easily perceive Wherfore let any judicious Reader that hath look'd further into Aristotle than only upon his Logical and Metaphysical works judg whether in bulk our Doctrine be not conformable to the course of his and of all the best Philosophers that have been and are though in retail or particulars we somtimes mingle therewith our own private judgments as every one of them hath likewise shewed us the way to do by the liberty themselvs have taken to dissent in some points from their predecessours And were it our turn to declare and teach Logick and Metaphysicks we should be forced to go the way of matter and forms and privations as Aristottle hath trodden it out to us in his works of that strain But this is not our task for the present for no man that contemplates nature as he ought can choose but see that these notions are no more necessary when we consider the framing of the Elements than when we examine the making of compounded bodies and therfore these are to be set apart as higher principles and of another strain than need be made use of for the actual composition of compounded things and for the resolution of them into their material ingredients or to cause their particular Motions which are the Subjects we now discourse of Upon this occasion I think it not amiss to touch how the latter Sectatours or rather pretenders of Aristotle for truly they have not his way have introduced a model of doctrine or rather of ignorance out of his words which he never so much as dream'd of howbeit they alledge Texts out of him to confirm what they say as Hereticks do out of Scripture to prove their Assertions For wheras he call'd certain Collections or Positions of things by certain common names as the Art of Logick requires terming some of them Qualities others Actions others Places or Habits or Relatives or the like these his later followers have concieted that these names did not design a concurrence of sundry things or a diverse disposition of the parts of any thing out of which some effect resulted which the understanding considering all together hath expressed the notion of it by one name but have imagin'd that every one of these names had correspondent to it some real positive Entity or thing separated in its own nature from the main thing or substance in which it was and indifferent to any other substance but in all to which it is linked working still that effect which is to be expected from the nature of such a quality or action c. And thus to the very negatives of things as to the names of points lines instants and the like they have imagined positive Entities to correspond likewise to the names of actions places and the like they have framed other Entities as also to the names of colours sounds tasts smells touches and the rest of the sensible qualitie and generally to all qualities whatever Wheras nothing is more evident than that Aristotle meant by qualities no other thing but that disposition of parts which is proper to one body and not found in all as you will plainly see if you but examine what beauty health agility science and such other qualities are for by that name he calls them and by such examples gives us to understand what he means by the word Quality the first of which is nothing else but a composition of several parts and colours in due proportion to one another the next but a due temper of the humours and the being of every part of the body in the state it should be the third but a due proportion of the spirits and strength of the sinews and the last but order'd Phantasmes Now when these perverters of Aristotle have framed such Entities under that conception which nature hath attributed to substances they immediately upon the nick with the same breath that describ'd them as substances deny them to be substances and thus they confound the first apprehensions of nature by seeking learned and strained definitions for plain things After which they are fain to look for glew and paste to join these Entities to the substance they accompany which they find with the same facillity by imagining a new Entity whose nature it is to do that which they have need of And this is the general course of their Philosophy whose great subtilty and queint speculations in enquiring how things come to pass afford no better satisfaction than to say upon every occasion that there is an Entity which makes it be so As if you ask them how a wall is white or black They will tell you there is an Entity or Quality whose essence is to be Whiteness or blackness diffused through the wall If you continue to ask how doth whiteness stick to the wall They reply that it is by means of an Entity called Union whose nature it is actually to joyn whiteness and the wall together And then if you enquire how it comes to pass that one white is like another They will as readily answer that this is wrought by another Entity whose nature is to be likeness and it makes one thing like another The consideration of which doctrine makes me remember a ridiculous Tale of a trewant School-boys Latine who upon a time when he came home to see his friends being asked by his Father what was Latine for bread answer'd bredilus and for beer beeribus and the like of all other things he ask'd him adding only a termination in bus to the plain English word of every one of them which his Father perceiving and though ignorant of Latine yet presently apprehending that the mysteries his son had learn'd deserv'd not the expence of keeping him at School bade him immediately put off his hosibus and shoosibus and fall to his old Trade of treading Morteribus In like manner these great Clerks do as readily find a pretty Quality or mood wherby to render the nature or causes of any effect in their easy Philosophy as this Boy did a Bus to stamp upon an English word and coyn it into his mock Latine But to be serious as the weight of the matter requires let these so peremptory pretenders of Aristotle shew me but one Text in him where he admits any middle distinction such as those modern Philosophers do and must needs admit who maintain the qualities we have rejected betwixt that which he calls Numerical and that which he calls of Reason Notion or Definition the first of which we may term to be of or in things the other to be in our heads or discourses or the One Natural the other Logical and I will yield that they have reason and I have groslly mistaken what he has written and do not reach the depth of his sense But this they will never be able to do Besides the whole scope of his Doctrine and all his discourses and intentions are carry'd throughout and built on the same foundations that we have laid for ours
in society together and converse with one another wheras the other has no further extent then among such persons as have agreed together to explicate and design among themselvs particular notions peculiar to their arts and affairs Of the first kind are those ten general heads which Aristotle calls Predicaments under which he who was the most judicious orderer of notions and director of mens conceptions that ever lived hath comprised whatever has or can have a being in nature For when any object occurs to our thoughts we either consider the essential and fundamental Being of it or we refer it to some species of Quantity or we discover some Qualities in it or we perceive that it Does or Suffers somthing or we conceive it in some determinate Place or Time and the like Of all which every man living that injoys but the use of reason finds naturally within himself at the very first naming of them a plain complete and satisfying notion which is the same without any the least variation in all mankind unless it be in such as have industriously and by force and with much labour perplex'd and deprav'd those primary and sincere impressions which nature had freely made in them Of the second sort are the particular words of art by which learned men use to express what they mean in Sciences and the names of Instruments and of such things as belong to Trades and the like as a Sine a Tangent an Epicycle a Deferent an Axe a Trowel and such others the intelligence of which belongs not to the generality of mankind but only to the Geometricians Astronomers Carpenters Masons and such persons as converse familiarly and frequently with those things To learn the true signification of such words we must consult with those that have the knowledge and practice of them as in like manner to understand the other kind of plain language we must observe how the words that compose it are apprehended used and applyed by mankind in general and not receive into this examination the wrested or Metaphorical senses of any learned men who seek oftentimes beyond any ground in nature to frame a general notion that may comprehend all the particular ones which in any sense proper or improper may arise out of the use of one word And this is the cause of great errours in discourse so great and important as I cannot too much inculcate the caution requisite to the avoyding of this rock Which that it may be the better apprehended I will instance in one example of a most plain and easie conception wherin all mankind naturally agrees how the wresting it from its proper genuine and original signification leads one into strange absurdities and yet they pass for subtil speculations The notion of being in a place is naturally the same in all men living Ask any simple Artisan Where such a man such a house such a tree or such a thing is and he will answer you in the very same manner as the learnedest Philosopher would doe He 'l tell you the Man you ask for is in such a Church sitting in such a Piew and in such a Corner of it that the House you inquire after is in such a Street and next to such two Buildings on each side of it that the Tree you would find out is in such a Forest upon such a Hill near such a Fountain and by such a Bush that the Wine you would drink of is in such a Cellar in such a Part of it and in such a Cask In conclusion no man living that speaks naturally and freely out of the notion he finds clearly in his understanding will give you other answer to the question of where a thing is then such a one as plainly expresses his conceit of being in place to be no other then bodies being environ'd and inclos'd by some one or several others that are immediate to it as the place of a liquour is the vessel that contains it and the place of the vessel is such a part of the chamber or house that it rests on together with the ambient Air which has a share in making up the places of most things And this being the answer that every man whatever will readily give to this question and every asker being fully satisfied with it we may safely conclude That all their notions and conceptions of being in a place are the same and consequently that it is the natural and true one But then some others considering that such conditions as these will not agree to other things which they likewise conceit to be in a place for they receive it as an axiome from their sense that whatever is must be somwhere and whatever is no where is not at all they fall to casting about how they may frame some common notion to comprehend all the several kinds of being in place which they imagine in the things they discourse of If there were nothing but Bodies to be rank'd by them in the Predicament of Place then that description I have already set down would be allow'd by them as sufficient But since that Spirits and Spiritual things as Angels Rational Souls Verities Sciences Arts and the like have a being in Nature and yet will not be comprised in such a kind of place as a Body is contain'd in they rack their thoughts to speculate out some common notion of being in place which may be common to these as well as to Bodies like a common accident agreeing to divers subjects And so in the end they pitch on an Entity which they call an Ubi and they conceit the nature and formal reason of that to be the ranking of any thing in a place when that Entity is thereto affixed And then they have no further difficulty in setling an Angel or any pure Spirit or immaterial Essence in a place as properly and as completely as if it were a Corporal Substance 'T is but assigning an Ubi to such a Spirit and he is presently riveted to what place you please And by multiplying the Ubis any individual body to which they are assign'd is at the same instant in as many distant places as they allot it different Ubis And if they assign the same Ubi to several bodies so many several ones as they assign it to will be in one and the same place And not only many bodies in one place but even a whole body in an indivisible by a kind of Ubi that has a power to resume all the extended parts and inclose them in a point of place All which prodigious conceits and impossibilities in nature spring out of their mistake in framing Metaphysical and abstracted conceptions instead of contenting themselvs with those plain easie and primary notions which Nature stamps alike in all men of common sense and understanding As who desires to be further instructed in this particular may perceive if he take the pains to look over what Mr. White hath discours'd of Place in the
because mans discerning them to be able to discourse accordingly of them is the princpal respect for which their denominations are to be allotted them we may with reason call those things dense wherein a man finds a sensible difficulty to part them and those rare where the resistance is imperceptible And to these two notions of rarity and density we must allow a great latitude far from consisting in an indivisible state for since rare faction makes a lesser body equal to a bigger and all inequalitie betwixt two bodies has the conditions of a Body it follows that the excess of one body over another consists of infinite parts into which it might be divided and consequently that what is rarified passes as many degrees as the inequality or excess hath parts And the same law being in condensations both dense and rare things must be acknowledg'd capable of infinite variety and diversity of states in regard of more and less in the same kind These things being premised and calling to mind that 't is the nature of density to make the parts of a dense thing compact and stick together and be hardly divisible and on the contrary side that 't is the nature of rarity to diffuse and extend a rare thing and prepare and approach it to division according to the proportion of the degree of rarity which it has and that weight abounds where there is excess of density and is very little or none in excess of rarity we may now begin in our imagination to put these Qualities into the scales one against another to see what effects they produce in Bodies And first let us weigh Gravity against Density or sticking together of parts which sticking or compactedness being natural to density requires some excess of gravity in proportion to the density or some other outward violence to break it If then in a dense body the gravity overcome the density and make the parts of it break asunder it will draw them downwards towards the center that gravity tends to and never let them rest till they come thither unless some impediment meet them by the way and stop their journey so that such a body will as near as it possibly can lie in a perfect spherical figure in respect of the center and the parts of it will be chang'd and alter'd and thrust on any side that is the ready way thither the force of gravity therefore working upon it it will run as far as it meets with nothing to hinder it from attaining this spherical superficies Wherefore such bodies for the most part have no setled outside of their own but receive their figure and limits from such lets as hinder them from attaining to that sphericalness they aim at Now Aristotle whose definitions are in these matters generally receiv'd as fully expressing the notions of mankind tells us and our own experience confirms it that we use to call those things moist which run in such sort as we have here set down and that we term those things dry which have a Consistence within themselves and which to enjoy a determinate figure do not require the stop or hinderance of another body to limit and circle them in which will be the nature of those that have a greater proportion of density in respect of their gravity And thus out of the comparison of density with weight we have found two more qualities then we yet had met withall namely wetness and dryness For though a body be dense which of its own nature singly considered would preserve the continuity of its parts as making the body hardly divisible whereby it would be dry yet if the gravity that works upon it be in proportion greater then the density it will sever the parts of it and make them run to the center and so become fluide and moist though not in the eminentest degree that may be of fluidity and moisture because that if the like over proportion of gravity happen in a rare body it will there more powerfully work its effect then it can in a dense body because a rare body will more easily obey and yield to the gravity that masters it then a dense one will and consequently will be more fluide and moist then it Now on the other side in weighing Rarity against Gravity if it happen that the Rarity overcome the Gravity then the gravity will not change the figure of a body so proportion'd but what figure it has from its proper natural causes the same will still remain with it and consequently such a body will have terms of its own and not require an ambient body to limit and circle it in which nature we call dry But if the proportion of the gravity be the greater and overcome the rarity then by how much the rarity is greater so much the more will the gravity force it to apply it self equally and on all sides to the center and such a body will the more easily receive its figure from another and will be less able to consist of it self which properties we attribute to wetness or moisture So that it appears how the qualities of wet and dry which first we found in things that were dense are also common to that nature of bodies which we term rare And thus by our first inquiry after what kind of bodies result out of the compounding of rarity and density with gravity we discover four different sorts some dense ones that are dry and others likewise dense that are moist then again some rare ones that are likewise moist and other rare ones that are dry But we must not rest here let us proceed a little further to search what other properties these four kinds of bodies will have which we shall best discover if we apply them severally to some other compounded bodie of which nature are all those we converse with or see and then consider the effects which these work upon it To begin with that which we said is so excessively Rare that gravity has no power over it If we look on the multitude of little parts it may be divided into whereof every one will subsist by it self for we have already proved it dry and then suppose them to be moved with force and strength against the body we apply them to it must necessarily follow that they will forcibily get into the porousness of it and pass with violence between part and part and of necessity separate the parts of that thing one from another as a knife or wedge doth a solid substance by having their thinnest parts press'd into it So that if in the compounded thing some parts be more weighty others more light as of necessity there must be the heaviest will all fall lowest the lightest will fly uppermost and those which are of a mean nature between the two extremes will remain in the middle In summe by this action an extreme rare body upon a compounded one all the parts of one kind that were in the
