of Vinager will easily work and to speak in an Helmontian Phrase Exantlate it self I have not yet tryed sayes Carneades of what use the mention'd liquors may be in Physick either as Medicines or as Menstruums But I could mention now and may another time divers of the tryals that I made to satisfy my self of the difserence of these two Liquors But that as I allow you thinking what you newly told me about Corals I presume you will allow me from what I have said already to deduce this Corollary That there are divers compound bodies which may be resolv'd into four such differing Substances as may as well merit the name of Principles as those to which the Chymists freely give it For since they
their bare Assertions And that you may not Eleutherius think I deal so rigidly with them because I scruple to Take these Productions of the Fire for such as the Chymists would have them pass for upon the account of their having some affinity with them consider a little with me that in regard an Element or Principle ought to be perfectly Similar and Homogeneous there is no just cause why I should rather give the body propos'd the Name of this or that Element or Principle because it has a resemblance to it in some obvious Quality rather then deny it that name upon the account of divers other Qualities wherein the propos'd Bodies are unlike and if you do but consider what sleight and easily producible qualities they are that suffice as I have already more then once observ'd to Denominate a Chymical Principle or an Element you 'l not I hope think my wariness to be destitute either of Example or else of Reason For we see that the Chymists will not allow the Aristotelians that the Salt in Ashes ought to be called Earth though the Saline and Terrestrial part symbolize in weight in dryness in fixness and fusibility only because the one is sapid and dissoluble in Water and the other not Besides we see that sapidness and volatility are wont to denominate the Chymists Mercury or Spirit and yet how many Bodies think you may agree in those Qualities which may yet be of very differing natures and disagree in qualities either more numerous or more considerable or both For not only Spirit of Nitre Aqua Fortis Spirit of Salt Spirit of Oyle of Vitriol Spirit of Allome Spirit of Vinager and all Saline Liquors Distill'd from Animal Bodies but all the Acetous Spirits of Woods freed from their Vinager All these I say and many others must belong to the Chymists Mercury though it appear not why some of them should more be comprehended under one denomination then the Chymists Sulphur or Oyle should likewise be for their Distill'd Oyles are also Fluid Volatile and Tastable as well as their Mercury Nor is it Necessary that their Sulphur should be Unctuous or Dissoluble in Water since they generally referr Spirit of Wine to Sulphurs although that Spirit be not Unctuous and will freely mingle with Water So that bare Inflamability must constitute the Essence of the Chymists Sulphur as uninflamablenesse joyned with any taste is enough to intitle a Distill'd Liquor to be their Mercury Now since I can further observe to You that Spirit of Nitre and Spirit of Harts-horne being pour'd together will boile and hisse and tosse up one another into the air which the Chymists make signes of great Antipathy in the Natures of Bodies as indeed these Spirits differ much both in Taste Smell and Operations Since I elsewhere tell you of my having made two sorts of Oyle out of the same mans blood that would not mingle with one another And since I might tell You Divers Examples I have met with of the Contrariety of Bodies which according to the Chymists must be huddl'd up together under one Denomination I leave you to Judge whether such a multitude of Substances as may agree in these sleight Qualities and yet Disagree in Others more Considerable are more worthy to be call'd by the Name of a Principle which ought to be pure and homogeneous than to have appellations given them that may make them differ in name too from the bodies from which they so wildly differ in Nature And hence also by the bye you may perceive that 't is not unreasonable to distrust the Chymists way of Argumentation when being unable to shew us that such a Liquor is for Example purely saline they prove that at least salt is much the predominant principle because that the propos'd substance is strongly tasted and all Tast proceeds from salt whereas those Spirits such as spirit of Tartar spirit of Harts-horn and the like which are reckoned to be the Mercuries of the Bodies that afford them have manifestly a strong and piercing tast and so has according to what I formerly noted the spirit of Box c. even after the acid Liquor that concurr'd to compose it has been separated from it And indeed if sapidness belong not to the spirit or Mercurial Principle of Vegitables and Animals I scarce know how it will be discriminated from their phlegm since by the absence of Inflamability it must be distinguish'd from their sulphur which affords me another Example to prove how unacurate the Chymical Doctrine is in our present Case since not only the spirits of Vegitables and Animals but their Oyles are very strongly tasted as he that shall but wet his tongue with Chymical Oyle of Cinnamon or of Cloves or even of Turpentine may quickly find to his smart And not only I never try'd any Chymical Oyles whose tast was not very manifest and strong but a skilful and inquisitive person who made it his business by elaborate operations to depurate Chymical Oyles and reduce them to an Elementary simplicity Informes us that he never was able to make them at all Tastless whence I might inferr that the proof Chymists confidently give us of a bodies being saline is so far from demonstrating the Predominancy that it does not clearly Evince so much as the presence of the saline Principle in it But I will not pursues Carneades remind you that the Volatile salt of Harts-horn Amber Blood c. are exceeding strongly scented notwithstanding that most Chymists deduce Odours from Sulphur and from them argue the Predominancy of that Principle in the Odorous body because I must not so much as add any new Examples of the incompetency of this sort of Chymical arguments since having already detain'd You but too long in those generals that appertain to my fourth consideration 't is time that I proceed to the particulars themselves to which I thought fit they should be previous These Generals continues Carneades being thus premis'd we might the better survey the Unlikeness that an attentive and unprepossess'd observer may take notice of in each sort of Bodies which the Chymists are wont to call the salts or sulphurs or Mercuries of the Concretes that yield Them as if they had all a simplicity and Identity of Nature whereas salts if they were all Elementary would as little differ as do the Drops of pure and simple Water 'T is known that both Chymists and Physitians ascribe to the fixt salts of calcin'd Bodies the vertues of their concretes and consequently very differing Operations So we find the Alkali of Wormwood much commended in distempers of the stomach that of Eyebright for those that have a weak sight and that of Guaiacum of which a great Quantity yields but a very little salt is not only much commended in Venereal Diseases but is believed to have a peculiar purgative vertue which yet I have not had occasion to try And though I confess I have long thought that these Alkalizate salts are for
enough so call'd as Compounded of the Volatile salt of Urine and the fixt of the same Liquor which as I noted is not unlike sea-salt but that it self argues a manifest Difference betwixt the salts since such a Volatile salt is not wont to Unite thus with an ordinary Alcali but to fly away from it in the Heat And on this occasion I remember that to give some of my Friends an Ocular proof of the difference betwixt the fixt and Volatile salt of the same Concrete Wood I devis'd the following Experiment I took common Venetian sublimate and dissolv'd as much of it as I well could in fair Water then I took Wood Ashes and pouring on them Warme Water Dissolv'd their salt and filtrating the Water as soon as I found the Lixivium sufficiently sharp upon the tongue I reserv'd it for use Then on part of the former solution of sublimate dropping a little of this Dissolv'd Fixt salt of Wood the Liquors presently turn'd of an Orange Colour but upon the other part of the clear solution of sublimate putting some of the Volatile salt of Wood which abounds in the spirit of soot the Liquor immediately turn'd white almost like Milke and after a while let fall a white sediment as the other Liquor did a Yellow one To all this that I have said concerning the Difference of salts Aliquando oleum Cinnamomi c. suo sali Alcali miscetur absque omni aqua trium mensium Artificiosa occultaque circulatione totum in salem volatilem commutatum est Helmont Tria Prima Chymicorum c. pag. 412. I might add what I Formerly told you concerning the simple spirit of Box and such like Woods which differ much from the other salts hitherto mention'd and yet would belong to the saline Principle if Chymists did truly teach that all Tasts proceed from it And I might also annex what I noted to you out of Helmont concerning