and Air covers it what force and power Fire has upon them all what working is in the depths of it and of what composition the main body of it is framed where neither our eys can reach nor any of our Senses sends its messengers to gather and bring back any relations of it Yet are not our Masters contented with all this the whole world of Bodies is not enough to satisfy them the knowledg of all corporeal things and of this machine of heaven and earth with all that they enclose cannot quench the unlimited thirst of a noble mind once set on fire with the beauty and love of Truth Aestuat infoelix angusto limite mundi Ut Gyâ—rae clausus scopulis parvaque Seripho But such heroick spirits cast their subtile nets into another world after the winged inhabitants of the heavens and find means to bring them also into account and to serve them how imperceptible soever they be to the senses as dainties at the Souls table They enquire after a Maker of the world we see and are our selves a main part of and having found Him they conclude Him out of the force of contradiction to be Eternal Infinite Omnipotent Omniscient Immutable and a thousand other admirable qualities they determine of him They search after his Tools and Instruments wherwith he built this vast and admirable pallace and seek to grow acquainted with the Officers and Stewards that under him govern this orderly and numerous Family They find them to be Invisible Creatures exalted above us more than we can estimate yet infinitely farther short of their and our Maker than we are of them If this occasion them to cast their thoughts upon Man himself they find a nature in him 't is true much inferiour to these admirable Intelligences yet such an one as they hope may one day arrive to the likeness of them and that even at the present is of so noble a mould as nothing is too big for it to fathome nor any thing too small for it to discern Thus we see knowledg hath no limits nothing escapes the toils of Science all that ever was that is or can ever be is by them circled in their extent is so vast that our very thoughts and ambitions are too weak and too poor to hope for or aim at what by them may be compassed And if any man that is not inured to raise his thoughts above the pitch of the outward objects he converses daily with should suspect what I have now said is rather like the longing dreams of passionate Lovers whose desires feed them with impossibilities than that it is any real truth or should imagine it but a Poetick Idea of Science that never was nor will be in act or if any other that hath his discoursing faculty vitiated and perverted by having been imbued in the Schools with unsound and umbratile principles should perswade himself that however the pretenders to learning and Science may talk loud of all things and make a noise with Scholastick terms and perswade their ignorant hearers that they speak and unfold deep mysteries yet in very truth nothing at all can be known I shall beseech them both to suspend their conjectures or beliefs herein and to reserve their censure of me whether or no I have strain'd too far till the learned Author of the Dialogues of the World hath enriched it with the Work he hath composed of Metaphysicks in which going orderly and rigorously by continued propositions as Mathematicians demonstrate their undertakings he hath left no scope for wrangling brains to make the least cavil against his doctrine and casting his sharp-sighted thoughts over the whole extent of nature and driving them up to the Almighty Author of it he hath left nothing out of the verge of those rules and all-comprehending principles he gives of true Science And then I doubt not but they will throughly absolve me from having used any amplification in aiming at the reach of this all grasping power For my part the best expression I am able to make of this admirable piece I must borrow from witty Galileus when he speaks of Archimedes's long miss'd Book of Glasses and profess that having some of the Elements or Books of it entrusted in my hands by the Author I read them over with extreme amazement as well as delight for the wonderful subtilty and solidness of them Thus much for knowledge Now let us cast an eye upon humane actions All that we do if we do it as we should and like men is govern'd and steer'd by two sorts of qualities the one of which we call Arts the other Prudence An Art is a collection of general rules comprehending some one subject upon which we often work The matters we work on out of which the particular subjects of Arts do spring are of three kinds our Selves our Neighbours and such dumb or insensible things as compose the Rest of the World Our actions on our Selves are the highest and noblest of all the rest and those by which we live and work as men or to express my self better they are those by which we perfect that part of us which makes us men and by which we direct and level all we do according to the rule of reason not suffering our actions to swerve from what she dictates to us This is done by multiplying and heightning the thoughts of those things which maintain us in reason whether the motives be moral as the examples of worthy persons and the precepts and perswasions of wise men and the like or natural as the consideration of the sweet and contented life which vertue givs us here by good conversation honour profit quiet pleasure and what else soever grows out of so excellent a root as also of the Beatitude and Happiness it brings us to in