refraction 6. An answer to the arguments brought in favour of Monsieur des Cartes his opinion 7. The true cause of refraction of light both at its entrance and at its going out from the refleing body 8. A general rule to know the nature of reflection and refractions in all sorts of surface 9. A body of greater parts and greater pores makes a greater refraction than one of lesser parts and lesser pores 10. A confirmation of the former doctrine out of the nature of bodies that refract light CHAP. XIV Of the composition qualities Generation of mixed Bodies 1. The connexion of this chapter with the rest and the Authours intent in it 2. That there is a least sise of bodies and that this least sise is found in fire 3. The first conjunction of parts is in bodies of least sise and it is made by the force of Quantity 4. The second sort of conjunction is compactedness in simple Elements and it proceeds from density 5. The third conjunction is of parts of different Elements and it proceeds from quantity and density together 6. The reason why liquid bodies do easily joyn together and dry ones difficultly 7. That no two hard bodies can touch one another immediately 8. How mixed bodies are framed in general 9. The cause of the several degrees of solidity in mixed bodies 10. The Rule whereto are reduced all the several combinations of Elements in compounding of mixed bodies 11. Earth and water are the basis of all permanent mixed bodies 12. What kind of bodies those are where water is the basis and earth the predominant Element over the other two 13. Of those bodies where water being the basis air is the predominant Element 14. What kind of bodies result where water is the basis and fire the predominant Element 15. Of those bodies where water is in excess it alone being both the basis and the predominant Element 16. Of those bodies where earth alone is the basis and also the predominant in excess over the other three Elements 17. Of those bodies where earth is the basis water is the predominant element over the other two 18. Of those bodies where earth being the basis air is the predominant 19. Of those bodies where earth being the basis fire is the predominant 20. All the second qualities of mixed bodies arise from several combinations of the first qualities and are at last resolv'd into several degrees of rarity density 21. That in the Planets Stars there is a like variety of mixed bodies caused by light as here on earth 22. In what manner the Elements work on one another in the composition of mixed bodies and in particular fire which is the most active 23. A particular declaration touching the generation of Metals CHAP. XV. Of the Dissolution of Mixed Bodies 1. Why some bodies are brittle and others tough or apt to withstand outward violence the first instrument to dissolve mixed bodies 2. How outward violence doth work on the most compacted bodies 3. The several effects of fire the second and chiefest instrument to dissolve all compounded bodies 4. The reason why some bodies are not dissolved by fire 5. The reason why fire melteth gold but cannot consume it 6. Why Lead is easily consumed and calcinted by fire 7. Why and how some bodies are divided by fire into Spirits Waters Oyls Salts and Earth And what those parts are 8. How water the third instrument to dissolve bodies dissolvs calx into salt and so into terra damnata 9. How water mingled with salt becomes a most powerful Agent to dissolve other bodies 10. How putrefaction is caused CHAP. XVI An Explication of certain Maxims touching the operations and qualies of bodies and whether the Elements be found pure in any part of the world 1. What is the Sphere of activity in corporeal agents 2. The reason why no body can work in distance 3. An objection answer'd against the manner of explicating the former axiome 4. Of re-action and first in pure local motion that each Agent must suffer in acting and act in suffering 5. The former Doctrine applyed to other local motions design'd by particular names And that Suisseths argument is of no force against this way of doctrine 6. Why some notions do admit of intension and remission and others not 7. That in every part of our habitable world all the four elements are found pure in small atoms but not in any great bulk CHAP. XVII Of Rarefaction and Condensation the two first motions of Particular bodies 1. The Authours intent in this and the following chapters 2. That bodies may be rarified both by outward and inward heart and how this is perform'd 3. Of the great effects of Rarefaction 4. The first manner of condensation by heat 5. The second manner of condensation by cold 6. That Ice is not water rarified but condensed 7. How Wind Snow and Hail are made and wind by rain allaid 8. How parts of the same or divers bodies are joyn'd more strongly together by condensation 9. Vacuities cannot be the reason why water impregnated to the full with one kind of salt will notwithstanding receive more of another 10. The true reason of the former effect 11. The reason why bodies of the same nature do joyn more easily together than others CHAP. XVIII Of another motion belonging to Particular bodies called Attraction and of certain operations term'd Magical 1. What Attraction is and from whence it proceeds 2. The true sense of the Maxime that Nature abhors from vacuitys 3. The true reason of attraction 4. Water may be brought by the force of attraction to what height soever 5. The doctrine touching the attraction of water in Syphons 6. That the Syphon doth not prove water to weigh in its own orb 7. Concerning attraction caus'd by fire 8. Concerning attraction made by virture of hot bodies amulets c 9. The natural reason given for divers operations esteem'd by some to be magical CHAP. XIX Of three other motions belonging to particular bodies Filtration Restitution and Electrical attraction 1. What is Filtration and how it is effected 2. What causes the water in Filtration to ascend 3. Why the filter will not drop unless the label hang lower than the water 4. Of the motion of Restitution and why some bodies stand bent others not 5. Why some bodies return only in part to their natural figure others entirely 6. Concerning the nature of those bodies which shrink aand stretch 7. How great and wonderful effects proceed from small plain and simple principles 8. Concerning Electrical attratâ—on and the causes of it 9. Cabeus his opinion refuted concerning the cause of Electrical motions CHAP. XX. Of the Loadstones generation and its particulas motions 1. The extreme heat of the Sun under the Zodiack draws a stream of air from each Pole into the torrid Zone 2. The atomes of these two streams coming together are apt to incorporate with one another 3. By the meeting and mingling together
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
in my mind every one of these Notions is a distinct Picture by it self and as much sever'd from any of the rest arising from the same apple as it would be from any impression or image made in me by a Stone or any other substance whatever that being entire in it self and circumscribed within its own circle is absolutely sequestred from any communication with the other So that what is but one entire thing in it self seems to be many distinct things in my understanding wherby if I be not very cautious and in a manner wrestle with the bent and inclination of my Understanding which is apt to refer the distinct and complete stamp it finds within it self to a distinct and complete original Character in the Thing I shall be in danger before I am aware to give actual Beings to the quantity figure colour smel tast and other accidents of the Apple each of them distinct one from another as also from the Substance which they clothe because I find the notions of them really distinguish'd as if they were different Entities in my mind And from thence I may infer there is no contradiction in nature to have the Accidents really sever'd from one another and to have them actually subsist without their Substance and such other mistaken subtilties which arise out of our unwary conceiting that things are in their own Natures after the same fashion as we consider them in our Understanding And this course of the minds disguising and changing the impressions it receives from outward objects into appearances quite differing from what the things are in their own real natures may be observ'd not only in multiplying Entities where in truth there is but one but also in a contrary manner by comprising several distinct Things under one single Notion which if afterwards it be reflected back upon the things themselvs is the occasion of exceeding great errours and entangles one in unsuperable difficulties As for example Looking upon several Cubes or Dyce wherof one is of gold another of lead a third of ivory a fourth of wood a fifth of glass and what other matter you please all these several things agree together in my Understanding and are there comprehended under one single notion of a Cube which like a Painter that were to designe them only in black and white makes one figure that represents them all Now if removing my consideration from this impression which the several cubes make in my understanding to the cubes themselvs I shall unwarily suffer my self to pin this one notion upon every one of them and accordingly conceive it to be really in them it will of necessity fall out by this misapplying of my intellectual notion to the real things that I must allow Existence to other entities which never had nor can have any in nature From this conception Plato's Idea's had their birth For finding in his understanding one Universal notion that agreed exactly to every Individual of the same Species or Substance which imprinted that notion in him and conceiving that the picture of any thing must have an exact correspondence with the thing it represents and not considering that this was but an imperfect picture of the individual that made it he thence conceiv'd there was actually in every individual Substance one universal Nature running through all of that species which made them be what they were And then considering that corporeity quantity and other accidents of Matter could not agree with this universal subsistent Nature he denyed all those of it and so abstracting from all materiality in his Idea's and giving them a real and actual subsistence in nature he made them like Angels whoce essences and formal reasons were to be the Essence and to give Existence to corporeal individuals and so each Idea was embodied in every individual of its species To which opinion and upon the same grounds Averroes lean'd in the particular of mens Souls Likewise Scotus finding in his understanding an Universal notion springing from the impression that Individuals make in it will have a like Universal in the thing it self so determining Universals to use his own language and terms to be à parte rei and expressing the distinction they have from the rest of the thing by the terms of actu formaliter sed non realiter and therby makes every individual comprise an universal subsistent nature in it Which inconvenience other modern Philosophers seeking to avoid will not alsow these Universals a real and actual subsistence but lend them only a fictitious Being so making them as they call them Eutia rationis But herein again they suffer themselvs to be carried down the stream before they are aware by the understanding which is apt to pin upon the objects the notions it finds within it self resulting from them and consider an Unity in the things which indeed is only in the Understanding Therfore one of our greatest cares in the guidance of our discourse and a continual and sedulous caution therin ought to be used in this particular where every errour is a fundamental one and leads into inextricable labyrinths and where that which is all our level to keep us upright and even our Understanding is so apt by reason of its own nature and manner of operation to make us slide into mistaking and errour And to summ up in short what this discourse aims at we must narrowly take heed left reflecting upon the notions we have in our mind we afterwards pin those aiery superstructures upon the material things themselvs that begot them or frame a new conception of the nature of any thing by the negotiation of our understanding upon those impressions which it self makes in us wheras we should acquiesce and be content with that natural and plain notion which springs immediately and primarily from the thing it self which when we do not the more we seem to excel in subtilty the further we go from reality and truth like an Arrow which being wrong levell'd at hand falls widest when shot in the strongest bow Now to come to another point that makes to our present purpose We may observe there are two sorts of language to express our notions by One belongs in general to all mankind and the simplest person that can but apprehend and speak sense is as much judg of it as the greatest Doctor in the Schools and in this the words express the things properly and plainly according to the natural conceptions that all people agree in making of them The other sort of language is circled in with narrower bounds and understood only by those that in a particular express manner have been train'd up to it and many of the words which are proper to it have been by the Authors of it translated and wrested from the general conceptions of the same words by some metaphor or similitude or allusion to serve their private turns Without the first manner of expressing our notions mankind could not live
first of his Dialogues De Mundo To which Book I shall from time to time according as I shall have occasion refer my Reader in those subjects the Author takes upon him to prove being confident that his Metaphysical Demonstrations there are as firm as any Mathematical ones for Metaphysical Demonstrations have in themselvs as much firmness certainty and evidence as they and will appear as evident to whoever shall understand them throughly and frame right conceptions of them which how plain soever they seem is not the work of every pretender to learning CHAP. II. Of Quantity AMong those primary affections which occur in the perusal of a Body Quantity as I have observ'd in the precedent Chapter is one and in a manner the first and root of all the rest Therfore according to the caution we have been so prolix in giving because it is of so main importance if we aim at right understanding the true nature of it we must examin what apprehension all kinds of people that is mankind in general make of it By which proceeding we do not make the ignorant Multitude judg of that Learning which grows out of the consideration of Quantity but only of the natural notion which serves learned men for a basis and foundation to build Scientifical superstructures on For though Sciences be the works and structures of the understanding govern'd and level'd by the wary and strict rules of most ingenuous Artificers yet the ground on which they are rais'd are such plain notion of things as naturally and without any art present themselvs to every mans apprehension without which for matter to work upon those artificial reflections would leave the understanding as unsatisfied as a Cook would the appetite by a dish upon which he should have exercised all his art in dressing it but whose first substance were not meat of solid nutriment 'T is the course Market that must deliver him plain materials to imploy his cunning on And in like manner 't is the indisciplin'd Multitude that must furnish learned men with natural apprehensions and notions to exercise their wits about Which when they have they may use and order and reflect upon them as they please but they must first receive them in that plain and naked form as mankind in general pictures them out in their imaginations And therfore the first work of Scholars is to learn of the People Quem penes arbitrium est jus norma loquendi what is the true meaning and signification of these primary names and what notions they beget in the generality of mankind of the things they design Of the Common People then we must enquire What Quantity is and we shall soon be informed if we but consider what answer any sensible man will make on the sudden to a question wherof that is the subject for such unstudied replies express sincerely the plain and natural conceptions which they that make them have of the things they speak of And this of Quantity is the plainest and the first that nature prints in us of all the things we see feel and converse with and that must serve for a ground to all our other inquiries and reflections for which cause we must be sure not to receive it wrested or disguised from its own nature If then any one be asked What Quantity there is in such a thing or how great it is he will presently in his understanding compare it with some other thing equally known by both parties that may serve for a measure to it and then answer That it is as big as it or twice as big or not half so big or the like in fine that it is bigger or lesser then another thing or equal to it 'T is of main importance to have this point throughly and clearly understood therfore it will not be amiss to turn it and view it a little more particularly If thou ask what Quantity there is of such a parcel of Cloth how much Wood in such a piece of Timber how much Gold in such an Ingot how much Wine in such a Vessel how much Time was taken up in such an Action he that is to give you an account of them measures them by ells by feet by inches by pounds by ounces by gallons by pints by days by hours and the like and then tells you how many of those parts are in the whole that you inquire of Which answer every man living will at the instant without study make to this question and with it every man that shall ask will be fully appay'd and satisfied so that 't is most evident it fully expresses the notions of them both and of all mankind in this particular Wherfore when we consider that Quantity is nothing else but the Extension of a thing and that this Extension is exprest by a determinate number of lesser extensions of the same nature which lesser ones are sooner and more easily apprehended then greater because we are first acquainted and conversant with such and our understanding grasps weighs and discerns such more steadily and makes an exacter judgment of them and that such lesser ones are in the greater which they measure as parts in a whole and that the whole by comprehending those parts is a mere capacity to be divided into them we conclude That Quantity or Bigness is nothing else but Divisibility and that a thing is big by having a capacity to be divided or which is the same to have parts made of it This is yet more evident if more may be in Discrete Quantity that is in Number then in Continued Quantity or Extension For if we consider any number whatever we shall find the essence of it consists in a capacity of being resolv'd and divided into so many Unities as are contain'd in it which are the parts of it And this species of Quantity being simpler then the other servs for a rule to determine it by as we may observe in the familiar answers to questions of Continued Quantity which express by number the Content of it as when one delivers the Quantity of a piece of ground by such a number of furlongs acres perches or the like But we must take heed of conceiving that those parts which we consider to discern the nature of Quantity are actually and really in the whole of any continued one that contains them Ells feet inches are no more real Entities in the whole that is measur'd by them and makes impressions of such notions in our Understanding then in our former example colour figure mellowness tast and the like are several substances in the Apple that affects our several Senses with such various impressions 'T is but one whole that may indeed be cut into so many several parts but those parts are not really there till by division they are parceled out and then the whole out of which they are made ceases to be any longer and the parts succeed in lieu of it and are every one of