Bodies which though they consist in great part of Chymical Oyles do yet appear but Volatile salts But to insist on these things were to repeat and therefore I shall proceed This Disparity is also highly eminent in the separated sulphurs or Chymical Oyles of things For they contain so much of the scent and tast and vertues of the Bodies whence they were drawn that they seem to be but the Material Crasis if I may so speak of their Concretes Thus the Oyles of Cinnamon Cloves Nutmegs and other spices seem to be but the United Aromatick parts that did ennoble those Bodies And 't is a known thing that Oyl of Cinnamon and oyle of Cloves which I have likewise observ'd in the Oyles of several Woods will sink to the Bottom of Water whereas those of Nutmegs and divers other Vegetables will swim upon it The Oyle abusively call'd spirit of Roses swims at the Top of the Water in the forme of a white butter which I remember not to have observ'd in any other Oyle drawn in any Limbeck yet there is a way not here to be declar'd by which I have seen it come over in the forme of other Aromatick Oyles to the Delight and Wonder of those that beheld it In Oyle of Anniseeds which I drew both with and without Fermentation I observ'd the whole Body of the Oyle in a coole place to thicken into the Consistence and Appearance of white Butter which with the least heat resum'd its Former Liquidness In the Oyl of Olive drawn over in a Retort I have likewise more then once seen a spontaneous Coagulation in the Receiver And I have of it by me thus Congeal'd which is of such a strangely Penetrating scent as if 't would Perforate the Noses that approach it The like pungent Odour I also observ'd in the Distill'd Liquor of common sope which forc'd over from Minium lately afforded an oyle of a most admirable Penetrancy And he must be a great stranger both to the Writings and preparations of Chymists that sees not in the Oyles they distill from Vegetables and Animals a considerable and obvious Difference Nay I shall venture to add Eleutherius what perhaps you will think of kin to a Paradox that divers times out of the same Animal or Vegetable there may be extracted Oyles of Natures obviously differing To which purpose I shall not insist on the swimming and sinking Oyles which I have sometimes observ'd to float on and subside under the spirit of Guajacum and that of divers other Vegetables Distill'd with a strong and lasting Fire Nor shall I insist on the observation elsewhere mention'd of the divers and unminglable oyles afforded us by Humane Blood long fermented and Digested with spirit of Wine because these kind of oyles may seem chiefly to differ in Consistence and Weight being all of them high colour'd and adust But the Experiment which I devis'd to make out this Difference of the oyles of the same Vegetable ad Oculum as they speak was this that followes I took a pound of Annis-seeds and having grosly beaten them caused them to be put into a very large glass Retort almost filled with fair Water and placing this Retort in a sand Furnace I caus'd a very Gentle heat to be administer'd during the first day and a great part of the second till the VVater was for the most part drawn off and had brought over with it at least most of the Volatile and Aromatick Oyle of the seeds And then encreasing the Fire and changing the Receiver I obtain'd besides an Empyreumatical Spirit a quantity of adust oyle whereof a little floated upon the Spirit and the rest was more heavy and not easily separable from it And whereas these oyles were very dark and smell'd as Chymists speak so strongly of the Fire that their Odour did not betray from what Vegetables they had been forc'd the other Aromatick Oyle was enrich'd with the genuine smell and tast of the Concrete and spontaneously coagulating it self into white butter did manifest self to be the true Oyle of Annisseeds which Concrete I therefore chose to employ about this Experiment that the Difference of these Oyles might be more conspicuous then it would have been had I instead of it destill'd another Vegetable I had almost forgot to take notice that there is another sort of Bodies which though not obtain'd from Concretes by Distillation many Chymists are wont to call their Sulphur not only because such substances are for the most part high colour'd whence they are also and that more properly called Tinctures as dissolv'd Sulphurs are wont to be but especially because they are for the most part abstracted and separated from the rest of the Masse by Spirit of Wine which Liquor those men supposing to be Sulphureous they conclude that what it works upon and abstracts must be a Sulphur also And upon this account they presume that they can sequester the sulphur even of Minerals and Metalls from which 't is known that they cannot by Fire alone separate it To all This I shall answer
That if these sequestred substances where indeed the sulphurs of the Bodies whence they are drawn there would as well be a great Disparity betwixt Chymical Sulphurs obtain'd by Spirit of Wine as I have already shewn there is betwixt those obtain'd by Distillation in the forme of Oyles which will be evident from hence that not to urge that themselves ascribe distinct vertues to Mineral Tinctures extolling the Tincture of Gold against such and such Diseases the Tincture of Antimony or of its Glass against others and the Tincture of Emerauld against others 't is plain that in Tinctures drawn from Vegetables if the superfluous spirit of Wine be distill'd off it leaves at the bottom that thicker substance which Chymists use to call the Extract of the Vegetable And that these Extracts are endow'd with very differing Qualities according to the Nature of the Particular Bodies that afforded them though I fear seldom with so much of the specifick vertues as is wont to be imagin'd is freely confess'd both by Physitians and Chymists But Eleutherius sayes Carneades we may here take Notice that the Chymists do as well in this case as in many others allow themselves a License to abuse Words For not again to argue from the differing properties of Tinctures that they are not exactly pure and Elementary Sulphurs they would easily appear not to be so much as Sulphur's although we should allow Chymical Oyles to deserve that Name For however in some Mineral Tinctures the Natural fixtness of the extracted Body does not alwayes suffer it to be easily further resoluble into differing substances Yet in very many extracts drawn from Vegetables it may very easily be manifested that the spirit of Wine has not sequestred the sulphureous Ingredient from the saline and Mercurial ones but has dissolv'd for I take it to be a Solution the finer Parts of the Concrete without making any nice distinction of their being perfectly Sulphureous or not and united it self with them into a kind of Magistery which consequently must contain Ingredients or Parts of several sorts For we see that the stones that are rich in vitriol being often drench'd with rain-Water the Liquor will then extract a sine and transparent substance coagulable into Vitriol and yet though this Vitriol be readily dissoluble in Water it is not a true Elementary Salt but as You know a body resoluble into very differing Parts whereof one as I shall have occasion to tell You anon is yet of a Metalline and consequently not of an Elementary Nature You may consider also that common Sulphur is readily dissoluble in Oyle of Turpentine though notwithstanding its Name it abounds as well if not as much in Salt as in true Sulphur witness the great quantity of saline Liquor it affords being set to flame away under a glasse Bell. Nay I have which perhaps You will think strange with the same Oyle of Turpentine alone easily enough dissolv'd crude Antimony finely powder'd into a Blood-red Balsam wherewith perhaps considerable things may be perform'd in Surgery And if it were now Requisite I could tell You of some other Bodies such as Perhaps You would not suspect that I have been able to work upon with certain Chymical Oyles But instead of digressing further I shall make this use of the Example I have nam'd That 't is not unlikely but that Spirit of Wine which by its pungent tast and by some other Qualities that argue it better especially its Reduciblenesse according to Helmont into Alcali and Water seems to be as well of a Saline as of a Sulphureous Nature may well be suppos'd Capable of Dissolving Substances That are not meerly Elementary sulphurs though perhaps they may abound with Parts that are of kin thereunto For I find that Spirit of Wine will dissolve Gumm Lacca Benzoine and the Resinous Parts of Jallap and even of Guaiacum whence we may well suspect that it may from Spices Herbs and other lesse compacted Vegetables extract substances that are not perfect Sulphurs but mixt Bodies And to put it past Dispute there is many a Vulgar Extract drawn with Spirit of Wine which committed to Distillation will afford such differing substances as will Loudly proclaim it to have been a very compounded Body So that we may justly suspect that even in Mineral Tinctures it will not alwaies follow that because a red substance is drawn from the Concrete by spirit of Wine that Substance is its true and Elementary Sulphur And though some of these