the next state and of the contrary effects which spring from vice Again by observing the motives and wayes of our passions and animal desires we learn how to prevent them how to terrifie them and how to wear them away by little and little through sometimes giving them diversions otherwhiles restraining them with moderation and oftentimes cutting off the occasions and abridging them of their natural encreasings All these things are brought into art and rule whose lessons were men but as careful and industrious to study as they are to become masters in vain and trivial things they would enjoy happy lives In the next place we are to consider the actions wherby we work upon our Neighbours They are chiefly government and negotiation both which are of one kind and have but this difference that the one is done in common the other is perform'd in particular The means by which we command are rewards and punishments which who hath in his hands may assuredly by wise using them bring to pass whatever he has a mind to Upon occasion of mentioning these two powerful motives which have so main an influence in mens actions we may note
to pass his way without hindring his fellow Wherfore seeing that one single light could not send rayes enough to fil every little space of aire that is capable of light and the less the further it is from the flame 't is obvious enough to conceive how in the space where the air is there is capacity for the rays of many candles Which being well sum'd up will take away the great admiration how the beams of light though they be corporeall can in such great multitudes without hindering one another enter into bodies and come to our eye and will shew that 't is the narrowness of our capacities and not the defect of nature which makes these difficulties seem so great For she hath sufficiently provided for all these subtile operations of fire as also for the entrance of it into glass and into all other solid bodies that are Diaphanous upon which was grounded the last instance the second objection pressed for all such bodies being constituted by the operation of fire which is alwaies in motion there must needs be ways left for it both to enter in and to evaporate out And this is most evident in glass which being wrought by an extreme violent fire and swelling with it as water and other things do by the mixture of fire must necessarily have great store fire in it self whiles it is boyling as we see by its being red hot And hence it is that the workmen are forced to let it cool by degrees in such relentings of fire as they call their nealing heats lest it should shiver in pieces by a violent succeeding of air in the room of the fire for that being of greater parts then the fire would strain the pore of the glass too suddenly and break it all in pieces to get ingressions whereas in those nealing heats the air being rarer lesser parts of it succeed to the fire and leisurely stretch the pores without hurt And therefore we need not wonder that light passes so easily through glass and much less that it gets through other bodies seeing the experience of Alchymists assures us 't is hard to find any other body so impenitrable as glass But now to come to the answer of the first and in appearance most powerful objection against the corporeity of light which urges that its motion is perform'd in an instant and therefore cannot belong to what is material and cloth'd with quantity We will endeavour to shew how unable the sense is to judge of sundry sorts of motions of Bodies and how grosly it is mistaken in them And then when it shall appear that the motion of light must necessarily be harder to be observed then those others I conceive all that is rais'd against our opinion by so incompetent a judge will fall flat to the ground First then let me put the Reader in mind how if ever he mark'd children when they play with firesticks they move and whirle them round so fast that the motion will cosen their eyes and represent an entire circle of Fire to them and were it somewhat distant in a dark night that one play'd so with a lighted Torck it would appear a constant Wheele of fire without any discerning of motion in it And then let him consider how slow a motion that is in respect of what 't is possible a body may participate of and he may safely conclude that 't is no wonder though the motion of light be not descried and that indeed no argument can be made from thence to prove that light is not a body But let us examine this consideration a little further and compare it to the motion of the earth or heavens Let the appearing circle of the fire be some three foot Diameter and the time of one entire circulation of it be the sixtieth part of a minute of which minutes there are 60. in an hour so that in a whole day there will but be 86400. of these parts of time Now the Diameter of the wheel of fire being but of three foot the whole quantity of space that it moves in that atome of time will be at the most ten foot which is three paces and a foot of which parts there are near eleven millions in the compass of the earth so that if the earth be moved round in 24. hours it must go near 130. times as fast as the Boy 's stick which by its swift motion deceives our eye But if we allow the Sun the Moon and the fixed Stars to move how extreme swift must their flight be and how imperceptible would their motion be in such a compass as our sight would reach to And this being certain that whether the earth or they move the appearances to