them a new whole This truth is evident out of the very definition we have gather'd of Quantity For since it is Divisibility that is a bare capacity to division it follows that it is not yet divided and consequently that those parts are not yet in it which may be made of it for division is the making two or more things of one But because this is a very great controversie in Schools and so important to be determin'd and setled as without doing so we shal be liable to main errours in searching the nature and operations of Bodies and that the whole progress of our discourse will be uncertain and wavering if this principle and foundation be not firmly laid we must apply our selvs to bring some more particular and immediate proof of the verity of this assertion Which we wil doe by shewing the inconvenience impossibility and contradiction that the admittance of the other leads to For if we allow actual parts to be distinguish'd in Quantity it wil follow that 't is composed of points or indivisibles which we shall prove to be impossible The first wil appear thus if Quantity were divided into all the parts into which 't is divisible it would be divided into indivisibles for nothing divisible and not divided would remain in it but it is distinguish'd into the same parts into which it would be divided if it were divided into all the parts into which 't is divisible therfore it is distinguish'd into indivisibles The major proposition is evident to any man that has eyes of understanding The minor is the confession or rather the position of the adversary when he says that all its parts are actually distinguished The consequence cannot be calumniated since indivisibles whether they be separated or joyn'd are still but indivisibles though that which is composed of them be divisible It must then be granted that all the parts which are in Quantity are indivisibles which parts being actually in it and the whole being composed of these parts only it follows that Quantity is composed and made of indivisibles If any should cavil at the supposition and say we stretch it further then they intend it by taking all the parts to be distinguished wheras they mean only that there are parts actually in Quantity abstracting from all by reason that all in that matter would infer an infinity which to be actually in any created thing they will allow impossible Our answer will be to represent to them how this is barely said without any ground or colour of reason merely to evade the inconvenience the argument drives them to For if any parts be actually distinguish'd why should not all be so What prerogative have some that the others have not And how came they by it If they have their actual distinction out of their nature of being parts then all must enjoy it alike and all be equally distinguished as the supposition goes and they must all be indivisibles as we have proved Besides to prevent the cavil upon the word all we may change the expression of the Proposition into a negative for if they admit as they do that there is no part in Quantity but is distinguish'd as far as it may be distinguish'd then the same conclusion follows with no less evidence and all will prove indivisibles as before But 't is impossible that indivisibles should make Quantity for if they should it must be done either by a finite and determinate number or by an infinite multitude of them If you say by a finite let us take for example three indivisibles and by adding them together let us suppose a line composed whose extent being only longitude 't is the first and simplest species of Quantity and therfore whatever is divisible into parts must be at least a line This line thus made cannot be conceiv'd to be divided into more parts then three since doing so you reduce it into the indivisibles that composed it But Euclide hath demonstratively proved beyond all cavil in the Tenth Proposition of his Sixth Book of Elements that any line whatever may be divided into whatever number of parts so that if this be a line it must be divisible into an hundred or a thousand a million of parts which being impossible in a line divided into three parts only wherof every one is incapable of further division it is evident that neither a line nor any Quantity whatever is composed or made of a determinate number of indivisibles And since this capacity of being divisible into infinite parts is a property belonging to all extension for Euclide's demonstration is universal we must needs confess that 't is the nature of indivisibles when joyn'd together to be drown'd in one another for otherwise there would result a kind of extension out of them which would not have that property contrary to what Euclide has demonstrated And from hence it follows that Quantity cannot be composed of an infinite multitude of such indivisibles for if this be the nature of indivisibles though you put never so great a number of them together they will still drown themselvs all in one indivisible point For what difference can their being infinite bring to them of such force as to destroy their essence and property If you but consider how the essential composition of any Multitude whatever is made by the continual addition of Unities till that number arise 't is evident in our case that the infinity of indivisibles must also arise out of the continued addition of still one indivisible to the indivisibles presupposed Then let us apprehend a finite number of indivisibles which according as we have proved make no extension but are all drowned in the first and observing how the progress to an infinite multitude goes on by the steps of one and one added still to this presupposed number we shal see that every indivisible added and consequently the whole infinity will be drown'd in the first number as that was in the first indivisible Which will be yet plainer if we consider that the nature of extension requires one part be not in the same place where the other is then if the extension be composed of indivisibles let us take two points of place in which this extension is and inquire whether the indivisibles in each of these points be finite or infinite If it be answer'd that they are finite then the finite indivisibles in these two points make an extension which we have proved impossible But if they be said to be infinite then infinite indivisibles are drown'd in one point and consequently have not the force to make extension Thus then it remains firmly establish'd That Quantity is not composed of indivisibles neither finite nor infinite ones and consequently That parts are not actually in it Yet before we leave this point though we have already been somewhat long about it I conceive it will not be tedious if we be yet a little longer and bend
of this subject but to enumerate the several specieses of Quantity according to that division which Logitians for more facilitie of discourse have made of it Namely these six Magnitude Place Motion Time Number and Weight Of which the two first are Permanent and lie still exposed to the pleasure of whoever has a mind to take a survey of them Which he may doe by measuring what parts they are divisible into how many ells feet inches a thing is long broad or deep how great a place is whether it be not biger or lesser then such another and by such considerations as these which all agree in this that they express the essence of those two Specieses of Quantity to consist in a Capacity of being divided into parts The two next Motion and Time though they be of a fleeting propriety yet 't is evident that in regard of their original and essential nature they are nothing else but a like divisibility into parts which is measured by passing over so great or so little distance and by years days hours minutes and the like Number we also see is of the same nature for it is divisible into so many determinate parts and is measured by unities or by lesser numbers so or so often contain'd in a proposed greater And the like is evident of Weight which is divisible into pounds ounces drams or grains and by them is measured So that looking over all the several specieses of Quantitie 't is evident our definition of it is a true one and expresses fully the essence of it when we say it is Divisibilitie or a Capacitie to be divided into parts and that no other notion whatever besides this reaches the nature of of it CHAP. III. Of Rarity and Density I Intend in this Chapter to look as far as I can into the nature and causes of the two first differences of Bodies which follow out of Quantity as it concurs with Substance to make a Body for the discovery of them and of the various proportions of them among themselves will be a great and important step in the journey we are going But the scarcity of our language is such in subjects remov'd from ordinary conversation though in others I think none is more copious or expressive as affords us not apt words of our own to express significantly such notions as I must busie my self about in this discourse therefore I will presume to borrow them from the Latine School where there is much adoe about them I would express the difference between bodies that under the same measures and outward bulk have a greater thinness and expansion or thickness and solidity one than another which terms or any I can find in English do not signifie fully those differences of Quantity which I intend here to declare therefore I will do it under the names of Rarity and Density the true meaning of which will appear by what we shall hereafter say 'T is evident to us that there are different sorts of Bodies of which though you take equal quantities in one regard yet they will be unequal in another Their magnitudes may be the same but their weights will be different or contrarywise their weights being equal their outward measures will not be so Take a pinte of Air and weigh it against a pinte of Water and you will see the ballance of the last go down amain but if you drive out the Aire by filling the pinte with Lead the other pinte in which the Water is will rise again as fast which if you pour out and fill that pinte with Quicksilver you will perceive the Lead to be much lighter and again you will find a pinte of Gold heavier then so much Mercury And in like manner if you take away of the heavy bodies till they agree in weight with the lighter they wil take up fill different proportions and parts of the measure that shall contain them But whence this effect arises is the difficulty we would lay open Our measures tel us their quantities are equal and reason assures us there cannot be two bodies in one and the same place therfore when we see a pinte of one thing outweighs a pinte of another that is thiner we must conclude there is more body compacted together in the heavy thing than in the light for else how could so little of a solid or dense thing be stretch'd out to take up so great room as we see in a basin of water that being rarified into smoke or air fills the whole chamber and again shrink back into so little room as when it returns into water or is contracted into ice But how this comprehension of more body in equal room is effected doth not a little trouble Philosophers To find a way that may carry us through these difficulties arising out of the Rarity and Density of Bodies let us do as Astronomers when they inquire the motions of the Spheres and Planets they take all the Phenomena or several appearances of them to our eyes and then attribute to them such Orbs courses and periods as may square and fit with every one of them and by supposing them they can exactly calculate all that will ever after happen to them in their motions So let us take into our consideration the chief properties of rare and dense bodies and then cast with our selvs to find out an hypothesis or supposition if it be possible that may agree with them all First it seems to us that dense bodies have their parts more close and compacted than others have that are more rare and subtile Secondly they are more heavy than rare ones Again the rare are more easily divided than the dense bodies for water oyl milk honey and such like substances will not only yield easily to any harder thing than shall make its way through them but they are so apt to division and to lose their continuity that their own weights will overcome and break it wheras in iron gold marble and such dense bodies a much greater weight and force is necessary to work that effect And indeed if we look wel into it we shall find that the rarer things are as divisible in a lesser Quantity as the more dense are in a greater and the same force will break the rarer thing into more and lesser parts than it will an equal one that is more dense Take a Stick of light wood of such a bigness that being a foot long you may break it with your hands and another of the same bigness but of a more heavy and compacted wood and you shall not break it though it be two foot long and with equal force you may break a loaf of bread into more and less parts then a lump of lead that is of the same bigness Which also will resist more to the division of Fire the subtillest divider that is then so much water will For the little atomes of fire which we shall discourse on hereafter
will pierce cut out the water almost into as little parts as themselves and mingling themselves with them they will flie away together and so convert the whole body of water into subtile smoke whereas the same Agent after long working upon lead will bring it into no less parts then small grains of dust which it calcines it into And gold that is more dense then lead resists peremptorily all the dividing power of fire and will not at all be reduced into a calx or lime by such operation as reduced lead into it So that remembring how the nature of Quantity is Divisibility and considering that rare things are more divisible then dense ones we must needs acknowledge that the nature of Quantity is some way more perfectly in things that are Rare then in those that are Dense On the other side more compacted and dense things may haply seem to some to have more Quantity then those that are rare and that is but shrunk together which may be stretch'd out and driven into much greater dimensions then the Quantity of rare things taking the quantities of each equal in outward appearance As gold may be beaten into much more and thiner leaf then an equal bulk of silver or lead A wax candle will burn longer with a small light then a tallow candle of the same bigness and consequently be converted into a greater quantity of fire and air Oyl will make much more flame then spirit of wine that is far rarer then it These and such like considerations have much perplex'd Philosophers and driven them into diverse thoughts to find out the reasons of them Some observing that the dividing of a body into little parts makes it less apt to descend then when it is in greater have believ'd the whole cause of lightness and rarity to be derived from division As for example they find that lead cut into little pieces will not go down so fast in water as when it is in bulk and it may be reduced into so smal atomes that it will for some space swim upon the water like dust of wood Which assumption is prov'd by the great Galileus to whose excellent wit and admirable industry the world is beholding not only for his wonderful discoveries made in the Heavens but also for his acurate and learned declaring of those very things that lye under our feet He about the 90. page of his first Dialogue of Motion clearly demonstrates how any real medium must of necessity resist more the descent of a little piece of lead or any other weighty matter than it would a greater piece and the resistance will be greater and greater as the pieces are lesser and lesser So that as the pieces are made less they will in the same medium sink the flower and seem to have acquired a new nature of lightness by the diminution not only of having less weight in them than they had as half an ounce is less than a whole ounce but also of having in themselvs a less proportion of weight to their bulk than they had as a pound of Cork is in regard of its magnitude lighter than a pound of Lead So as they conclude that the thing whose continued parts are the lesser is in its own nature the lighter and the rarer and other things whose continued parts are greater be heavier and denser But this discourse reaches not home for by it the weight of any body being discovered by the proportion it has to the medium in which it descends it must ever suppose a body lighter than it self in which it may sink and go to the bottome Now of that lighter body I enquire what makes it be so and you must answer by what you have concluded that it is lighter then the other because the parts of it are lesse and moreseverd from one another for if they be as close together their division avails them nothing since things sticking fast together work as if they were but one and so a pound of lead though it be filed into small dust if it be compacted hard together will sink as fast as if it were one bulk Now then allowingthe little parts to be seperated I ask what other body fills up the spaces between those little parts of the medium in which your heavy body descends For if the parts of water are more sever'd then the parts of lead there must be some other substance to keep the parts of it asunder let us suppose this to be air and I ask Whether an equal part of air be as heavy as so much water or whether it be not If you say it is then the compound of water and air must be as heavy as lead since their parts one with another are as much compacted as the parts of lead are For there is no difference whether those bodies whose little parts are compacted together be of the same substance or of divers or whether the one be divided into smaller parts then the other or not so they be of equal weights in regard of making the whole equally heavy as you may experience if you mingle pin-dust with a sand of equal weight though it be beaten into far smaller divisions then the pin-dust and put them in a bag together But if you say that air is not so heavy as water it must be because every part of air hath again its parts more sever'd by some other body then the parts of water are sever'd by air And then I make the same instance of that body which severs the parts of air And so at last since there cannot actually be an infinite process of bodies one lighter then another you must come to one whose little parts filling the pores and spaces between the parts of the others have no spaces in themselves to be fil'd up But as soon as you acknowledge such a body to be lighter and rarer then all the rest you contradict and destroy all you said before For by reason of its having no pores it follows by your rule that the little parts of it must be as heavy if not heavier then the little parts of the same bigness of that body whose pores it fills and consequently it is proved by the experience we alledg'd of pin-dust mingled with sand that the little parts of it cannot by their mingling with the parts of the body in which it is immediately contain'd make that lighter then it would be if these little parts were not mingled with it Nor would both their parts mingled with the body which immediately contains them make that body lighter And so proceeding on in the same sort through all the mingled bodies till you come to the last that is immediately mingled with water you will make water nothing the lighter for being mingled with all these and by consequence it should be as heavy and as dense as lead Now that which deceiv'd the Authors of this opinion was that they had not a right intelligence of the causes