Extracts may perhaps be inflamable Yet besides that others are not and besides that their being reduc'd to such Minuteness of Parts may much facilitate their taking Fire besides this I say We see that common Sulphur common Oyle Gumm Lac and many Unctuous and Resinous Bodies will flame well enough though they be of very compounded natures Nay Travellers of Unsuspected Credit assure Us as a known thing that in some Northern Countries where Firr trees and Pines abound the poorer sort of Inhabitants use Long splinters of those Resinous Woods to burne instead of Candles And as for the rednesse wont to be met with in such solutions I could easily shew that 't is not necessary it should proceed from the Sulphur of the Concrete Dissolv'd by the Spirit of Wine if I had leasure to manifest how much Chymists are wont to delude themselves and others by the Ignorance of those other causes upon whose account spirit of Wine and other Menstruums may acquire a red or some other high colour But to returne to our Chymical Oyles supposing that they were exactly pure Yet I hope they would be as the best spirit of Wine is but the more inflamable and deflagrable And therefore since an Oyle can be by the Fire alone immediately turn'd into flame which is something of a very differing Nature from it I shall Demand how this Oyle can be a Primogeneal and Incorruptible Body as most Chymists would have their Principles Since it is further resoluble into flame which whether or no it be a portion of the Element of Fire as an Aristotelian would conclude is certainly something of a very differing Nature from a Chymical Oyle since it burnes and shines and mounts swiftly upwards none of which a Chymical Oyle does whilst it continues such And if it should be Objected that the Dissipated Parts of this flaming Oyle may be caught and collected again into Oyl or Sulphur I shall demand what Chymist appears to have ever done it and without Examining whether it may not hence be as well said that sulphur is but compacted Fire as that Fire is but diffus'd Sulphur I shall leave you to consider whether it may not hence be argu'd that neither Fire nor Sulphur are primitive and indestructible Bodies and I shall further observe that at least it will hence appear that a portion of matter may without being Compounded with new Ingredients by having the Texture and Motion of its small parts chang'd be easily by the means of the Fire
exquisite simplicity They pretend also to be able by the Fire to divide all Concretes Minerals and others into the same number of Distinct Substances And in the mean time I must think it improbable that they can either truly separate as many differing Bodies from Gold for Instance or Osteocolla as we can do from Wine or Vitriol or that the Mercury for Example of Gold or Saturn would be perfectly of the same Nature with that of Harts-horn and that the sulphur of Antimony would be but Numerically different from the Distill'd butter or oyle of Roses But suppose sayes Eleutherius that you should meet with Chymists who would allow you to take in Earth and Water into the number of the principles of Mixt Bodies and being also content to change the Ambiguous Name of Mercury for that more intelligible one of spirit should consequently make the principles of Compound Bodies to be Five would you not think it something hard to reject so plausible an Opinion only because the Five substances into which the Fire divides mixt Bodies are not exactly pure and Homogeneous For my part Continues Carneades I cannot but think it somewhat strange in case this Opinion be not true that it should fall out so luckily that so great a Variety of Bodies should be Analyz'd by the Fire into just five Distinct substances which so little differing from the Bodies that bear those names may so Plausibly be call'd Oyle Spirit Salt Water and Earth The Opinion You now propose answers Carneades being another then that I was engag'd to examine it is not requisite for me to Debate it at present nor should I have leisure to do it thorowly Wherefore I shall only tell you in General that though I think this Opinion in some respects more defensible then that of the Vulgar Chymists yet you may easily enough learn from the past Discourse what may be thought of it Since many of the Objections made against the Vulgar Doctrine of the Chymists seem without much alteration employable against this Hypothesis also For besides that this Doctrine does as well as the other take it for granted what is not easie to be prov'd that the Fire is the true and Adequate Analyzer of Bodies and that all the Distinct substances obtainable from a mixt Body by the Fire were so pre-existent in it that they were but extricated from each other by the Analysis Besides that this Opinion too ascribe to the Productions of the Fire an Elementary simplicity which I have shewn not to belong to them and besides that this Doctrine is lyable to some of the other Difficulties wherewith That of the Tria Prima is incumber'd Besides all this I say this quinary number of Elements if you pardon the Expression ought at least to have been restrain'd to the Generality of Animal and Vegetable Bodies since not only among these there are some Bodies as I formerly argu'd which for ought has yet been made to appear do consist either of fewer or more similar substances then precisely Five But in the Mineral Kingdom there is scarce one Concrete that has been evinc'd to be adequatly divisible into such five Principles or Elements and neither more nor less as this Opinion would have every mixt Body to consist of And this very thing continues Carneades may serve to take away or lessen your Wonder that just so many Bodies as five should be found upon the Resolution of Concretes For since we find not that the fire can make any such Analysis into five Elements of Metals and other Mineral Bodies whose Texture is more strong and permanent it remains that the Five Substances under consideration be Obtain'd from Vegetable and Animal Bodies which probably by reason of their looser Contexture are capable of being Distill'd And as to such Bodies 't is natural enough that whether we suppose that there are or are not precisely five Elements there should ordinarily occurr in the Dissipated parts a five Fold Diversity of Scheme if I may so speak For if the Parts do not remain all fix'd as in Gold Calcin'd Talck c. nor all ascend as in the Sublimation of Brimstone Camphire c. but after their Dissipation do associate themselves into new Schemes of Matter it is very likely that they will by the Fire be divided into fix'd and Volatile I mean in Reference to that degree of heat by which they are destill'd and those Volatile parts will for the most part ascend either in a dry forme which Chymists are pleas'd to call if they be Tastless Flowers if Sapid Volatile Salt or in a Liquid Forme And this Liquor must be either inflamable and so pass for oyl or not inflamable and yet subtile and pungent which may be call'd Spirit or else strengthless or insipid which may be nam'd Phlegme or Water And as for the fixt part or Caput Mortuum it will most commonly consist of Corpuscles partly Soluble in Water or Sapid especially if the Saline parts were not so Volatile as to fly away before which make up its fixt salt and partly insoluble and insipid which therefore seems to challenge the name of Earth But although upon this ground one might easily enough have foretold that the differing substances obtain'd from a perfectly mixt Body by the Fire would for the most part be reducible to the five newly mentioned States of Matter yet it will not presently follow that these five Distinct substances were simple and primogeneal bodies so pre-existent in the Concrete that the fire does but take them asunder Besides that it does not appear that all Mixt Bodies witness Gold Silver Mercury c. Nay nor perhaps all Vegetables which may appear by what we said above of Camphire Benzoin c. are resoluble by Fire into just such differing Schemes of Matter Nor will the Experiments formerly alledg'd permit us to look upon these separated Substances as Elementary or uncompounded Neither will it be a sufficient Argument of their being Bodies that deserve the Names which Chymists are pleas'd to give them that they have an Analogy in point of Consistence or either Volatility or Fixtness or else some other obvious Quality with the suppos'd Principles whose names are ascrib'd to them For as I told you above notwithstanding this Resemblance in some one Quality there may be such a Disparity in others as may be more fit to give them Differing Appellations then the Resemblance is to give them one and the same And indeed it seems but somewhat a gross Way of judging of the Nature of Bodies to conclude without Scruple that those must be of the same Nature that agree in some such General Quality as Fluidity Dryness Volatility and the like since each of those Qualities or States of Matter may Comprehend a great Variety of Bodies otherwise of a very differing Nature as we may see in the Calxes of Gold of Vitriol and of Venetian Talck compar'd with common Ashes which yet are very dry and fix'd by the vehemence