us are the same 't is evident that as now they cannot be perceiv'd to move as peradventure they do not so it would be the very same in shew to us although they did move If the Sun were near us and gallop'd at that rate surely we could not distinguish between the beginning and ending of his race but there would appear one permanent Line of light from East to West without any motion at all as the Torch seems to make with so much a slower motion one permanent immoveable wheel of fire But contrary to this effect we see that the Sun and Stars by onely being removed further from our eyes do cosen our sight so grossely that we cannot discern them to be moved at all One would imagine that so rapid and swift a motion should be perceiv'd in some sort or other which whether it be in the earth or in them is all one to this purpose Either we should see them change their places whiles we look upon them as Arrows and Birds do when they fly in the Aire or else they should make a stream of light bigger then themselvs as the Torch doth But none of all this happens Let us gaze upon them so long and so attentively that our eyes be dazled with looking and all that while they seem to stand immovable and our eyes can give us no account of their journey till it be ended They discern it not while it is in doing So that if we consult with no better counsellour then them we may wonder to see that body at night setting in the West which in the morning we beheld rising in the East But that which seems to be yet more strange is that these bodies move cross us and nevertheless are not perceiv'd to have any motion at all Consider then how much easier it is for a thing that moves towards us to be with us before we are aware A nimble Fencer will put in a thrust so quick that the â—oil will be in your bosome when you thought it a yard off because in the same moment you saw his point so far distant and could not discerne it to move towards you till you felt the rude salutation it gave you If then you will compare the body of light with
Reading her self at large here doth descry An object worthy her far-spreading eye And of her nature such true notions frame That she salutes her self with a new name Here she may scan her Thoughts view either State How link't to matter how when Separate Through Fancie's glass her noble Essence spy A shoreless Sea of Immortality In which unbounded Main you sail so fast Till you both lose and find your self at last Yet Sir you 'r justly accused by this age Plain truths in difficulties to engage What needed you to such nice cost proceed A Quality at first word had done the deed But you may nobly pity them and grant Nought's easier than to be ignorant They take the surface of the doubt while you Laboriously first pierce then dig it through In moving questions Talk not Truth 's their aim As Lords start Hares not for the prey but game They spring then stoop at some slight Butter-fly Thus some in hunting only love the Cry This is the utmost art with which they 're stor'd To call Truth some unanswerable word Which holds the field untill some active wit Working at Fanci's mintage chance to hit Upon a quainter which cuts that in twain And triumphs till a third cleaves it again Thus these Tenedian Axes hew each other Like Cadmu's armed crop each slays his brother Since with Distinctions they so nicely pare They subtilize it quite away to air These Authors yet voluminously-vain Stuff Libraries With Monsters of their brain Whose fruitless toil is but the same or less To plant bryar-fields t' enlarge a wilderness How hard to rectifie that ravell'd clue On your own bottom winding't up a new Yet this you did by th'guidance of his light Who was your Plato you his Stagyrite Save that his Doctrine's such you could invent In Truth 's behalf no reason to dissent Even That Great Soul which fathoms th' Universe Doth to the center Natures entrails pierce Girdles the World and as a pair of beads On Reason's link the Starry bodies threads Uuspells the Heaven's broad volume views so clear Of active Angels th' higher Hemisphere And this of Bodies 'cause he first begun His search by studying Man their Horizon Whom Heaven reserves Divinity to weed From Words o'regrowing the Diviner Seed To use your own 'cause no expression's higher These sparks you kindled at his great fire And round about in thorow-light papers hurl'd Will shortly enlighten and enflame a World Iohn Serjeant FIRST TREATISE DECLARING THE NATURE and OPERATION OF BODIES CHAP. I. A Preamble to the whole discourse Concerning Notions in general IN delivering any Science the clearest and smoothest Method and most agreeable to Nature is to begin with the consideration of those things that are most Common and obvious and by the dissection of them to descend by orderly degrees and Sâ—epps as they lye in the way to the examination of the most Particular and remote ones Now in our present intended Survey of a Body the first thing which occurs to our Sense in the perusal of it is its Quantity bulk or magnitude And this seems to be conceiv'd by all Mankind so inseparable from a Body as that when a man would distinguish a Corporeal Substance from a Spiritual one which is accounted indivisible he naturally pitches on an apprehension of its having bulk and being solid tangible and apt to make impression on our outward senses according to that expression of Lucretius who studying Nature in a familiar and rational manner tells us Tangere enim tangi nisi Câ—rpus nulla potest res And therfore in