neither great nor little and consequently the whole machine raised upon that supposition must be ruinous His argument is to this purpose What is nothing cannot have parts but vacuum is nothing because as the Adversaries conceive it vacuum is the want of a corporeal substance in an inclosing body within whose sides nothing is whereas a certain body might be contain'd within them as if in a pail or bowl of a gallon there were neither milk nor water nor air nor any other body whatever therefore vacuum cannot have parts Yet those who admit it put it expresly for a Space which essentially includes Parts and thus they put two contradictories nothing and parts that is parts and no parts or something and nothing in the same proposition And this I conceive to be absolutely unavoidable For these reasons therfore I must entreat my Readers favour that he will allow me to touch upon Metaphysicks a little more than I desire or intended but it shall be no otherwise then as is said of the Dogs by the River Nilus side who being thirsty lap hastily of the water only to serve their necessity as they run along the shore Thus then remembring how we determin'd that Quantity is Divisibility it follows that if besides Quantity there be a Substance or Thing which is divisible that Thing if it be condistinguish'd from its Quantity or Divisibility must of it self be indivisible or to speak more properly it must be not divisible Put then such Substance to be capable of the Quantity of the whole world or Universe and consequently you put it of it self indifferent to all and to any part of Quantity for in it by reason of the negation of Divisibility there is no variety of parts wherof one should be the subject of one part of Quantity or another of another or that one should be a capacity of more another of â—ess This then being so we have the ground of more or less Proportion between Substance and Quantity for if the whole Quantity of the Universe be put into it the proportion of Quantity â—o the capacity of that substance will be greater than if but half â—hat quantity were imbibed in the same substance And because proportion changes on both sides by the single change of only one side it follows that in the latter the proportion of that Substance to its Quantity is greater and that in the former 't is less though the Substance in it self be indivisible What we have said thus in abstract will sink more easily into us if we apply it to some particular bodies here among us in which we see a difference of Rarity and Density as to air water gold or the like and examine if the effects that happen to them do follow out of this disproportion between substance and Quantity For example let us conceive that all the quantity of the world were in one uniform substance then the whole universe would be of one and the same degree of Rarity and Density let that degree be the degree of water it will then follow that in what part soever there happens to be a change from this degree that part will not have that proportion of quantity to its substance which the quantity of the whole world had to the presupposed uniformsubstance But if it happens to have the degree of rarity which is in the air it will then have more quantity in proportion to its substance then would be due to it according to the presupposed proportion of the quantity of the universe to the aforesaid uniform substance which in this case is as it were the standard to try all other proportions by And contrariwise if it happens to have the degree of Density which is found in earth or in gold then it will have less quantity in proportion to its substance then would be due to it according to the aforesaid proportion or common standard Now to proceed from hence with examining the effects which result out of this compounding of Quantity with substance we may first consider that the Definitions which Aristotle has given us of Rarity and Density are the same we drive at He tells us that that body is rare whose quantity is more and its substance less that contrariwise dense where the substance is more and the quantity less Now if we look into the proprieties of the bodies we have named or of any others we shall see them all follow clearly out of these definitions For first that one is more diffused another more compacted such diffusion and compaction seem to be the very natures of Rarity and Density supposing them to be such as we have defined them to be since substance is more diffused by having more parts or by being in more parts and is more compacted by the contrary And then that rare bodies are more divisible then dense ones you see is coincident into the same conceit with their diffusion and compaction And from hence again it follows that they are more easily both divided into great and by the force of natural Agents divisible into lesser parts for both these that is facility of being divided and easie divisibility into lesser parts are contain'd in being more divisible or in more enjoying the effect of Quantity which is divisibility From this again follows that in rare bodies there is less resistance to the motion of another body through it than in dense ones and therefore a like force passes more easily through the one than through the other Again rare bodies are more penetrative and active than dense ones because being by their overproportion of quantity easily divisible into small parts they can run into every little pore and so incorporate themselvs better into other bodies than more dense ones can Light bodies likewise must be rarer because most divisible if other circumstances concur equally Thus you see decypher'd to your hand the first division of bodies flowing from Quantity as it is ordain'd to Substance for the composition of a Body for since the definition of a Body is a thing which hath parts and quantity is that by which it hath parts and the first propriety of quantity is to be bigger or lesse and consequently the first differences of having parts are to have bigger or lesse more or fewer what division of a Body can be more simple more plain or more immediate than to divide it by its Quantity as making it have bigger or less more or fewer parts in proportion to its Substance Neither can I justly be blamed for touching thus on Metaphysicks to explicate the nature of these two kinds of Bodies for Metaphysicks being the Science above Physicks it belongs to her to declare the principles of Physicks of which these we have now in hand are the very first step But much more if we consider that the composition of quantity with substance is purely Metaphysical we must necessarily allow the inquiry into the nature of Rarity and Density to be wholly Metaphysical since
the essence of Rarity and Density stands in the proportion of quantity to substance if we believe Aristole the greatest master that ever was of finding out definitions and notions and trust to the uncontroulable reasons we have brought in the precedent discourse This explication of Rarity and Density by the composition of substance with quantity may peradventure give little satisfaction to such as are not used to raise their thoughts above Physical and natural speculations who are apt to conceive there it no other composition or resolution but such as our senses shew us in compounding and dividing bodies according to quantitive parts Now this obliges us to shew that such a kind of composition and division as this must necessarily be allow'd of even in that course of doctrine which seems most contrary to ours To which purpose let us suppose that the position of Democritus or of Epicurus is true to wit that the original compositions of all bodies is out of very little ones of various figures all of them indivisible not Mathematically but Physically and that this infinite number of indivisibles floats in an immense ocean of vacuum or imaginary space In this position let any man who conceives their grounds may be maintained explicate how one of these little bodies is moved For taking two parts of vacuum in which this body successively is 't is clear that really and not only in my understanding 't is a difference in the said body to be now here now there wherfore when the body is gone thither the notion of being here is no more in the body and consequently is divided from the body And therfore when the body was here there was a composition between the body and its being here which seeing it cannot be betwixt two parts of Quantity must of necessity be such a kind of composition as we put between quantity and substance And certainly let men wrack their brains never so much they will never be able to shew how motion is made without some such composition and division upon what grounds soever they proceed And if then they tell us that they understand not how there can be a divisibility between substance and quantity we may reply that to such a divisibility two things are required first that the Notions of Substance and Quantity be different secondly that one of them may be Chang'd without the other As for the First 't is most evident we make an absolute distinction between their two notions both when we say that Socrates was bigger a Man than a Boy and when we conceive that milk or water while it boyles or wine while it works so as they run over the vessels they are in are greater and possess more place then when they were cool and quiet and fill'd not the vessel to the brim For however witty explications may seem to evade that the Same thing is now greater now lesser yet it cannot be avoided but that ordinary men who look not into Philosophy both conceive it to be so and in their familiar discourse express it so which they could not do if they had not different notions of the Substance and of the Quantity of the thing they speak of And though we had no such evidences the very names and definitions of them would put it beyond strife all men calling substance a Thing quantity Bigness and refering a Thing to Being as who would say that which is but Bigness to some other of like nature to which it is compar'd as that it is half as big twice as big or the like This then being unavoidable that the Notions are distinguish'd there remains no difficulty but only in the Second namely that the one may be Chang'd and the other not Which reason and demonstration convince as we have shew'd Wherfore if any shall yet further reply that they do not understand how such change is made we shall answer by asking them whether they know how the change of being sometimes here sometimes there is made by local motion in vacuum without a change in the body moved Which question if they cannot satisfie they must either deny that there is any local motion in vacuum or else admit a change in quantity without a change in substance for this latter is as evidently true as they suppose the former to be though the manner how they are effected be alike obscure in both and the reason of the obscurity the same in both With which we will conclude the present Chapter adding onely this note That if all Physical things and natural changes proceed out of the constitution of rare and dense bodies in this manner as we put them which the work we have in hand intends to shew then so manifold effects will so convince the truth of this doctrine we have declared that there can remain no doubt of it nor can there be any of the divisibility of quantity from substance without which this doctrine cannot consist For it cannot be understood how there is a greater proportion of quantity than of substance or contrariwise of substance then of quantity if there be not a real divisibility between quantity and substance And much less can it be conceiv'd that the same thing hath at one time a greater proportion of Quantity and at another time a less if the greater or lesser proportion be not separable from it that is if there be not a divisibility betwixt it and substance as well as there are different notions of them Which to prove by the proper principle belonging to this matter would require us to make a greater inrode into the very bowels of Metathysicks and to take a larger circuit then is fitting either for the subject or for the intended brevity of this Treatise CHAP. IV. Of the four first Qualities and of the four Elements THe subject of our discourse hitherto hath been three simple notions Quantity Rarity and Density Now it shall be to enquire if by compounding these with Gravity or Weight which is one of the specieses of Quantity above mentioned and of which I shall speak at large hereafter we may beget any further qualities and so produce the Four first Bodies call'd Elements Inimitation of Logitians who by compounding such propositions as of themselves are evident to mans nature as soon as they are proposed bring forth new knowledges which threds they still entermix and weave together till they grow into a fair piece And thus the Sciences they so much labour for and that have so great an extent result out of few and simple notions in their beginnings But before we fall to mingling and comparing them together I think it will not be amiss to set down and determine what kind of things we mean by rare and what by dense that when the names are agreed on we may slip into no errour by mistaking them So then though there be several considerations in regard of which rarity and density may be differently attributed to bodies yet
compounded one will be gathered into one place and those of divers kinds into divers places which is the notion whereby Aristotle hath express'd the nature of heat and is an effect which daily experience in burning and boiling teaches us to proceed from heat And therefore we cannot doubt but such extreme rare bodies are as well hot as dry On the other side if a Dense thing be apply'd to a compound it will because it is weighty press it together and if that application be continu'd on all sides so that no part of the body that is pressed be free from the siege of the dense body that presses it it will form it into a narrower room and keep in the parts of it not permitting any of them to slip out So that what things soever it finds within its power to master be they light or heavy or of what contrary nature soever it compresses them as much as it can and draws them into a less compass and holds them strongly together making them stick fast to one another Which effect Aristotle took for the proper notion of cold and therefore gave for definition of the nature of it that it gathers things of divers natures and experience shews us in freezing and all great coolings that this effect proceds from cold But if we examine which of the two sorts of dense bodies the fluide or the consistent is most efficacious in this operation we shall find that the less dense one is more capable of being apply'd round about the body it shall besiege and therefore will stop closer every little hole and more easily send subtile parts into every little vein of it and by consequence shrink it up together and coagulate and constringe it more strongly then a body can that is extremely dense which by reason of its great density and the stubbornness of its parts cannot so easily bend and ply them to work this effect And therefore a body that is immoderately dense is colder then another that is so in excess since cold is an active or working power and that which is less dense excells in working On the contrary side rare bodies being hot because their subtile parts environing a compounded body will sink into the pores of it and to their power separate its parts it follows that those wherein the gravity overcomes the rarity are less hot then such others as are in the extremity and highest excess of rarity both because the former are not able to pierce so little parts of the resisting dense body as extreme rare ones are and likewise because they more easily take ply by the obstacle of the solid ones they meet with then these do So that out of this discourse we gather that of such bodies as differ precisely by the proportion of Rarity and Density those which are extremely rare are in the excesse of heat and are dry withall that weighty rare bodies are extremely humid and meanly hot that fluide dense bodies are moist though not in such excess as rare ones that are so but are coldest of any and lastly that extreme dense bodies are less cold then fluide dense ones and that they are dry But whether the extreme dense bodies be more or less dry then such as are extremely rare remains yet to be decided Which we shall easily do if we but reflect that it is density which makes a thing hard to be divided and