't is by reason of the Earth that abounds in it but since according to them it must consist also of air and partly of Fire which they affirm to be light Elements how comes it that it should be so much heavier then Earth of the same bulk though to fill up the porosities and other Cavities it be made up into a mass or paste with Water which it self they allow to be a heavy Element But to returne to our Spagyrists we see that Chymical Oyles and fixt Salts though never so exquisitely purify'd and freed from terrestrial parts do yet remain ponderous enough And Experience has inform'd me that a pound for instance of some of the heaviest Woods as Guajacum that will sink in Water being burnt to Ashes will yield a much less weight of them whereof I found but a small part to be Alcalyzate then much lighter Vegetables As also that the black Charcoal of it will not sink as did the wood but swim which argues that the Differing Gravity of Bodies proceeds chiefly from their particular Texture as is manifest in Gold the closest and Compactest of Bodies which is many times heavier then we can possibly make any parcell of Earth of the same Bulk I will not examine what may be argu'd touching the Gravity or Quality Analagous thereunto of even Celestial bodies from the motion of the spots about the Sun d from the appearing equality of the suppos'd Seas in the Moon nor consider how little those Phaemonea would agree with what Sennertus presumes concerning Gravity But further to invalidate his supposition I shall demand upon what Chymical Principle Fluidity depends And yet Fluidity is two or three perhaps excepted the most diffused quality of the universe and far more General then almost any other of those that are to be met with in any of the Chymicall Principles or Aristotelian Elements since not only the Air but that vast expansion we call Heaven in comparison of which our Terrestrial Globe supposing it were all Solid is but a point and perhaps to the Sun and the fixt Stars are fluid bodies I demand also from which of the Chymical Principles Motion flowes which yet is an affection of matter much more General then any that can be deduc'd from any of the three Chymical Principles I might ask the like Question concerning Light which is not only to be found in the Kindl'd Sulphur of mixt Bodis but not to mention those sorts of rotten Woods and rotten Fish that shine in the Dark in the tails of living Glow-wormes and in the Vast bodies of the Sun and Stars I would gladly also know in which of the three Principles the Quality we call Sound resides as in its proper Subject since either Oyl falling upon Oyle or Spirit upon Spirit or Salt upon Salt in a great quantity and from a considerable height will make a noise or if you please create a sound and that the objection may reach the Aristotelians so will also water upon water and Earth upon Earth And I could name other qualities to be met within divers bodies of which I suppose my Adversaries will not in haste assign any Subject upon whose Account it must needs be that the quality belongs to all the other several bodies And before I proceed any further I must here invite you to compare the supposition we are examining with some other of the Chymical Tenents For first they do in effect teach that more then one quality may belong to and be deduc'd from one Principle For they ascribe to Salt Tasts and the power of Coagulation to sulphur as well Odours as inflamableness And some of them ascribe to Mercury Colours as all of them do effumability as they speak And on the other side it is evident that Volatility belongs in common to all the three Principles and to Water too For 't is manifest that Chymical Oyles are Volatile That also divers Salts Emerging upon the Analysis of many Concretes are very Volatile is plain from the figitiveness of Salt of Harts-horne flesh c. ascending in the Distillation of those bodies How easily water may be made to ascend in Vapours there is scarce any body that has not observ'd And as for what they call the Mercuriall Principle of bodies that is so apt to be rais'd in the form of Steam that Paracelsus and others define it by that aptness to fly up so that to draw that inference by the way it seems not that Chymists have been accurate in their Doctrine of qualities and their respective Principles since they both derive several qualities from the same Principle and must ascribe the same quality to almost all their Principles and other bodies besides And thus much for the first thing taken for granted without sufficient proof by your Sennertus And to add that upon the Bye continues Carneades we may hence learn what to judge of the way of Argumentation which that fierce Champion of the Aristotelians against the Chymists In Thessalo redivivo Cap. 10. pag. 73. 74. Anthonius Guntherus Billichius employes where he pretends to prove against Beguinus that not only the four Elements do immediately concur to Constitute every mixt body and are both present in it and obtainable from it upon its Dissolution but that in the Tria Prima themselves whereinto Chymists are wont to resolve mixt Bodies each of them clearly discovers it self to consist of four Elements The Ratiocination it self pursues Carneades being somewhat unusual I did the other Day Transcribe it and sayes He pulling a Paper out of his Pocket it is this Ordiamur cum Beguino a ligno viridi quod si concremetur videbis in sudore Aquam in fumo Aerem in flamma Prunis Ignem Terram in cineribus Quod si Beguino placuerit ex eo colligere humidum aquosum cohibere humidum oleaginosum extrahere ex cineribus salem Ego ipsi in unoquoque horum seorsim quatuor Elementa ad oculum demonstrabo eodem artificio quo in ligno viridi ea demonstravi Humorem aquosum admovebo Igni Ipse Aquam Ebullire videbit in Vapore Aerem conspiciet Ignem sentiet in aestu plus minus Terrae in sedimento apparebit Humor porro Oleaginosus aquam humiditate fluiditate per se accensus vero Ignem flamma prodit fumo Aerem fuligine nidore amurca terram Salem denique ipse Beguinus siccum vocat Terrestrem qui tamen nec fusus Aquam nec caustica vi ignem celare potest ignis vero Violentia in halitus versus nec ab Aere se alienum esse demonstrat Idem de Lacte de Ovis desemine Lini de Garyophyllis de Nitro de sale Marino denique de Antimonio quod fuit de Ligno viridi Judicium eadem de illorum partibus quas Beguinus adducit sententia quae de viridis ligni humore aquoso quae de liquore ejusdem oleoso quae de sale fuit This bold Discourse resumes Carneades putting up
again his Paper I think it were not very difficult to confure if his Arguments were as considerable as our time will probably prove short for the remaining and more necessary Part of my Discourse wherefore referring You for an Answer to what was said concerning the Dissipated Parts of a burnt piece of green Wood to what I told Themistius on the like occasion I might easily shew You how sleightly and superficially our Guntherus talks of the dividing the flame of Green Wood into his four Elements When he makes that vapour to be air which being caught in Glasses and condens'd presently discovers it self to have been but an Aggregate of innumerable very minute drops of Liquor and When he would prove the Phlegmes being compos'd of Fire by that Heat which is adventitious to the Liquor and ceases upon the absence of what produc'd it whether that be an Agitation proceeding from the motion of the External Fire or the presence of a Multitude of igneous Atomes pervading the pores of the Vessel and nimbly permeating the whole Body of the Water I might I say urge these and divers other Weaknesses of His Discourse But I will rather take Notice of what is more pertinent to the Occasion of this Digression namely that Taking it for Granted that Fluidity with which he unwarily seems to confound Humidity must proceed from the Element of Water he makes a Chymical Oyle to Consist of that Elementary Liquor and yet in the very next Words proves that it consists also of Fire by its Inflamability not remembring that exquisitely pure Spirit of Wine is both more Fluid then Water it self and yet will Flame all away without leaving the Least Aqueous Moisture behind it and without such an Amurca and Soot as he would Deduce the presence of Earth from So that the same Liquor may according to his Doctrine be concluded by its great Fluidity to be almost all Water and by its burning all away to be all disguised Fire And by the like way of Probation our Author would shew that the fixt salt of Wood is compounded of the four Elements For sayes he being turn'd by the violence of the Fire into steames it shews it self to be of kin to Air whereas I doubt whether he ever saw a true fixt Salt which to become so must have already endur'd the violence of an Incinerating Fire brought by the Fire alone to ascend in the Forme of Exhalations but I do not doubt that if he did and had caught those Exhalations in convenient Vessels he would have found them as well as the Steames of common Salt c. of a Saline and not an Aereal Nature And whereas our Authour takes it also for Granted that the Fusibility of Salt must be Deduc'd from Water it is indeed so much the Effect of heat variously agitating the Minute Parts of a Body without regard to Water that Gold which by its being the heavyest and fixtest of Bodies should be the most Earthy will be brought to Fusion by a strong Fire