our inquiry of Bodies we will observe that plain Method which Nature teaches us and begin with examining what Quantity is as being their first and primary affection and that which makes the things we treat of be what we intend to signifie by the name of Body But because there is a great 〈◊〉 of Apprehensions framed by learned men of the nature of Quantity though indeed nothing can be more plain and simple then it is in it self I conceive it will not be amiss before we enter into the explication of it to consider how the mystery of discoursing and expressing our Thoughts to one another by Words a prerogative belonging only to Man is order'd and govern'd among us that so we may avoyd those rocks which many and for the most part such as think they spin the finest threds suffer shipwrack against in their subtilest discourses The most dangerous of all which assuredly is when they confound the true and real Natures of things with the Conceptions they frame of them in their own minds By which fundamental miscarriage of their reasoning they fall into great errours and absurdities and whatever they build on so ruinous a foundation proves but useless cobwebs or prodigious Chymaeras 'T is true words serve to express things but if you observe the matter well you will perceive they do so onely according to the Pictures we make of them in our own thoughts and not according as the Things are in their proper natures Which is very reasonable it should be so since the Soul that gives the Names has nothing of the things in her but these Notions and knows not the Things otherwise then by these Notions and therefore cannot give other Names but such as must signifie the Things by mediation of these Notions In the Things all that belongs to them is comprised under one entire Entity but in Us there are fram'd as many several distinct formal Conceptions as that one Thing shews it self to us with different faces Every one of which conceptions seems to have for its object a distinct Thing because the Conception it self is as much sever'd and distinguish'd from another Conception or Image arising out of the very same Thing that begot this as it can be from any image painted in the understanding by an absolutely other Thing It will not be amiss to illustrate this matter by some familiar Example Imagin I have an Apple in my hand the same Fruit works different effects upon my several Senses my Eye tells me 't is green or red my Nose that it hath a mellow scent my Taste that it is sweet and my Hand that it is cold and weighty My Senses thus affected send messengers to my Phantasie with news of the discoveries they have made and there all of them make them several and distinct pictures of what enters by their doors So that my Reason which discourses on what it finds in my phantasie can consider greenness by it self or mellowness or sweetness or coldness or any other quality whatever singly and alone by it self without relation to any other that is painted in me by the same Apple in which none of these have any distinction at all but are one and the same Substance of the Apple that makes various and different impressions on me according to the various dispositions of my several Senses as hereafter we shall explicate at large But
which made little parts of bodies naturally heavie descend slowly in regard of the velocity of greater parts of the same bodies descending the Doctrine of which we intend to deliver hereafter Others therfore perceiving this rule to fall short have indeavour'd to piece it out by the mixtion of Vacuitie among bodies believing it is that which makes one rarer then another Which mixtion they do not put always immediate to the main body they consider but if it have other rarer and lighter bodies mingled with it they conceive this mixtion immediate only to the rarest or lightest As for example a Crystal being lighter and consequently rarer then a Diamond they will not say there is more vacuity in a Crystal then in a Diamond but that the pores of a Crystal are greater and consequently there is more aire in a Crystal to fil the pores of it then is in a Diamond and the vacuities are in the aire which abounding in a Crystal more then in a Diamond makes that lighter and rarer then this by the more vacuites that are in the greater Quantity of aire which is mingled with it But against this suppsition a powerful adversary is urged for Aristotle in his 4. Book of Physicks hath demonstrated that there can be no motion in vacuity 'T is true they indeavour to evade his demonstration as not reaching home to their supposition by acknowledging it to be an evident one in such a vacuity as he there speaks of which he supposed so great that a body may swim in it as in an Ocean and not touch or be near any other body whereas this opinion exclude all such vast inanity admit no vacuities but so little ones as no body whatever can come to but wil be biger than they and consequently must on some side orother touch the corporal parts which those vacuities divide for they are the separations of the least parts that are or can be actually divided from one another which parts must of necessity touch one another on some side or else they could not hang together to compose one substance and and therefore the dividing vacuities must be less then the divided parts And thus no body will ever be in danger of floating up and down without touching any thing which is the difficulty that Aristotle chiefly impugns I confess I should be very glad that this