rarity makes it easie for a facility to yeeld to division is nothing else but a pliableness in the thing that is to be divided wherby it easily receives the figure which the thing that divides it doth cast it into Now this plyablenss belongs more to rare then to dense things and accordingly we see fire more easily bend by the concameration of an oven then a stone can be reduced into due figure by hewing And therfore since dryness is a quality that makes those bodies wherein it reigns conserve themselves in their own figure and limits and resist the receiving of any from another body it is manifest that those are driest wherein these effects are most seen which is in dense dodies and consequently excess of dryness must be allotted to them to keep company with their moderate coldness Thus we see that the number of Elements assign'd by Aristotle is truly and exactly determin'd by him and that there can be neither more nor less of them and their qualities are rightly allotted to them Which to settle more firmly in our minds it will not be mis-spent time to sum up in short the effect of what we have hitherto said to bring us to this Conclusion First we shew'd that a body is made and constituted a Body by Quantity Next that the first division of Bodies is into Rare and Dense ones as differing only by having more less Quantity And lastly that the conjunction of Gravity with these two breeds two other sorts of combinations each of which is also twofold the first sort concerning Rarity out of which arises one extremely hot and moderately dry and another extremely humide and moderately hot the second sort concerning Density out of which is produced one that is extremely cold and moderately wet and another extremely dry and moderately cold And these are the combinations whereby are constituted Fire Air Water and Earth So that we have thus the proper notions of the Four Elements and both them and their qualities driven up and resolv'd into their most simple Principles which are the notions of Quantity and of the two most simple differences of quantitive things Rarity and Density Beyond which mans wit cannot penetrate nor can his wishes aim at more in this particular seeing he has attain'd to the knowledge of what they are and of what makes them be so and that it is impossible they should be otherwise and this by the most simple and first principles which enter into the composition of their nature Out of which it is evident these Four bodies are Elements since they cannot be resolv'd into any others by way of physicall composition themselves being constituted by the most simple Differences of a Body And again all other bodies whatever must of necessity be resolv'd into them for the same reason because no bodies can be exempt from the First defferences of a Body Since then we mean by the name of an Element a Body not composed of any former bodies and of which all other bodies are composed we may rest satisfied that these are rightly so named But whether every one of these four Elements comprehend under its name one only lowest Species or mady as whether there be one only Species of fire or several and the like of the rest we intend not here to determine Yet we note that there is a great latitude in every kind since Rarity and Density as we have said before are as divisible as Quantity Which Latitudes in the bodies we converse with are so limited that What makes it self and
other things be seen as being accompanied by light is called Fire What admits the illuminative action of fire and is not seen is called Air What admits the same action and is seen in the rank of Elements is called Water And what through the density of it admits not that action but absolutely reflects it is called Earth And out of all we said of these four Elements it is manifest there cannot be a fifth as is to be seen at large in every Aristotelian Philosopher that writes of this matter I am not ignorant that there are sundry objections used to be made both against these notions of the First Qualities and against the division of the Elements but because they and their solotions are to be found in every ordinary Philosopher and not of any great difficulty and that the handling them is too particular for the design of this discourse and would make it too prolix I refer the Reader to seek them for his satisfaction in those Authors that treat Physick professedly and have deliver'd a compleat body of Phylosophy And I will end this Chapter with advertising him lest I should be misunderstood that though my disquisition here has pitch'd on the four bodies of Fire Air Water and Earth yet it is not my intention to affirme that those which we ordinary call so and fall daily within our use are such as I have here express'd them or that these Phlosophicall ones which arise purely out of the combination of the first qualities have their residence or consistence in great bulks in any places of the World be they never so remote as Fire in the hollow of the Moons Orb Water in the bottom of the Sea Air above the Clouds and Earth below the Mines But these notions are onely to serve for certain Idea's of Elements by which the forenamed bodies and the compounds of them may be tryed and receive their doom of more or lesse pure and approaching to the nature from whence they have their denomination And yet I will not deny but that such perfect Elements may be foumd in some very little quantities in mixed bodies and the greatest abundance of them in these four known bodies that we call in ordinary practise by the names of the pure ones for they are least compounded and approach most to the simpleness of the Elements But to determine absolutely their existence or not existence either in bulk or in little parts depends of the manner of action among bodies which as yet we have not medled with CHAP. V. Of the operations of the Elements in general And of their activities compared with one another HAving by our former discourse inquired out what degrees and proportions of rarity and density compounded with gravity are necessary for the production of the Elements and first qualities whose combinations frame the Elements our next consideration in that orderly progress we have proposed to our selves in this Treatise wherein our aim is to follow successively the steps which nature has printed out to us will be to examine the operations of the Elements by which they work upon one another To which end let us propose to our selves a rare and a dense body encountring one another by the impulse of some exterior agent In this case 't is evident that since rarity implyes a greater proportion of quantity and quantity is nothing but divisibility rare bodies must needs be more divisible then dense ones and consequently when two such bodies are press'd one against another the rare body not being able to resist division so strongly as the dense one is and being not permitted to retire back by reason of the extern violence impelling it against the dense body it follows that the parts of the rare body must be sever'd to let the dense one come between them and so the rare body becomes divided and the dense body the divider And by this we see that the notions of divider and divisible immediately follow rare and dense bodies and so much the more properly agree to them as they exceed in the qualities of Rarity and Density Likewise we are to observe in our case that the dense or dividing body must necessarily cut and enter further and further into the rare or divided body and so the sides of it be joyn'd successively to new and new pars of the rare body that gives way to it and forsake others it parts from Now the rare body being in a determinate situation of the Universe which we call being in a place and is a necessary condition belonging to all particular bodies and the dense body comming to be within the rare body whereas formerly it was not so it follows that it loses the place it had and gains another This effect is that which we call local motion And thus we see by explicating the manner of this action that locall motion is nothing else but the change of that respect or relation which the body moved has to the rest of the Universe following out of Division and the name of Locall Motion formerly signifies only the mutation of a respect to other extrinsecall bodies subsequent to that division And this is so evident and agreeable to the notions that all mankind who as we have said is judge and master of language naturally frames of place as I wonder much why any will labour to give other artificall and intricate doctrine of this that in it self is so plain and clear What need is there to introduce an imaginary space or with Johannes Grammaticus a subsistent quantity that must run through all the World and then entail to every body an aiery entity an unconceiveable mood an unintelligible Ubi that by an intrinsecall relation to such a part of the imaginary space must thereto pin and fasten the body it is in It must needs be a ruinous Phylosophy that is grounded upon such a contradiction as is the allotting of parts to that which the Authors themselvs upon the matter acknowledge to be merely nothing and upon so weak a shift to deliver them from the inconveniences that in their course of doctrine other circumstances bring them to as is the voluntary creating of new imaginary Entities in things without any ground in nature for them Learned men should express the advantage and subtilty of their wits by penetrating further into nature then the vulgar not by vexing and wresting it from its own course They should refine and carry higher not contradict and destroy the notions of mankind in those things it is the competent judge of as it undoubtedly is of those primary notions which Aristotle has rank'd under Ten Heads which as we have touched before every one can conceive in gross and the work of Scholars is to explicate them in particular and not to make the Vulgar believe they are mistaken in framing those apprehensions that nature taught them Out of that which hath been hitherto resolvd 't is manifest that Place really and abstracting from
man that seeing the Divider is the agent in division and in Local motion and dense bodies are by their nature dividers the Earth must in that regard be the most active among the Elements since it is the most dense of them all But this seems to be against the Common judgment of all the searchers of nature who unamimously agree that Fire is the most active Element As also it seems to impugne what we our selves have determin'd when we said there were two active qualities heat and cold whereof the first was in its greatest excess in Fire and the latter in water To reconcile these we are to consider that the action of Cold in its greatest height is composed of two parts the one is a kind of pressing and the other is penetration which requires applicability Of which two the former arises out of density but the latter out of moderation of density as I have declared in the precedent Chapter Wherefore the former will exceed more in Earth though the whole be more eminent in Water For though considering only the force of moving which is a a more simple and abstracted notion then the determination and particularization of the Elements and is precedent to it therein Earth hath a precedency over water yet taking the action as it is determin'd to be the action of a particular Element and as it concurs to the composition or dissolution of mixed bodies in that consideration which is the chief work of Elements and requires an intime application of the Agents Water hath the principality and excess over Earth As for Fire it is more active then either of them as will appear clearly if we consider how when Fire is applyed to fewel and the violence of blowing is added to its own motion it incorporates it self with the fewel and in a small time converts a great part of it into its own nature and shatters the rest into smoak and ashes All which proceeds from the exceeding smallness and dryness of the parts of fire which being moved with violence against the fewel and thronging in multitudes upon it easily pierce the porous substance of it like so many extreme sharp Needles And that the force of Fire is as great and greater then of Earth we may gather out of our former discourse where having resolved that density is the virtue by which a body is moved and cuts the medium and again considering that celerity of motion is a kind of density as we shall by and by declare 't is evident that since blowing must of necessity press violently and with a rapid motion the parts of fire against the fewel and so condense them exceedingly there both by their celerity by bringing very many parts together there it must needs also give them activity and vertue to pierce the body they are beaten against New that Celerity is a kind of Density will appear by comparing their natures For if we consider that a dense body may be dilated so as to possess and fill the place of a rare body that exceeded it in bigness and by that dilatation may be divided into as many and as great parts as the rare body was divisible into we may conceive that the substance of those parts was by a secret power of nature folded up in that little extension in which it was before And even so if we reflect upon two Rivers of equal channels and depths whereof the one goes swifter then the other and determine a certain length of each channel and a common measure of Time we shall see that in the same measure of time there passes a greater bulk of water in the designed part of the channel of the swifter stream then in the designed part of the flower though those parts be equal Nor imports it that in Velocity we take a part of time whereas in Density it seems that an instant is sufficient and consequently there would be no proportion between them For knowing Philosophers all agree that there are no Instants in time and that the apprehension of them proceeds meerly from the manner of our understanding And as for parts in time there cannot be assumed any so little in which the comparison is not true and so in this regard it is absolutely good And if the Reader have difficulty at the disparity of the things which are pressed together in Density and in Celerity for that in Density there is only Substance in Celerity there is also Quantity crowded up with the substence he will soon receive satisfaction when he shall consider that this disparity is to the advantage of what we say and makes the nature of density more perfect in celerity and consequently more powerful in fire then in earth Besides if there were no disparity it would be a distinct species of density but the very same By what we have spoken above it appears how fire gets into fewel now let us consider how it comes out for the activity of that fierce body will not let it lie still and rest as long as it has so many enemies round about it to rouse it up We see then that as soon as it has incoporated it self with the fewel and is grown master of it by introducing into it so many of its own parts like so many Souldiers into an Enemies Town they break out again on every side with as much violence as they came in For by reason of the former resistance of the fewel their continual streaming of new parts upon it and one overtaking another there where their journey was stop'd all which is increas'd by the blowing doth so exceedingly condense them into a narrower room then their nature effects that as soon as they get liberty and grow masters of the fewel which at the first was their prison they enlarge their place and consequently come out and flie abroad ever aiming right forwards from the point where they begin their journey for the violence wherewith they seek to extend themselves into a larger room when they have liberty to do so will admit no motion but the shortest which is by a straight line So that if in our phantasie we frame an image of a round body all of fire we must withall presently conceive that the flame proceeding from it would diffuse it self every way indifferently in straight lines so that the source serving for the Center there would be round about it an huge Sphere and of fire and light unless some accidental and extern cause should determine its motion more to one part then to another Which compass because it is round and has the figure of a Sphere is by Philosophers term'd the Sphere of its activity So that it is evident the most simple and primary motition of fire is a flux in a direct line from the center of it to its circumference taking the fewel for its center as also that when 't is beaten against a harder body it may be able to destroy it though that