which sure is more likely to drive away then increase its Aqueous Ingredient if it have any and on the other side for want of a sufficient agitation of its minute parts Ice is not Fluid but Solid though he presumes also that the Mordicant Quality of Bodies must proceed from a fiery ingredient whereas not to urge that the Light and inflamable parts which are the most likely to belong to the Element of Fire must probably be driven away by that time the violence of the Fire has reduc'd the Body to ashes Not to urge this I I say nor that Oyle of Vitriol which quenches Fire burnes the Tongue and flesh of those that Unwarily tast or apply it as a caustick doth it is precarious to prove the Presence of Fire in fixt salts from their Caustick power unlesse it were first shewn that all the Qualities ascribed to salts must be deduc'd from those of the Elements which had I Time I could easily manifest to be no easy talk And not to mention that our Authour makes a Body as Homogeneous as any he can produce for Elementary belong both to Water and Fire Though it be neither Fluid nor Insipid like Water nor light and Volatile like Fire he seems to omit in this Anatomy the Element of Earth save That he intimates That the salt may pass for that But since a few lines before he takes Ashes for Earth I see not how he will avoid an Inconsistency either betwixt the Parts of his Discourse or betwixt some of them and his Doctrine For since There is a manifest Difference betwixt the Saline and the insipid Parts of Ashes I see not how substances That Disagree in such Notable Qualities can be both said to be Portions of an Element whose Nature requires that it be Homogeneous especially in this case where an Analysis by the Fire is suppos'd to have separated it from the admixture of other Elements which are confess'd by most Aristotelians to be Generally found in common Earth and to render it impure And sure if when we have consider'd for how little a Disparities sake the Peripateticks make these Symbolizing Bodies Aire and Fire to be two Distinct Elements we shall also consider that the Saline part of Ashes is very strongly Tasted and easily soluble in Water whereas the other part of the same Ashes is insipid and indissoluble in the same Liquor Not to add that the one substance is Opacous and the other somewhat Diaphanous nor that they differ in Divers other Particulars If we consider those things I say we shall hardly think that both these Substances are Elementary Earth And as to what is sometimes objected that their Saline Tast is only an Effect of Incineration and Adustion it has been elsewhere fully reply'd to when propos'd by Themistius and where it has been prov'd against him that however insipid Earth may perhaps by Additaments be turn'd into Salt yet 't is not like it should be so by the Fire alone For we see that when we refine Gold and Silver the violentest Fires We can Employ on them give them not the least Rellish of Saltness And I think Philoponus has rightly observ'd that the Ashes of some Concretes contain very little salt if any at all For Refiners suppose that bone-ashes are free from it and therefore make use of them for Tests and Cuppels which ought to be Destitute of Salt lest the Violence of the Fire should bring them to Vitrification And having purposely and heedfully tasted a Cuppel made of only bone-ashes and fair water which I had caus'd to be expos'd to a Very Violent Fire acuated by the Blast of a large pair of Double Bellows I could not perceive that the force of the Fire bad imparted to it the least Saltness or so much as made it less Insipid But sayes Carneades since neither You nor I love Repetitions I shall not now make any of what else was urg'd against Themistius but rather invite
and melt it in the Fire to free it from the aqueous parts and afterward distill it with a vehement Fire from burnt Clay or any other as dry a Caput mortuum as you please you will as Chymists confess by teaching it drive over a good part of the Salt in the form of a Liquor And to satisfy some ingenious men That a great part of this Liquor was still true sea salt brought by the Operation of the Fire into Corpuscles so small and perhaps so advantageously shap'd as to be capable of the forme of a Fluid Body He did in my presence poure to such spititual salts a due proportion of the spirit or salt and Phlegme of Urine whereby having evaporated the superfluous moisture he soon obtain'd such another Concrete both as to tast and smell and easie sublimableness as common Salt Armoniack which you know is made up of grosse and undistill'd sea salt united with the salts of Urine and of Soot which two are very neer of kin to each other And further to manifest that the Corpuscles of sea salt and the Saline ones of Urine retain their several Natures in this Concrete He mixt it with a convenient quantity of Salt of Tartar and committing it to Distillation soon regain'd his spirit of Urine in a liquid form by its self the Sea salt staying behind with the Salt of Tartar Wherefore it is very possible that dry Bodies may by the Fire be reduc'd to Liquors without any separation of Elements but barely by a certain kind of Dissipation and Comminution of the matter whereby its parts are brought into a new state And if it be still objected that the Phlegme of mixt Bodies must be reputed water because so weak a tast needs but a very small proportion of Salt to impart it It may be reply'd that for ought appears common Salt and divers other bodies though they be distill'd never so dry and in never so close Vessels will yield each of them pretty store of a Liquor wherein though as I lately noted Saline Corpuscles abound Yet there is besides a large proportion of Phlegme as may easily be discovered by coagulating the Saline Corpuseles with any convenient Body as I lately told you our Friend coagulated part of the Spirit of Salt with Spirit of Urine and as I have divers times separated a salt from Oyle of Vitriol it self though a very ponderous Liquor and drawn from a saline body by boyling it with a just quantity of Mercury and then washing the newly coagulated salt from the Precipitate with fair Water Now to what can we more probably ascribe this plenty of aqueous Substance afforded us by the Distillation of such bodies than unto this That among the various operations of the Fire upon the matter of a Concrete divers particles of that matter are reduc'd to such a shape and bignesse as is requisite to compose such a Liquor as Chymists are wont to call Phlegme or Water How I conjecture this change may be effected 't is neither necessary for me to tell you nor possible to do so without a much longer discourse then were now seasonable But I desire you would with me reflect upon what I formerly told you conterning the change of Quicksilver into Water For that Water having but a very faint tast if any whit more than divers of those liquors that Chymists referr to Phlegme By that experiment it seems evident that even a metalline body and therefore much more such as are but Vegetable or Animal may by a simple operation of the Fire be turn'd in great part into Water And since those I dispute with are not yet able out of Gold or Silver or divers other Concretes to separate any thing like Water I hope I may be allow'd to conclude against Them that water it self is not an Universal and pre-existent Ingredient of Mixt Bodies But as for those Chymists that Supposing with me the Truth of what Helmont relates of the Alkahest's wonderful Effects have a right to press me with his Authority concerning them and to alledge that he could Transmute all reputedly mixt Bodies into insipid and meer Water To those I shall represent That though his Affirmations conclude strongly against the Vulgar Chymists against whom I have not therefore scrupl'd to Employ Them since they Evince that the Commonly reputed Principles or Ingredients of Things are not Permanent and indestructible since they may be further reduc'd into Insipid Phlegme differing from them all Yet till we can be allow'd to examine this Liquor I think it not unreasonable to doubt whether it be not something else then meer Water For I find not any other reason given by Helmont of his Pronouncing it so then that it is insipid Now Sapour being an Accident or an Affection of matter that relates to our Tongue Palate and other Organs of Tast it may very possibly be that the small Parts of a Body may be of such a Size and Shape as either by their extream Littleness or by their slenderness or by their Figure to be unable to pierce into and make a perceptible Impression upon the Nerves or Membranous parts of the Organs of Tast and what may be fit to work otherwise upon divers other Bodies than meer Water can and consequently to Disclose it self to be of a Nature farr enough from Elementary In Silke dyed Red or of any other Colour whilst many Contiguous Threads makes up a skein the Colour of the Silke is conspicuous but if only a very few of them be lookt upon the Colour will appear much fainter then before But if You take out one simple Thread you shall not easily be able to discern any Colour at all So subtile an Object having not the Force to make upon the Optick Nerve an Impression great enough to be taken Notice of It is also observ'd that the best sort of Oyl-Olive is almost tastless and yet I need not tell you how exceedingly distant in Nature Oyle is from VVater The Liquor into which I told you upon the Relation of Lully and Eye-witness that Mercury might be Transmuted has sometimes but a very Languid if any Tast and yet its Operations even upon some Mineral Bodies are very peculiar Quicksilver it self also though the Corpuscles it consists of be so very small as to get into the Pores of that Closest and compactest of Bodies Gold is yet you know altogether Tastless And our Helmont several times tells us that fair Water wherein a little Quantity f Quicksilver has lain for some time though it acquire no certain Tast or other sensible Quality from the Quicksilver Yet it has a power to destroy wormes in humane Bodies which he does much but not causelessly extoll And I remember a great Lady that had been Eminent for her Beauty in Divers Courts confess'd to me that this insipid Liquor was of all innocent washes for the Face the best that she ever met with And here let me conclude my Discourse concerning such waters