supposition might serve our turne and save the Phenomena that appear among bodies through their variety of Rarity and Density Which if it might be then would I straight go on to the inquiring after what follow'd out of this ground as Astronomers to use our former similitude calculate the future appearances of the Celestial bodies out of those motions and orbs they assign to the Heavens For as this apprehension of vacuity in bodies is very easie and intelligible so the other which I conceive to be the truth of the case is exceedingly abstracted and one of the most difficult points in all the Metaphysicks and therefore I would if it were possible avoid touching upon it in this discourse which I desire should be as plain and easie and as much removed from Scholastick terms as may be But indeed the inconveniences that follow out of this supposition of vacuities are so great as it is impossible by any means to slide them over As for example let us borrow of Gallileus the proportion of weight between water and air He shews us how the one is 400 times heavier then the other And Marinus Ghetaldus teaches us that gold is 19 times heavier then water so that gold must be 7600 times heavier then air Now then considering that nothing in a body can weigh but the solid parts of it it follows that the proportion of the parts of gold in a sphere of an inch Diameter is to the parts of the air of a like dimension as 7600 is to one Therfore in air it self the vacuities that are supposed in it will be to the solid parts of it in the same proportion as 7600 to one Indeed the proportion of difference shal be greater for even in gold many vacuities must be admitted as appears by the heating of it which shews that in every least part it is exceeding porous But according to this rate without pressing the inconvenience any further the air will by this reckoning appear to be like a net whose holes distances are to the lines and threds in the proportion of 7600 to one and so would be lyable to have little parts of its body swim in those greater vacuities contrary to what they strive to avoid Which would be excedingly more if we found on the one side any bodies heavier denser then gold that were so solid as to exclude all vacuities on the other side should balance them withsuch bodies as are lighter and rarer then air as fire is and as some say will have the aether to be But already the disproportion is so great and the vacuity so strangely exceeds the body in which it is as were too great an absurdity to be admitted And besides it would destroy all motion of small bodies in the air if it be true as Aristotle hath demonstrated in the fourth Book of his Physicks that motion cannot be made but among bodies and not in vacuo Again if rarity were made by vacuity rare bodies could not be gather'd together without losing their rarity and becoming dense The contrary of which we learn by constant experience as when the Smith and Glassemender drive their white and fury fires as they term them when aire pierces most in the sharp wind and generally we see that more of the same kind of rare bodies in less place works more efficaciously according to the nature that results out of that degree of rarity Which argues that every little part is as rare as it was before for else it would lose the vertue of working according to the nature but that by their being crowded together they exclude all other bodies that before mediated between the little parts of their main body and so more parts being gotten together in the same place then formerly there were they work more forcibly Thirdly if such vacuities were the cause of rarity it would follow that fluid bodies being rarer then solid ones would be of themselvs standing like nets or cobwebs wheras contrariwise we see their natures are to run together and to fill up every little creek and corner which effect following out of the very nature of the things themselves needs must exclude vacuities out of that nature And lastly if it be true as we have shew'd in the last Chapter that there are no actual parts in Quantity it follows of necessity that all Quantity must of it self be one as Metaphysicks teach us and then no distance can be admitted between one Quantity and another And truely if I understand Aristotle right he hath perfectly demonstrated that no vacuity is possible in nature
conceive let us go on to the fourth which requires that we satisfie their inquisition who ask what becomes of that vast body of shining light if it be a body that fills all the distance between heaven and earth and vanishes in a moment assoon as a cloud or the Moon interposes it self between the Sun and us or that the Sun quits our Hemisphere No sign at all remains of it after its extinction as doth of all other substances whose destruction is the birth of some new thing Whither then is it flown we may be perswaded that a mist is a corporeal substance because it turns to drops of water upon the twigs that it invirons and so we might believe light to be fire if after the burning of it out we found any ashes remaing but experience assures us that after it is extinguished it leaves not the least vestigium behind it of having been there Now before we answer this objection we will intreat our Adversary to call to mind how we have in our solution of the former declared and proved that the light which for example shines from a candle is no more then the flame is from whence it springs the one being condensed and the other dilated and that the