from its nature by suffering the like effect Yet dilated water will in proportion moisten more then dilated fire will burn for the rarefaction of water brings it nearer to the nature of air whose chief propriety is moisture and the fire that accompanies it when it raiseth it into steam gives it more powerful ingression into what body it meets withal whereas fire when 't is very pure and at entire liberty to stretch and spread it self as wide as the nature of it will carry it gets no advantage of burning by its mixture with air and although it gains force by its purity yet by reason of its extreme rarefaction it must needs be extreamly faint But if by the help of Glasses you will gather into less room what is diffused into a great one and so condense it as much as it is for example in the flame of a candle then that fire or compacted light will burn much more forcibly then so much flame for there is as much of it in quantity excepting what is lost in the carriage of it and it is held in together in as little room and it has this advantage besides that 't is clog'd with no grosse body to hinder the activity of it It seems to me now that the very answering this objection doth besides repelling the force of it evidently prove that light is nothing but fire in its own nature and exceedingly dilated for if you suppose fire for example the flame of a candle to be stretch'd out to the utmost expansion that you may well imagine such a gross body is capable of 't is impossible it should appear and work otherwise then it doth in light as I have shewd above And again we see plainly that light gather'd together burns more forcibly then any other fire whatever and therefore must needs be fire Why then shall we not confidently conclude that what is fire before it gets abroad and is fire again when it comes together doth likewise remain fire during all its journey Nay even in the journey it self we have particular testimony that it is fire for light returning back from the earth charg'd with little atomes as it doth in soultry gloomy weather heats much more than before just as fire doth when it is imprisoned in a dense body Philosophers ought not to judge by the same rules that the common people doth Their gross sense is all their guide and therfore they cannot apprehend any thing to be fire that doth not make it self to be known for such by burning them But he that judiciously examines the matter and traces the pedigree and period of it and sees the reason why in some circumstances it burns and in others not is too blame if he suffer himself to be led by others ignorance contrary to his own reason When they that are curious in perfumes will have their chamber fil'd with a good scent in a hot season that agrees not with burning perfumes and therfore make some odoriferous water be blown about it by their servants mouthes that are dexterous in that ministery as is used in Spain in the Summer time every one that sees it done though on a sudden the water be lost to his eyes and touch and is only discernable by his nose yet is well satisfied that the scent which recreates him is the very water he saw in the glass extremely dilated by the forcible sprouting of it out from the servants mouth and will by little and little fall down and become again palpable water as it was before and therefore doubts not but it is still water whiles it hangs in the air divided into little atomes Whereas one that saw not the beginning of this operation by water nor observ'd how in the end it shews it self again in water might the better be excused if he should not think that what he smel'd were water blown about the air nor any substance of it self because he neither sees nor handles it but some adventitious quality he knows not how adhering to the air The like difference is between Philosophers that proceed orderly in their discourses and others that pay themselves with terms which they understand not The one see evidence in what they conclude whiles the others guesse wildly at random I hope the Reader will not deem it time lost from our main drift which we take up thus in examples and digressions for if I be not much deceived they serve exceedingly to illustrate the matter Which I hope I have now rendred so plain as no man that shall have well weighed it will expect that Fire dilated into that rarified substance which mankind who according to the different appearance of things to their sense gives different names to them calls Light should burn like that grosser substance which from doing so they call fire nor doubt but that they may be the same thing more or less attenuated as leaf-gold that flies in the air as light as down is as truly gold as that in an ingot which being heavier then any other substance falls most forcibly to the ground What we have said of the unburning fire which we call light streaming from the flame of a Candle may easily be apply'd to all other lights deprived of sensible heat whereof some appear with flame others without it Of the first sort are the innoxious flames that are often seen on the hair of mens heads and horses manes on the Masts of ships over graves and fat marish grounds and the like and of the latter sort are Glow-worms and the light-conserving stones rotten wood some kinds of fish and of flesh when they begin to putrifie and some other things of the like nature Now to answer the second part of this objection That we daily see great heats without any light as well as much light without any heat and therefore light and fire cannot be the same thing You may call to mind how Dense bodies are capable of great quantities of Rare ones and thereby it comes to pass that bodies which repugn to the dilatation of flame may nevertheless have much fire inclosed in them As in a stove let the fire be never so great yet it appears not outwards to the sight although that stove warm all the rooms near it So when many little parts of heat are imprison'd in as many little cells of gross earthly substance which are like so many little stoves to them that imprisonment will not hinder them from being very hot to the sense of feeling which is most perceptible of dense things But because they are choak'd with the closeness of the gross matter wherein they are closed they cannot break out into a body of flame or light so to discover their nature which as we have said before is the most unfit way for burning for we see that light must be condensed to produce flame and fire as flame must be to burn violently Having thus clear'd the third objection as I
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
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
to which much more might be added but that we have already trespassed in length and I conceive enough is said to decide the matter an equal judge will find the ballance of the question to hang upon these termes that to prove the nature of light to be material corporeal are brought a company of accidents well known to be the proprieties of quantitie or bodies and as well known to be in light Even so far as that 't is manifest light in its beginning before it be dispersed is fire and if again it be gathered together it shews it self again to be fire And the receptacles of it are the receptacles of a body being a multitude of pores as the hardness and coldness of transparent things do give us to understand of which we shall hereafter have occasion to discourse On the contrary side whatever arguments are brought against lights being a body are only negative As that we see not any motion of light that we do not discern where the confines are between light and air that we see not room for both of them or for more lights to be together and the like which is to oppose negative proofs against affirmative ones and to build a doctrine upon the defect of our senses or upon the likeness of bodies which are extremely unlike expecting the same effects from the most subtile as from the most gross ones All which together with the authority of Aristotle his followers have turned light into darkness and made us almost deny the light of our own eyes Now then to take our leave of this important question let us return to the principles from whence we began and consider that Seeing Fire is the most rare of the Elements and very dry and that out of the former it hath that it may be cut into very small pieces and out of the later that it conserves its own figure and so is apt to divide what ever fluid body and joyning to these two principles that it multiplies extremely in its source It must of necessity follow that it sends out in great multitudes little small parts into the air and other bodies circumfused with great dilatation in a spherical manner And likewise that these little parts are easily broken and new ones still following the former are still multiplyed in straight lines from the place where they break Out of which 't is evident that of necessity it must in a manner fill all places and that no sensible place is so little but that fire wil be found in it if the medium be capacious As also that its extreme least parts will be very easily swallow'd up in the parts of the air which are humid and by their enfolding be as it were quite lost so as to lose the appearance of fire Again that in its reflections it will follow the nature of grosser bodies and have glidings like them which is that we call refractions That little streamings from it will cross one another in excessive great numbers in an unsensible part of space without hindering one another That its motion will be quicker then sense can judge of and therefore will seem to move in an instant or to stand still as in a stagnation That if there be any bodies so porous with little and thick pores as that the pores arrive near to equalling the substance of the body then such a body will be so fill'd with these little particles of fire that it will appear as if there were no stop in its passage but were all filled with fire and yet many of these little parts will be reflected And whatever qualities else we find in light we shall be able to derive them out of these principles and shew that fire must of necessity do what experience teaches us that light doth That is to say in one word it will shew us that fire is light But if fire be light then light must needs be fire And so we leave this matter CHAP. IX Of Local motion in common THough in the fifth Chapter we made only earth the pretender in the controversie aginst fire for superiority in activity and in very truth the greatest force of gravity appears in those bodies which are eminently earthy nevertheless both water and air as appears out of the 4. Chapter of the Elements do agree with earth in having gravity and gravity is the chief virtue to make them efficients So that upon the matter this plea is common to all the three Elements Wherfore to explicate this virtue wherby these three weighty Elements work let us call to mind what we said in the beginning of the last Chapter concerning local motion to wit that according as the body moved or the divider did more and more enter into the divided body so it joyn'd it self to some new parts of the Medium or divided body and did in like manner forsake others Whence it happens that in every part of motion it possesses a greater part of the Medium then it self can fill at once And because by the limitation and confinedness of every magnitude to just what it is and no more 't is impossible that a lesser body should at once equalize a greater it followes that this division or motion whereby a body attains to fill a place bigger then it self must be done successively that is it must first fill one part of the place it moves in then another and so proceed on till it have measur'd it self with every part of the place from the first beginning of the line of motion to the last period of it where the body rests By which discourse it is evident that there cannot in nature be a strength so great as to make the least or quickest moveable that is to pass in an instant or all together over the least place that can be imagin'd for that would make the moved body remaining what it is in regard of its bigness to equallize and fit a thing bigger then it is Therfore it is manifest that motion must consist of such parts as have this nature that whiles one of them is in being the others are not yet and as by degrees every new one comes to be all the others that were before do vanish and cease to be Which circumstance accompanying motion we call Succession And whatever is so done is said to be done in time which is the common measure of all succession For the change of situation of the Stars but especally of the Sun and Moon is observ'd more or less by all mankind and appears alike to every man and being the most known constant and uniform succession that men are used to is as it were by nature it self set in their way and offer'd them as fittest to estimate and judge all other particular successions by comparing them both to it and among themselves by it And accordingly we see all men naturally measure all other successions and express their quantities by comparing them to the
revolutions of the Heavens for dayes houres and yeares are nothing else but they or some determinate parts of them to some of which all other motions and successions must of necessity be refer'd if we will measure them And thus we see how all the mystery of applying time to particular motions is nothing else but the considering how far the Agent that moves the Sun causes it to go on in its journey whiles the Agent that moves a particular body causes it to perform its motion So that 't is evident that Velocity is the effect of the superproportion of the one Agent over a certain Medium in respect of the proportion which another Agent hath to the same Medium And therefore Velocity is a quality by which One succession is intrinsically distinguishd from Another though our explication uses to include time in the notions of velocity and tardity Velocity then is the effect as we said of more strength in the Agent And having before expressed that velocity is a kind of density we find that this kind of density is an excellency in succession as permanent density is an excellency in the nature of Substance though an imperfection in the nature of Quantity by which we see that quantity is a kind of base alloy added to substance And out of this it is evident that by how much the quicker the motion is in equall Mediums by so much the agent is the perfecter which causes it to so quick Wherfore if the velocity should ascend so much as to admit no proportion between the quickness of the one and the tardity of the other all other circumstances being even excepting the difference of the Agents then there must be no proportion between the Agents Nor indeed can there be any proportion between them though there were never so many differences in other circumstances as long as those differences be within any proportion And consequently you see that if one Agent be supposed to move in an instant and another in time whatever other differences be in the bodies moved and in the Mediums nevertheless the agent which causes motion in an instant will be infinite in respect of the agent which moves in time Which is impossible it being the nature of a body that greater quantity of the same thing hath greater virtue then a less quantity hath and therfore for a body to have infinite virtue it must have infinite magnitude If any should say the contrary affirming the infinite virtue may be in a finite body I ask whether in half that body were it divided the virtue would be infinite or no If he acknowledge that it would not I infer thence that neither in the two parts together there can be infinite virtue for two finites cannot compose and make up one infinite But if he will have the virtue be infinite in each half he therin allows that there is no more virtue in the whole body then in one half of it which is against the nature of bodies Now that a body cannot be infinite in greatness is proved in the Second Knot of Mr. White 's first Dialogue De Mundo And thus it is evident that by the virtue of pure bodies there can be no motion in an instant On the other side it followes that there cannot be so little a force in nature but that giving it time enough it will move the greatest weight that can be imagined For the things we treat of being all of them quantities may by Division and Multiplication be brought to equality As for example Supposing the weight of a moveable to be a million of pounds and that the mover is able to move the millioneth part of one of those pounds in a million of yeares the millioneth part of a pace through a Medium of a certain rarity seeing yeers may be multiplied so as to equalize the force of this mover to the weight of the moveable it follows clearly that this force may move the whole weight of a million of pounds through the determined Medium in a determinate number of millions of years a million of paces For such a force is equal to the required effect and by consequence if the effect should not follow there would be a compleat cause put and no effect result from it But peradventure 't is needful to illustrate this point yet further Suppose then a weight never so great to be A and a force never so little to be B. Now if you conceive that some other force moves A you must withall conceive it moves A some space since all motion implies necessarily that it be through some space Let that space be CD And because a body cannot be moved a space in an instant but requires some time to have its motion perform'd in it follows that there must be a determin'd time in which the conceiv'd force must move the weight A through the space CD Let that time be EF. Now then this is evident that 't is all one to say that B moves A and to say that B moves A through a space in a time so that if any part of this be left out it cannot be understood that B moves A. Therfore to express particularly the effect which B is to do upon A we must say B must move A a certain space in a certain time Which being so we may in the next place consider that this effect of moving A may be diminish'd two waies either because the space 't is to be moved in is lessened or the time taken up in its motion is encreas'd for as it is a greater effect to move A through the space CD in a less time then EF so it is a less effect to move the same A through the space CD in a greater time then EF or through a less space then CD in the time EF. Now then this being suposed that it is a less effect to move A through CD in a greater time then EF it follows also that a lesser virtue is able to move it through CD in a greater time then EF then the virtue which is requir'd to move it through the same space in the time EF. Which if it be once granted as it cannot be denied then multiplying the time as much as the virtue or force required to move A through CD in the time EF is greater then the force B in so much time the force B will be able to move A through CD Which discourse is evident if we take it in common terms but it be applied to action wherin physical accidents intervene the artificer must have the judgment to provide for them according to the nature of his matter Upon this last discourse hangs the Principle which governs Mechanicks to wit that the force and the distance of weights counterpoysing one another ought to reciprocal That is by how much the one weight is heavier then the other by so much must the distance of the lighter from the fixed point upon which