or Liquors as I have hitherto been examining with these two Considerations VVhereof the first is That by reason of our being wont to drink nothing but VVine Bear Cyder or other strongly tasted Liquors there may be in several of these Liquors that are wont to pass for insipid Phlegme very peculiar and Distinct Tasts though unheeded and perhaps not to be perceiv'd by Us. For to omit what Naturalists affirm of Apes and which probably may be true of divers other Animals that they have a more exquisite palate than Men among Men themselves those that are wont to drink nothing but water may as I have try'd in my self Discern very sensibly a great Difference of Tasts in several waters which one un-accustomed to drink water would take to be all alike insipid And this is the first of my two Considerations the Other is That it is not impossible that the Corpuscles into which a body is dissipated by the Fire may by the Operation of the same fire have their figures so altered or may be by associations with one another brought into little Masses of such a Size and Shape as not to be fit to make sensible Impressions on the Tongue And that you may not think such alterations impossible be pleased to consider with me that not only the sharpest Spirit of Vinager having dissolved as much Corall as it can will Coagulate with it into a Substance which though soluble in water like salt is incomparably less strongly Tasted then the Vinager was before but what is more considerable though the Acid salts that are carried up with Quicksilver in the preparation of common sublimate are so sharp that being moistened with water it will Corrode some of the Metals themselves yet this Corrosive Sublimate being twice or thrice re-sublim'd with a full proportion of insipid Quicksilver Constitutes as you know that Factitious Concrete which the Chymists call Mercurius dulcis not because it is sweet but because the sharpness of the Corrosive Salts is so taken away by their Combination with the Mercurial Corpuscles that the whole mixture when it is prepar'd is judg'd to be insipid And thus continues Carneades having given you some Reasons why I refuse to admit Elementary water for a constant Ingredient of Mixt Bodies It will be easie for me to give you an Account why I also reject Earth For first it may well be suspected that many Substances pass among Chymists under the name of Earth because like it they are Dry and Heavy and Fixt which yet are very farr from an Elementary Nature This you will not think improbable If you recall to mind what I formerly told you concerning what Chymists call the Dead Earth of things and especially touching the copper to be drawn from the Caput Mortuum of Vitriol And if also you allow me to subjoyn a casual but memorable Experiment made by Johannes Agricola upon the Terra Damnata of Brimstone Our Author then tells us in his notes upon Popius that in the year 1621 he made an Oyle of Sulphur the remaining Faeces he reverberated in a moderate Fire fourteen dayes afterwards he put them well luted up in a VVind Oven and gave them a strong Fire for six hours purposing to calcine the Faeces to a perfect Whiteness that he might make someting else out of them But coming to break the pot he found above but very little Faeces and those Grey and not White but beneath there lay a fine Red Regulus which he first marvell'd at and knew not what to make of being well assured that not the least thing besides the Faeces of the Sulphur came into the pot and that the Sulphur it self had only been dissolv'd in Linseed Oyle this Regulus he found heavy and malleable almost as Lead having caus'd a Goldsmith to draw him a Wire of it he found it to be of the Fairest copper and so rightly colour'd that a Jew of Prague Offer'd him a great price for it And of this Metal he sayes he had 12 loth or six ounces out of one pound of Ashes or Faeces And this Story may well incline us to suspect that since the Caput Mortuum of the Sulphur was kept so long in the fire before it was found to be any thing else then a Terra damnata there may be divers other Residences of Bodies which are wont to pass only for the Terrestrial Faeces of things and therefore to be thrown away as soon as the Distillation or Calcination of the Body that yielded them is ended which yet if they were long and Skilfully examin'd by the fire would appear to be differing from Elementary Earth And I have taken notice of the unwarrantable forwardness of common Chymists to pronounce things useless Faeces by observing how often they reject the Caput Mortuum of Verdegrease which is yet so farr from deserving that Name that not only by strong fires and convenient Additaments it may in some hours be reduc'd into copper but with a certain Flux Powder I sometimes make for Recreation I have in two or three minutes obtain'd that Metal from it To which I may add that having for tryall sake kept Venetian Taclk in no less a heat than that of a glass Furnace I found after all the Brunt of the fire it had indur'd the remaining Body though brittle and discolour'd had not lost very much of its former Bulke and seem'd still to be nearer of kin to Talck than to meer Earth And I remember too that a candid Mineralist famous for his Skill in trying of Oars requesting me one day to procure him a certain American Mineral Earth of a Virtuoso who he thought would not refuse me I enquir'd of him why he seem'd so greedy of it he confess'd to me that this Gentleman having brought that Earth to the publick Say-Masters and they upon their being unable by any means to bring it to fusion or make it fly away he the Relator had procur'd a little of it and having try'd it with a peculiar Flux separated from it neer a third part of pure Gold so great mistakes may be committed in hastily concluding things to be Uselesse Earth Next it may be suppos'd That as in the Resolution of Bodies by the Fire some of the dissipated Parts may by their various occursion occasion'd by the heat be brought to stick together so closely as to constitute Corpuscles too heavy for the Fire to carry away the aggregate of which Corpuscles is wont to be call'd Ashes or Earth So other Agents may resolve the Concrete into Minute Parts after so differing a manner as not to produce any Caput mortuum or dry and heavy Body As you may remember Helmont above inform'd us that with his great Dissolvent he divided a Coal into two liquid and volatile Bodies aequiponderant to the Coal without any dry or fixt Residence at all And indeed I see not why it should be necessary that all Agents that resolve Bodies into portions of differingly qualifi'd matter
Imaginary Substantial Form as by the aggregate of these Qualities If you consider these Things I say and that the varying of either the figure or the Size or the Motion or the Situation or Connexion of the Corpuscles whereof any of these Bodies is compos'd may alter the Fabrick of it you will possibly be invited to suspect with me that there is no great need that Nature should alwayes have Elements before hand whereof to make such Bodies as we call mixts And that it is not so easie as Chymists and others have hitherto Imagin'd to discern among the many differing Substances that may without any extraordinary skill be obtain'd from the same portion of matter Which ought to be esteemed exclusively to all the rest its in-existent Elementary Ingredients much lesse to determine what Primogeneal and Simple Bodies convened together to compose it To exemplify this I shall add to what I have already on several occasions Represented but this single instance You may remember Eleutherius that I formerly intimated to you that besides Mint and Pompions I produced divers other Vegetables of very differing Natures out of Water Wherefore you will not I presume think it incongruous to suppose that when a slender Vine-slip is set into the ground and takes root there it may likewise receive its Nutriment from the water attracted out of the earth by his roots or impell'd by the warm'th of the sun or pressure of the ambient air into the pores of them And this you will the more easily believe if you ever observ'd what a strange quantity of Water will Drop out of