flame is in a perpetual flux of consumption about the circumference and of restauration at the center where it sucks in the fewell and then we will enquire of him what becomes of the bodie of flame which so continually dies and is renewed and leaves no remainder behind it as well as he doth of us what becomes of our body of light which in like manner is alwaies dying and alwaies springing fresh And when he hath well considered it he will find that one answer will serve for both Which is That as the fire streams out from the fountain of it and growes more subtile by its dilatation it sinks the more easily into those bodies it meets withall the first of which and that environs it round about is aire With air then it mingles and incorporates it self and by consequence with the other little bodies that are mingled with the aire and in them it receives the changes which nature works by which it may be turn'd into the other Elements if there be occasion or be still conserv'd in bodies that require heat Upon this occasion I remember a rare experiment that a Noble-Man of much sincerity and a singular friend of mine told me he had seen which was That by meanes of glasses made in a very particular manner and artificially placed one by another he had seen the Sun-beams gather'd together and precipitated down into a brownish or purplish red powder There could be no fallacy in this operation for nothing whatever was in the glasses when they were placed and disposed for this intent and it must be in the hot time of the year else the effect would not follow And of this Magistry he could gather some dayes near two ounces in a day And it was of a strange volative nature and would pierce and imprint his spiritual quality into gold it self the heaviest and most fixed body we converse withall in a very short time If this be plainly so without any mistaking then mens eyes and hands may tell them what becomes of light when it dies if a great deal of it were swept together But from what cause soever this experience had its effect our reason may be satisfied with what we have said above for I confesse for my part I beleeve the appearing body might be something that came along with the Sun-beams and was gather'd by them but not ther pure substance Some peradventure will object those lamps which both ancient and modern writers have reported to have been found in Tombes and Urns long time before closed up from mens repair to them to supply them with new fewel and therefore they believe such fires to feed upon nothing and consequently to be inconsumptible and perpetual Which if they be then our doctrine that will have light to be nothing but the body of fire perpetually flowing from his center and perpetual dying cannot be sound for in time such fires would necessarily spend themselves in light although light be so subtile a substance that an exceeding little quantity of fewel may be dilated into a vast quantity of light However there would be some consumption which how imperceptible soever in a short time yet after a multitude of revolutions of years must needs discover it self To this I answer That for the most part the witnesses who testifie originally the stories of these lights are such as a rational man cannot expect from them that exactness or nicitie of observation which is requisite for our purpose For they are usually gross labouring people who as they dig the ground for other intentions Stumble upon these Lamps by chance before they are aware and commonly they break them in the finding and imagine they see a glimpse of light which vanishes before they can in a manner take notice of it and is peradventure but the glistering of the broken glass or glazed pot which reflects the outward light assoon as by rummaging in the ground and discovering the Glass the light strikes upon it in such manner as sometimes a Diamond by a certain incountring of light in a dusky place may in the first twinkling of the motion seem to sparkle like fire And afterwards when they shew their broken Lamp and tell their tale to some man of a pitch of wit above them who is curious to inform himself of all the circumstances that may concern such lights they strain their memory to answer him satisfactorily unto all his demands and thus for his sake they perswade themselves to remember what they never saw and he again on his side is willing to help out the story a little And so after a while a very formal and particular relation is made of it As happens in like sort in reporting of all strange and unusual things when even those that in their nature abhor from lying are naturally apt to strain a little and fashion up in a handsome mould and almost to perswade themselves they saw more then they did so innate it is to every man to desire the having of some preeminence beyond his neighbours be it but in pretending to have seen something which they have not Therefore before I engage my self in giving any particular answer to this objection of pretended inconsumptible lights I would gladly see the effect certainly averred and undoubtedly proved For the testemonies which Fortunius Licetus produces who has been very diligent in gathering them and very sub 〈◊〉 in discoursing upon them and as the exactest Author that has written upon this subject do not seem to me to make that certainty which is required for the establishing of a ground in Philosophy Nevertheless if there be any certain experience in this particular I should think there might be some Art by circulation