downwards Nor need we fear lest the littlenessof the agents or the feebleness of their stroaks should not be sufficient to work this effect since there is no resistance in the body it self and the air is continually cut in pieces by the Sun-beams and by the motions of little bodies so that the adhesion to air of the body to be moved will be no hind'rance to this motion especially considering the perpetual new percussions and the multitude of them and how no force is so little but that with time and multiplication it will overcome any resistance But if any man desires to look on as it were at one view the whole chain of this doctrine of Gravity let him turn the first cast of his eyes on what we have said of fire when we explicated the nature of it To wit that it begins from a little source and by extreme multiplication and rarefaction extends it self into a great sphere And then hee 's perceive the reason why light is darted from the body of the Sun with that incredible celerity wherewith its beams fly to visit the remotest parts of the world and how of necessity it gives motion to all circumstant bodies since it is violently thrust forward by so extreme rarefaction and the further it goes is still the more rarified and dilated Next let him reflect how infinitely the quickness of lights motion prevents the motion of a moist body such an one as air is and then he wil plainly see that the first motion which light is able to give the air must needs be a swelling of that moist element perpendicularly round about the earth For the ray descendent and the ray reflectent flying with so great a speed that the air between them cannot take a formal pley any way before the beams of light be on both sides of it it followes that according to the nature of humide things it must first only swell for that is the beginning of motion in them when heat enters into and works on them And thus he may confidently resolve himself that the first motion which light causes in the air will be a swelling of it between the two rays towards the middle of them That is perpendicularly from the surface of the earth And out of this he will likewise plainly see that if there be any other little dense bodies floating in the air they must likewise mount a little through this swelling and rising of the air But that mounting will be no more then the immediate parts of the air themselvs move Because this motion is not by way of impulse or stroke that the air gives those denser bodies but by way of containing them in it and carrying them with it so that it gives them no more celerity then to make them go with it self and as parts of it self Then let him consider that light or fire by much beating upon the earth divides some little parts of it from others wherof if any become so small and tractable as not to exceed the strength which the rays have to manage them the returning rays will at their going back carry away with or drive before them such little atomes as they made or met with and so fill the air with little bodies cut out of the earth After this let him consider that when light caries up an atome with it the light and the atome stick together and make one ascending body in such sort as when an empty dish lies upon the water the air in the dish makes one descendent body together with the dish it self so that the density of the whole body of air and dish which in this case are but as one body is to be esteem'd according to the density of the two parts one of them being allay'd by the other as if the whole where thrughout of such a proportion of density as would arise out of the composition and kneading together the several densities of those two parts Now then when these little compounded bodies of light and earth are carryed up to a determinate height the parts of fire or light by little and little break away from them and therby the bulk of the part which is left becoms of a different degree of density quantity for quantity from the bulk of the entire atome when light was part of it and consequently it is denser then it was Besides let him consider that when these bodies ascend they go from a narrow room to a large one that is from the centrewards to the circumference but when they come down again they go from a larger part to a narrower Whence it followes that as they descend they draw closer and closer together and by consequence are subject to meet and fall in one with another and therby to increase their bulk and become more powerful in density not only by the loss of their fire but also by the encrease of their quantity And so 't is evident that they are denser coming down then going up Lastly let him consider that those atoms which went up first and are parted from their volative companions of fire or light must begin to come down apace when other new atoms which still have their light incorporated with them ascend to where they are and go beyond them by reason of their greater levity And as the latter atoms come up with a violence and great celerity so must the first go down with a smart impulse and by consequence being more dense then the air in which they are carryed must of necessity cut their way through that liquid and rare Medium and go the next way to supply the defect and room of the atoms which ascend that is perpendicularly to the earth and give the like motion to any body they find in their way if it be susceptible of such a motion Which 't is evident that all bodies are unless they be strucken by some contrary impulse For since a bodies being in a place is nothing else but the continuity of its outside to the inside of the body that contains it and is its place it can have no other repugnance to local motion which is nothing else but a successive changing of place besides this continuity Now the nature of density being the power of dividing and every least power having some force efficacy as we have shew'd above it follows that the stroke of every atome either descending or ascending will work somthing upon any body though never so big it chances to incounter with and strike upon in its way unless there be as strong an impulse the contrary way to oppose it But it being determin'd that the descending atoms are denser then those that ascend it follows that the descending ones will prevail And consequently all dense bodies must necessarily tend downwards to the center which is to be heavy if some other more dense body do not hinder them Out of this discourse we may conclude that there is no such thing among bodies
here their proportions which I leave to them who make that examination their task for thus much serves my present turn wherein I take a survey of nature but in gross And my chief drift in this particular is only to open the way for the discovering how bodies that of themselves have no propension to any determinate place do nevertheless move constantly and perpetually one way the dense ones descending and the rare ones ascending not by any intrinsecal quality that works upon them but by the oeconomy of nature that hath set on foot due and plain causes to produce known effects Here we must crave patience of the great soul of Galileus whose admirable learning all posterity must reverence whiles we reprehend in him that which we cannot term lesse then absurd and yet he not only maintains it in several places but also professes Dial. Po. de motu pag. 81. to make it more clear then day His position is that more or less gravity contributes nothing at all to the faster or slower descending of a natural body but that all the effect it gives to a body is to make it descend or not descend in such a Medium Which is against the first and most known principal that is in bodies to wit that more doth more and less doth less for he allows that gravity causes a body to descend and yet will not allow that more gravity causes it to descend more I wonder he never mark'd how in a pair of scales a superproportion of the overweight in one ballance lifted up the other faster then a less proportion of overweight would do Or that more weight hang'd to a jack made the spit turn faster or to the lines of a Clock made it go faster and the like But his argument wherby he endeavours to prove his position is yet more wonderful for finding in pendants unequal in gravity that the lighter went in the same time almost as fast as the heavier he gathers from thence that the different weights have each of them the same celerity and that it is the opposition of the air which makes the lighter body not reach so far at each undulation as the heavier For reply whereto first we must ask him whether experience or reason taught him that the slower going of the lighter pendant proceeded only from the Medium and not from want of gravity And when he shall have answer'd as he needs must that experience doth not shew this then we must importune him for a good reason but I do not find that he brings any at all Again if he admits which he doth in express terms that a lighter body cannot resist the Medium so much as a heavier body can we must ask him whether it be not the weight that makes the heavier body resist more which when he has acknowledg'd that it is he has therein likewise acknowledg'd that whenever this happens in the descending of a body the more weight must make the heavier body descend faster But we cannot pass this matter without noting how himself makes good those arguments of Aristotle which he seems by no means to esteem of For since the gravity overcomes the resistance of the Medium in same some proportion it follows that the proportions between the gravity and the medium may be multiplied without end so as if he suppose that the gravity of a body makes it go at a certain rate in Imaginary Space which is his manner of putting the force of gravity then there may be given such a proportion of a heavy body to the medium as it shall go in such a medium at the same rate and nevertheless there will be an infinite difference betwixt the resistance of the medium compared to that body and the resistance of the Imaginary Space compared to that other body which he supposed to be moved in it at the same rate which no man will stick at confession to be very absurd Then turning the scales because the resistance of the medium somewhat hinders gravity and that with less resistance the heavy body moves faster it must follow that since there is no proportion betwixt the medium and imaginary space there must neither be any proportion betwixt the time in which a heavy body shall pass through a certain quantity of the medium and the time in which it shall pass through as much imaginary space wherefore it must pass over so much imaginary space in an instant Which is the argument that Aristotle is so much laugh'd at for pressing And in a word nothing is more evident then that for this effect which Galileo attributes to gravity 't is unreasonable to put a divisible quantity since the effect is indivisible And therfore as evident it is that in his doctrine such a quality as intrinsecal gravity is conceiv'd to be ought not to be put since every power should be fitted to the effect or end for which it is put Another argument of Galileo is as bad as this when he endeavours to prove that all bodies go of a like velocity because it happens that a lighter body in some case goes faster then a heavier body in another case as for example in two pendants whereof the lighter is in the beginning of its motion and the heavier towards the end of it or if the lighter hangs at a longer string and the heavier at a shorter we see that the lighter will go faster then the heavier But this concludes no more then if a man should prove a lighter goes faster then a heavier because a greater force can make it go faster for 't is manifest that in a violent motion the force which moves a body in the end of its course is weaker then that which moves it in the beginning and the like is of the two strings But here 't is not amiss to solve a Probleme he puts which belongs to our present subject He findes by experience that if two bodies descend at the same time from the same point and go to the same point the one by the inferiour quarter of the circle the other by the chord to that arch or by any other lines which are chords to parts of that arch he findes I say that the moveable goes faster by the arch then by any of the chords And the reason is evident if we consider that the nearer any motion comes to a perpendicular one downwards the greater velocity it must have and that in the arch of such a quadrant every particular part of it inclines to the perpendicular of the place where it is more then the part of the chord answerable to it doth CHAP. XI An Answer to Objections against the causes of natural motion avow'd in the former Chapter and a refutation of the contrary opinion BUt to return to the thrid of our Doctrine There may peradventure be objected against it that if the violence of a bodies descent towards the center did proceed only from the density of it which gives it
continue some time before it can be settled and it being determin'd by the motion of the arrow that way that it slides it follows that all this commotion and undulation of the air serves to continue the arrow in its flight And thus faster then any part behind can be setled new ones before are stir'd till the resistance of the medium grows stronger then the impulse of the movers Besides this the arrow pressing on the air before it with a greater velocity then the air which is a liquid rare body can admit to move all of a piece without breaking it must of necessity happen that the parts of the air immediately before the arrow be driven upon others further off before these can be moved to give place unto them so that in some places the air becomes condens'd and consequently in others rarified Which also the wind we make in walking which will shake a paper pin'd loosly at the wall of a chamber towards which we walk and the cooling air caus'd by faning when we are hot do evidently confirm So that it cannot be doubted but condensation and rarefaction of the air must necessarily follow the motion of any solid body which being admitted 't is evident that a greater disorder and for some remarkable time must necessarily be in the air since it cannot brook to continue in more rarity or density then is natural to it Nor can weighty and light parts agree to rest in an equal height or lowness which the violence of the arrows motion forces them to for the present Therefore it cannot be deni'd but that though the arrow slide away there still remains behind it by this condensation and confusion of parts in the air motion enough to give impulse to the arrow so as to make it continue its motion after the bowstring has left it But here will arise a difficulty which is how this clapping in and undulation of the air should have strength and efficacy enough to cause the continuance of so smart a motion as is an arrow shot from a bow To this I need no other argument for an answer then to produce Galileo's testimony how great a body one single mans breath alone can in due circumstances give a rapid motion to and withal let us consider how the arrow and the air about it are already in a certain degree of velocity that is to say the obstacle that would hinder it from moving that way namely the resistance of the air is taken away and the causes that are to produce it namely the determining of the airs and atomes motion that way are heightned And then we may safely conclude that the arrow which of it self is indifferent to be moved upwards or downwards or forwards must needs obey that motion which is caused in it by the atomes and the air 's pressing upon it either according to the impulse of the string or when the string begins to flag according to the beating that follows the general constitution of nature or in a mixt manner according to the proportions that these two hold to one another Which proportions Galileus in his 4 Dialogue of Motion has attempted to explicate very ingeniously but having miss'd in one of his suppositions to wit that forced motion upon an Horizontal line is throughout uniform his great labours therein have taken little effect towards the advancing the knowledge of nature as he pretended for his conclusions succeed not in experience as Mersenius assures us after very exact trials nor can they in their reasons be fitted to nature So that to conclude this point I find no difficulty in allowing this motion of the air strength enough to force the moveable onwards for sometime after the first mover is sever'd from it and long after we see no motions of this nature endure so that we need seek no further cause for the continuance of it but may rest satisfied upon the whole matter that since the causes and circumstances our reason suggests to us are after mature and particular examination proportionable to the effects we see the doctrine we deliver must be sound and true For the establishing wherof we need not considering what we have already said spend much time in solving Galileo's arguments against it seeing out of what we have set down the answers to them appear plain enough For first we have assign'd causes how the air may continue its motion long enough to give as much impression as is needful to the arrow to make it go on as it does Which motion is not requisite to be near so great in the air behind the arrow that drives it on as what the arrow causes in the air before it for by reason of its density it must needs make a greater impression in the air it cuts then the air causes its motion would do of it self without the mediation of the arrow As when the force of a hand gives motion to a knife to cut a loaf of bread the knife by reason of the density and figure it has makes a greater impression in the loaf then the hand alone would do And this is the same that we declared in the natural motion of a heavy thing downwards to which we assigned two causes namely the beating of the atoms in the air falling down in their natural course to determine it the way it is to go and the density of the body that cutting more powerfully then those atoms can do gives together with their help a greater velocity to the moveable then the atoms of themselves can give Nor imports it that our resolution it aginst the general nature of rare and dense bodies in regard of conserving motion as Galileo objects For the reason why dense bodies conserve motion longer then rare bodies is because in regard of their dividing virtue they get in equal time a greater velocity Wherfore seeing velocity is equal to gravity it follows that resistance works not so much upon them as upon rare bodies and therfore cannot make them cease from motion so easily as it does rare bodies This is the general reason for the conservation of motion in dense bodies But because in our case there is a continual cause which conserves motion in the air the air may continue its motion longer than of it self it would do not in the same part of air which Galileus as it seems aim'd at but in divers parts in which the moveable successively is Which being concluded let us see how the forced motion comes to decrease and be ended To which purpose we may observe that the impression which the arrow receives from the air that drives it forwards being weaker than that which it receiv'd at first from the string by reason that the air is not so dense and therfore cannot strike so great a blow the arrow does not in this second measure of time wherein we consider the impulse given by the air only cut so strongly the air before it nor press so