a wound given to the Vine in a convenient place at a seasonable time in the Spring and how little of Tast or Smell this Aqua Vitis as Physitians call it is endow'd with notwithstanding what concoction or alteration it may receive in its passage through the Vine to discriminate it from common Water Supposing then this Liquor at its first entrance into the roots of the Vine to be common Water Let Us a little consider how many various Substances may be obtain'd from it though to do so I must repeat somewhat that I had a former occasion to touch upon And first this Liquor being Digested in the plant and assimilated by the several parts of it is turn'd into the Wood Bark Pith Leaves c. of the Vine The same Liquor may be further dry'd and fashon'd into Vine-buds and these a while after are advanced unto sour Grapes which express'd yield Verjuice a Liquor very differing in several qualities both from Wine and other Liquors obtainable from the Vine These soure Grapes being by the heat of the Sun concocted and ripened turne to well tasted Grapes Those if dry'd in the Sun and Distill'd afford a faetid Oyle and a piercing Empyreumatical Spirit but not a Vinous Spirit These dry'd Grapes or Raisins boyl'd in a convenient proportion of Water make a sweet Liquor which being betimes distill'd afford an Oyle and Spirit much like those of the Raisins themselves If the juice of the Grapes be squeez'd out and put to Ferment it first becomes a sweet and turbid Liquor then grows lesse sweet and more clear and then affords in common Distillations not an Oyle but a Spirit which though inflamable like Oyle differs much from it in that it is not fat and that it will readily mingle with Water I have likewise without Addition obtain'd in processe of time and by an easie way which I am ready to teach you from one of the noblest sorts of Wine pretty store of pure and curiously figured Crystals of Salt together with a great proportion of a Liquor as sweet almost as Hony and these I obtained not from Must but True and sprightly Wine besides the Vinous Liquor the fermented Juice of Grapes is partly turned into liquid Dregs or Leeze and partly into that crust or dry feculancy that is commonly called Tartar and this Tartar may by the Fire be easily divided into five differing substances four of which are not Acid and the other not so manifestly Acid as the Tartar it self The same Vinous Juice after some time especially if it be not carefully kept Degenerates into that very sour Liquor called Vinegar from which you may obtain by the Fire a Spirit and a Crystalline Salt differing enough from the Spirit and Lixiviate Salt of Tartar And if you pour the Dephlegm'd Spirit of the Vinegar upon the Salt of Tartar there will be produc'd such a Conflict or Ebullition as if there were scarce two more contrary Bodies in Nature and oftentimes in this Vinager you may observe part of the matter to be turned into an innumerable company of swimming Animals which our Friend having divers years ago observed hath in one of his Papers taught us how to discover clearly without the help of a Microscope Into all these various Schemes of matter or differingly Qualifyed Bodies besides divers others that I purposely forbear to mention may the Water that is imbib'd by the roots of the Vine be brought partly by the formative power of the plant and partly by supervenient Agents or Causes without the visible concurrence of any extraneous Ingredient but if we be allowed to add to the Productions of this transmuted Water a sew other substances we may much encrease the Variety of such Bodies although in this second sort of Productions the Vinous parts seem scarce to retain any thing of the much more fix'd Bodies wherewith they were mingl'd but only to have by their Mixture with them acquir'd such a Disposition that in their recess occasion'd by the Fire they came to be alter'd as to shape or Bigness or both and associated after a New manner Thus as I formerly told you I did by the Addition of a Caput Mortuum of Antimony and some other Bodies unfit for Distillation obtain from crude Tartar store of a very Volatile and Crystalline Salt differing very much in smell and other Qualities from the usuall salts of Tartar But sayes Eleutherius interrupting him at these Words if you have no restraint upon you I would very gladly before you go any further be more particularly inform'd how you make this Volatile Salt because you know that such Multitudes of Chymists have by a scarce imaginable Variety of wayes attempted in Vain the Volatilization of the Salt of Tartar that divers learned Spagyrists speak as if it were impossible to make any thing out of Tartar that shall be Volatile in a Saline Forme or as some of them express it in forma sicca I am very farr from thinking answers Carneades that the Salt I have mention'd is that which Paracelsus and Helmont mean when they speak of Sal Tartari Volatile and ascribe such great things to it For the Salt I speak of falls extreamly short of those Virtues not seeming in its Tast Smel and other Obvious Qualities to differ very much though something it do differ from Salt of Harts-horn and other Volatile Salts drawn
Vessels be depriv'd of its silver-like Colour and be turn'd into a Red Body and from this Red Body without Addition likewise may be obtain'd a Mercury Bright and Specular as it was before So that I have here a lasting Colour Generated and Destroy'd as I have seen at pleasure without adding or taking away either Mercury Salt or Sulphur and if you take a clean and slender piece of harden'd steel and apply to it the flame of a candle at some little distance short of the point You shall not have held the Steel long in the flame but You shall perceive divers Colours as Yellow Red and Blew to appear upon the Surface of the metal and as it were run along in chase of one another towards the point So that the same body and that in one and the same part may not only have a new colour produc'd in it but exhibite successively divers Colours within a minute of an hour or thereabouts and any of these Colours may by Removing the Steel from the Fire become Permanent and last many years And this Production and Variety of Colours cannot reasonably be suppos'd to proceed from the Accession of any of the three Principles to which of them soever Chymists will be pleas'd to ascribe Colours especially considering that if you but suddenly Refrigerate that Iron First made Red hot it will be harden'd and Colourless again and not only by the Flame of a Candle but by any other equivalent heat Conveniently appli'd the like Colours will again be made to appear and succeed one another as at the First But I must not any further prosecute an Occasional Discourse though that were not so Difficult for me to do as I fear it would be for the Chymists to give a better Account of the other Qualities by their Principles then they have done of Colours And your Sennertus Himself though an Author I much value would I fear have been exceedingly puzl'd to resolve by the Tria Prima halfe that Catalogue of Problems Senuert de Con. seus Dissens pag. 165.166 which he challenges the Vulgar Peripateticks to explicate by their four Elements And supposing it were true that Salt or Sulphur were the Principle to which this or that Quality may be peculiarly referr'd yet though he that teaches us this teaches us something concerning That quality yet he Teaches us but something For indeed he does not Teach us That which can in any Tollerable measure satisfie an inquisitive Searcher after Truth For what is it to me to know that such a quality resides in such a Principle or Element whilst I remain altogether ignorant of the Cause of that quality and the manner of its production and Operation How little do I know more then any Ordinary Man of Gravity if I know but that the Heaviness of mixt bodies proceeds from that of the Earth they are compos'd of if I know not the reason why the Earth is Heavy And how little does the Chymist teach the Philosopher of the Nature of Purgatition if he only tells him that the Purgative Vertue of Medicines resides in their Salt For besides that this must not be conceded without Limitation since the purging parts of many Vegetables Extracted by the Water wherein they are infus'd are at most but such compounded Salts I mean mingl'd with Oyle and Spirit and Earth as Tartar and divers other Subjects of the Vegetable Kingdom afford And since too that Quicksilver precipitated either with Gold or without Addition into a powder is wont to be strongly enough Cathartical though the Chymists have not yet prov'd that either Gold or Mercury have any Salt at all much less any that is Purgative Besides this I say how little is it to me to know That 't is the Salt of the Rhubarb for Instance that purges if I find That it does not purge as Salt since scarce any Elementary Salt is in small quantity cathartical And if I know not how Purgation in general is effected in a Humane Body In a word as 't is one thing to know a mans Lodging and another to be acquainted with him so it may be one thing to know the subject wherein a Quality principally resides and another thing to have a right notion and knowledg of the quality its self Now that which I take to be the reason of this Chymical Deficiency is the same upon whose account I think the Aristotelian and divers other Theories incompetent to explicate the Origen of Qualities For I am apt to think that men will never be able to explain the Phaenomena of Nature while they endeavour to deduce them only from the Presence and Proportion of such or such material Ingredients and consider such ingredients or Elements as Bodies in a state of rest whereas indeed the greatest part of the affections of matter and consequently of the Phaenomena of nature seems to depend upon the motion and the continuance of the small parts of Bodies For 't is by motion that one part of matter acts upon another and 't is for the most part the texture of the Body upon which the moving parts strike that modifies to motion or Impression and concurrs with it to the production of those Effects which make up the chief part of the Naturalists Theme But sayes Eleutherius me thinks for all this you have left some part of what I alledg'd in behalf of the three principles unanswer'd For all that you have said will not keep this from being a useful Discovery that since in the Salt of one Concrete in the Sulphur of another and the Mercury of a third the Medicinal vertue of it resides that Principle ought to be separated from the rest and there the desired faculty must be sought for I never denyed Replyes Carneades that the Notion of the Tria Prima may be of some use but continues he laughing by what you now alledg for it it will but appear That it is useful to Apothecaries rather than to Philosophers The being able to make things Operative being sufficient to those whereas the Knowledge of Causes is the Thing looked after by These And let me Tell You Eleutherius even this it self will need to be entertained with some caution For first it will not presently follow That if the Purgative or other vertue of a simple may be easily extracted by Water or Spirit of Wine it Resides in the Salt or Sulphur of the Concrete Since unlesse the Body have before been resolved by the Fire or some Other Powerful Agent it will for the most part afford in the Liquors I have named rather the finer compounded parts of it self Than the Elementary ones As I noted before That Water will dissolve not only pure Salts but Crystals of Tartar Gumme Arabick Myrr'h and Other Compound Bodies As also Spirit of Wine will Dissolve not only the pure Sulphur of Concretes but likewise the whole Substance of divers Resinous Bodies as Benzoin the Gummous parts of Jallap Gumme Lacca and
Other bodies that are counted perfectly Mixt. And we see that the Extracts made either with Water or Spirit of Wine are not of a simple and Elementary Nature but Masses consisting of the looser Corpuseles and finer parts of the Concretes whence they are Drawn since by Distillation they may be Divided into more Elementary substances Next we may consider That even when there intervenes a Chymical resolution by he Fire 't is seldom in the Saline or Sulphureous principle as such that the desir'd Faculty of the Concrete Resides But as that Titular Salt or Sulphur is yet a mixt body though the Saline or Sulphureous Nature be predominant in it For if in Chymical Resolutions the separated Substances were pure and simple Bodies and of a perfect Elementary Nature no one would be indued with more Specifick Vertues than another and their qualities would Differ as Little as do those of Water And let me add this upon the bye That even Eminent Chymists have suffer'd themselves to be reprehended by me for their over great Diligence in purifying some of the things they obtain by Fire from mixt Bodies For though such compleatly purifyed Ingredients of Bodies might perhaps be more satisfactory to our Understanding yet others are often more useful to our Lives the efficacy of such Chymical Productions depending most upon what they retain of the Bodies whence they are separated or gain by the new associations of the Dissipated among themselves whereas if they were meerly Elementary their uses would be comparatively very small and the vertues of Sulphurs Salts or Other such Substances of one denomination would be the very same And by the Way Eleutherius I am inclin'd upon this ground to Think That the artificial resolution of compound bodies by Fire does not so much enrich mankind as it divides them into their supposed Principles as upon the score of its making new compounds by new combinations of the dissipated parts of the resolv'd Body For by this means the Number of mixt Bodies is considerably increased And many of those new productions are indow'd with useful qualities divers of which they owe not to the body from which they were obtein'd but to Their newly Acquired Texture But thirdly that which is principally to be Noted is this that as there are divers Concretes whose Faculties reside in some one or other of those differing Substances that Chymists call their Sulphurs Salts and Mercuries and consequently may be best obtain'd by analyzing the Concrete whereby the desired Principles may be had sever'd or freed from the rest So there are other wherein the noblest properties lodge not in the Salt or Sulphur or Mercury but depend immediately upon the form or if you will result from the determinate structure of the Whole Concrete and consequently they that go about to extract the Vertues of such bodies by exposing them to the Violence of the Fire do exceedingly mistake and take the way to Destroy what they would obtain I remmember that Helmont himself somewhere confesses That as the Fire betters some things and improves their Vertues so it spoyles others and makes them degenerate And elsewhere he judiciously affirmes that there may be sometimes greater vertue in a simple such as Nature has made it than in any thing that can by the fire be separated from it Helm out Pharm Dispens Nov. p. 438. And lest you should doubt whether he means by the vertues of things those that are Medical he has in one place this ingenuous confession Credo sayes he simplicia in sua simplicitate esse sufficientia pro sanatione omnium morborum Nag Barthias even in a Comment upon Beguinus Vide Jer. ad Begu Lib. 1. Cap. 17. scruples not to make this acknowledgment Valde absurdum est sayes he ex omnibus rebus extracta facere salia quintas essentias praesertim ex substantiis per se plane vel subtilibus vel homogeneis quales sunt uniones Corallia Moscus Ambra c. Consonantly whereunto he also tells Us and Vouches the famous Platerus for having candidly given the same Advertisement to his Auditors that some things have greater vertues and better suited to our humane nature when unprepar'd than when they have past the Chymists Fire as we see sayes my Author in Pepper of which some grains swallowed perform more towards the relief of a Distempered stomack than a great quantity of the Oyle of the same spice It has been pursues Carneades by our Friend here present observ'd concerning Salt-petre that none of the substances into which the Fire is wont to divide it retaines either the Tast the cooling vertue or some other of the properties of the Concrete and that each of those Substances acquires new qualities not to be found in the Salt-Petre it self The shining property of the tayls of gloworms does survive but so short a time the little animal made conspicuous by it that inquisitive men have not scrupled publickly to deride Baptista Porta and others who deluded perhaps with some Chymical surmises have ventur'd to prescribe the distillation of a Water from the tayles of Glowormes as a sure way to obtain a liquor shining in the Dark To which I shall now add no other example than that afforded us by Amber which whilst it remains an intire body is endow'd with an Electrical faculty of drawing to it self fethers strawes and such like Bodies which I never could observe either in its Salt its Spirit its Oyle or in the Body I remember I once made by the reunion of its divided Elements none of these having such a Texture as the intire Goncrete And however Chymists boldly deduce such and such properties from this or that proportion of their component Principles yet in Concretes that abound with this or that Ingredient 't is not alwayes so much by vertue of its presence nor its plenty that the Concrete is qualify'd to perform such and such Effects as upon the account of the particular texture of that and the other Ingredients associated after a determinate Manner into one Concrete though possibly such a proportion of that ingredient may be more convenient than an other for the constituting of such a body Thus in a clock the hand is mov'd upon the dyal the bell is struck and the other actions belonging to the engine are perform'd not because the Wheeles are of brass or iron or part of one metal and part of another or because the weights are of Lead but by Vertue of the size shape bigness and co-aptation of the several parts which would performe the same things though the wheels were of Silver or Lead or Wood and the Weights of Stone or Clay provided the Fabrick or Contrivance of the engine were the same though it be not to be deny'd that Brasse and Steel are more convenient materials to make clock-wheels of than Lead or Wood. And to let you see Eleutherius that 't is sometimes at least upon the Texture of the small parts of a