violently upon it as in the first measure when the string parting from it did beat it forwards for till then the velocity encreases in the arrow as it does in the string that carries it along which proceeds from rest at the fingers loose from it to its highest degree of velocity which is when it arrives to the utmost extent of its jerk where it quits the arrow And therfore the air now doth not so swiftly nor so much of it rebound back from before and clap it self behind the arrow to fill the space that else would be left void by the arrows moving forward and consequently the blow it gives in the third measure to drive the arrow on cannot be so great as the blow was immediately after the strings parting from it which was in the second measure of time and therefore the arrow must needs move slower in the third measure than it did in the second as formerly it moved slower in the second which was the airs first stroke than it did in the first when the string drove it forwards And thus successively in every moment of time as the causes grow weaker weaker by the encrease of resistance in the air before and by the decrease of force in the subsequent air so the motion must be slower and slower till it come to pure cessation As for Galileu's second argument that the air has little power over heavy things and therfore he will not allow it to be the cause of continuing forced motions in dense bodies I wish he could as well have made experience what velocity of motion a mans breath might produce in an heavy bullet lying upon an even hard and slippery plain for a table would be too short as he did how admirable great a one it produced in pendants hanging in the air and I doubt not but he would have granted it as powerful in causing horizontal motions as he found it in the undulations of his pendants Which nevertheless sufficiently convince how great a power air has over heay bodies As likewise the experience of wind-guns assures us that air duly applyed is able to give greater motion to heavy bodies than to light ones For how can a straw or feather be imagin'd possibly to fly with half the violence as a bullet of lead doth out of one of those Engines And when a man sucks a bullet upwards in a perfectly bored barrel of a Gun which the bullet fits exactly as we have mention'd before with what a violence doth it follow the breath and ascend to the mouth of the barrel I remember to have seen a man that was uncautious and sucked strongly that had his foreteeth beaten out by the blow of the bullet ascending This experiment if well look'd into may peradventure make good a great part of this Doctrine we now deliver For the air pressing in behind the bullet at the touch-hole gives it its impulse upwards to which the density of the bullet being added you have the cause of its swiftness and violence for a bullet of wood or cork would not ascend so fast and so strongly and the sucking away of the air before it takes away that resistance which otherwise it would encounter with by the air lying in its way and its following the breath with so great ease shews as we touch'd before that of it self 't is indifferent to any motion when nothing presses upon it to determine it a certain way Now to Galileo's last argument that an arrow should fly faster broad-ways than long-ways if the air were cause of its motion there needs no more to be said but that the resistance of the air before hinders it as much as the impulse of the air behind helps it on So that nothing is gain'd in that regard but much is lost in respect of the figure which makes the arrow unapt to cut the air so well when it flyes broad-ways as when 't is shot long-ways and therfore the air being weakly cut so much of it cannot clap in behind the arrow and drive it on against the resistance before which is much greater Thus far with due respect and with acknowledging remembrance of the many admirable mysteries of nature which that great man hath taught the world we have taken liberty to dipute against him because this difficulty seems to have driven him against his Genius to believe that in such motions there must be allow'd a quality imprinted into the moved body to cause them which our whole scope both in this and all other occasions where like qualities are urged is to prove superfluous and ill grounded in nature and to be but meer terms to confound and leave in the dark whoever is forced to fly to them CHAP. XIII Of three sorts of violent motion Reflection Undulation and Refraction THe motion we have last spoken of because 't is ordinarily either in part or wholy contrary to gravity which is accounted the natural motion of most bodies uses to be call'd violent or forced And thus you have deliver'd you the natures and causes both of Natural and of Forced Motion yet it remains that we advertise you of some particular kinds of this forced motion which seem to be different from it but indeed are not As first the motion of Reflection which if we but consider how forced motion is made we shall find it is nothing else but a forced motion whose line whereon 't is made is as it were snapp'd in two by the encounter of a hard body For even as we see in a spout of water strongly shot against a wall the water following drives the precedent parts first to the wall and afterwards coming themselves to the wall forces them again another way from the wall so the latter parts of the torrent of air which is caused by the force that occasion'd the forced motion drives the former parts first upon the resistant body and afterwards again from it But this is more eminent in light than in any other body because light doth less rissent gravity and so observes the pure course of the stroke better than any other body from which others for the most part decline some way by reason of their weight Now the particular law of reflection is that the line incident the line of reflection must make equal angles with that line of the resistent superficies wch is in the same superficies with themselvs The demonstration wherof that great wit Renatus des Cartes hath excellently set down in his book of Dioptricks by the example of a ball strucken by a Racket against the earth or any resisting body the substance wherof is as follows The motion which we call Undulation needs no further explication for 't is manifest that since a Pendent when 't is removed from its perpendicular will restore it self therto by the natural force of gravity and that in so doing it gains a velocity and therefore cannot cease on a suddain it must needs be
same point of incidence in a shorter line and a greater angle than another does In both these wayes 't is apparent that a body composed of greater parts and greater pores exceeds bodies of the opposite kind for by reason that in the first kind more light may beat against one part a body in which that happens will wake an appearance from a further part of its superficies wheras in a body of the other sort the light that beats against one of the little parts of it will be so little as 't will presently vanish Again because in the first the part at the incidence is greater the surface from which the reflection is made inwards has more of a plain and straight superficies and consequently reflects at a greater angle than that whose superficies hath more of inclining But we must not pass from this question without looking a little into the nature of those bodies in which refraction is made for if they as well as the immediate causes of refraction likewise favour us it will not a little advance the certainty of our determination To this purpose we may call to mind how experience shews us that great refractions are made in smoke and mists and glasses and thick-bodied waters and Monsir des Cartes adds certain Oyls and Spirits or strong Waters Now most of these we see are composed of little consistent bodies swimming in another liquid body As is plain in smoke and mists for the little bubbles which rise in the water before they get out of it and that are smoke when they get into the air assure us that smoke is nothing else but a company of little round bodies swimming in the air and the round consistence of water upon herbs leavs twigs in a rind or dew gives us also to understand that a Mist is likewise a company of little round bodies that sometimes stand sometimes float in the air as the wind drives them Our very eyes bear witness to us that the thicker sort of waters are full of little bodies which is the cause of their not being clear As for Glass the blowing of it convinces that the little darts of fire which pierce it every way do naturally in the melting of it convert it into little round hollow bodies which in their cooling must settle into parts of the like figure Then for Chrystal and other transparent stones which are found in cold places it cannot be otherwise but that the nature of cold piercing into the main body and contracting every little part in it self this contraction must needs leave vacant pores between part and part And that such transparent stones as are made by heat have the like effect and property may be judg'd out of what we see in Bricks and Tiles which are left full of holes by the operation of the fire And I have seen in bones that have lain a long time in the Sun a multitude of sensible little pores close to one another as if they had been formerly stack all over with subtile sharp needles as close as they could be thrust in by one another The Chymical Oyles and Spirits which Monsir des Cartes speaks of are likely to be of the same composition since such use to be extracted by violent fires for a violent fire is made by the conjunction of many rayes together and that must needs cause great pores in the body it works on and the sticking nature of these spirits is capable of conserving them Out of all these observations it follows that the bodies in which greatest refractions happen are compounded as we have said of great parts and great pores and therfore by only taking light to be such a body as we have described it where we treated of its nature 't is evident the effect we have exprest must necessarily follow by way of reflection and refraction is nothing else but a certain kind of reflection Which last assertion is likewise convinced out of this that the same effects proceed from reflection as from refraction for by reflection a thing may be seen greater than it is in a different place from the true one where it is colours may be made by reflection as also gloating light and fire likewise and peradventure all other effects which are caused by refraction may as well as these be perform'd by reflection And therfore 't is evident they must be of the same nature since children are the resemblances of their parents CHAP. XIV Of the composition qualities and generation of mixed bodies HAving now declar'd the vertues by which Fire and Earth work upon one another and upon the rest of the Elements which is by Light and the motions we have discours'd of Our task shall be in this Chapter first to observe what will result out of such action of theirs and next to search into the ways and manner of compassing and performing it Which latter we shall the more easily attain to when we first know the end that their operation levels at In this pursuit we shall find that the effect of the Elements combinations by means of the motions that happen among them is a long pedegree of compounded qualities and bodies wherein the first combinations like marriages are the breeders of the next more-composed substances and they again are the parents of others in greater variety and so are multiplied without end for the further this work proceeds the more subjects it makes for new business of the like kind To descend in particular to all these is impossible And to look further then the general heads of them were superfluous and troublesome in this discourse wherin I aim only at shewing what sorts of things in common may be done by Bodies that if hereafter we meet with things of another nature and strain we may be sure they are not the off-spring of bodies and quantity which is the main scope of what I have design'd here And to do this with confidence certainty requires of necessity this leisurely and orderly proceeding we have hitherto used and shall continue to the end For walking thus softly we have always one foot upon the ground so as the other may be sure of firm footing before it settle Wheras they that for more hast will leap over rugged passages and broken ground when both their feet are in the air cannot help themselvs but must light as chance throws them To this purpose then we may consider that the qualities of bodies in common are of three sorts For they are belonging either to the Constitution of a compounded body or else to the Operation of it and the Operation of a body is of two kinds one upon Other Bodies the other upon Sense The last of these three sorts of qualities shall be handled in a peculiar Chapter by themselvs Those of the second sort wherby they work upon Other bodies have been partly declar'd in the former chapters and will be further discours'd of in the rest of this first
bodies are framed Out of which discourse we may ballance the degrees of solidity in bodies For all bodies being composed of humide and dry parts we may conceive either kind of those parts to be bigger or lesser or to be more rare or more dense Now if the dry parts of any body be extreme little and dense and the moist parts that joyn the dry ones together be very great and rare then that body will be very easie to be dissolv'd But if the moist parts which glew together such extreme little and dense dry parts be either lesser in bulk or not so rare then the body composed of them will be in a stronger degree of consistence And if the moist parts which serve for this effect be in an excess of littleness and withal dense then the body they compose will be in the highest degree of consistence that nature can frame On the other side if you glew together great dry parts which are moderately dense great by the admixtion of humid parts that are of the least size in bulk and dense withal then the consistence will decrease from its height by how much the parts are greater and the density less But if to dry parts of the greatest size and in the greatest remisness of density you add humid parts both very great and very rare then the composed body will prove the most easily dissolveable of all that nature affords After this casting our eyes a little further towards the composition of particular bodies we shall find still greater mixtures the further we go for as the first and simplest compounded bodies are made of the four Elements so others are made of these and again a third sort of them and so on-wards according as by motion the parts of every one are broken in sunder and mingled with others Those of the first order must be of various tempers according to the proportions of the Elements whereof they are immediatly made As for example such a proportion of Fire to the other three Elements will make one kind of simple body and another proportion will make another kind and so throughout by various combinations and proportions among all the Elements In the effecting of which work it will not be amiss to look a little upon nature and observe how she mingles and tempers different bodies one with another wherby she begets that great variety of creatures we see in the World But because the degrees of composition are infinite according to the encrease of number we will contain our selves within the common notions of excess in the four primary components for if we should descend once to specifie any determinate proportions we should endanger losing our selvs in a wood of particular natures which belong not to us at present to examin Then taking the four Elements as materials to work upon let us first consider how they may be varied that differing compositions may result out of their mixtures I conceive that all the ways of varying the Elements in this regard may be reduced to the several sizes of Bigness of the Parts of each Element that enter into the composition of any body and to the Number of those Parts for certainly no other can be imagin'd unless it were variety of Figure But that cannot be admited to belong in any constant manner to those least particulars wherof bodies are framed as if determinate figures were in every degree of quantity due to the natures of Elements and therfore the Elements would conserve themselves in those figures as well in their least atoms as massie bulk For seeing how these little parts are shuffled together without any order and that all liquids easily joyn and take the figures which the dense ones give them and that they again justling one another crush themselves into new shapes to which their mixture with the liquid ones makes them yield the more easily t is impossible the elements should have any other natural figure in these their least parts then such as chance gives them But that one part must be bigger then another is evident for the nature of rarity and density gives it the first of them causing divisibility into little parts and the latter hindring it Having then settled in what manner the Elements may be varied in the composition of bodies let us now begin our mixture In which our ground to work upon must be Earth and Water For only these two are the Basis of permanent bodies that suffer our senses to take hold of them and submit themselvs to trial Wheras if we should make the predominant Element to be Air or Fire and bring in the other two solid ones under their jurisdiction only to make up the mixture the compound resulting out of them would be either in continual consumption as ordinary fire is or else through too much subtlety imperceptible to our eyes or touch therfore not a fit subject for us to discourse of especially since the other two Elements afford us enough to speculate on Peradventure our Smel might take some cognisance of a body so composed or the effect of it taken in by respiration might in time shew it self upon our health but it concerns not us now to look so far our design requires more maniable substances Of these then let Water be the first and with it we will mingle the other three elements in excess over one another by turns but stil all of them oversway'd by a predominant quantity of water and then let us see what kind of bodies will result out of such proportions First if earth prevail above fire and air and arrive next in proportion to the water a body of such a composition must needs prove hardly liquid and not easie to let its parts run a sunder by reason of the great proportion of so dense a body as earth that holds it together Yet some inclination it will have to fluidness by reason the water is predominant over all which also will make it be easily divisible and give every little resistance to any hard thing that shall be apply'd to make way through it In a word this mixture makes the constitution of Mud Dirt Honey Butter and such like things where the main parts are great ones And such are the parts of earth and water in themselvs Let the next proportion of excess in a watry compound be of air which when it prevails incorporates it self chiefly with earth for the other Elements would not so well retain it Now because its parts are subtile by reason of the rarity it hath and sticking because of its humidity it drives the earth and water likewise into lesser parts The result of such a mixture is that the parts of a body compounded by it are close catching flowing slowly glibb and generally it will burn and be easily converted into flame Of this kind are those we call Oyly or unctuous bodies whose great parts are easily separated that is easily divisible
proportion over air and water And this I conceive produces those substāces which we may term co-agulated juyces and which the Latines call succi concreti whos 's first origine seems to have been liquours that have been afterwards dried by the force either of heat or cold Of this nature are all kind of Salts Niters Sulfurs and divers sorts of Bitumens All which easily bewray the relicks and effects of fire left in them some more some less according to their degrees And thus we have in general deduced from their causes the complexions of those bodies whereof the bulk of the world subjected to our use consists and which serve for the production and nourishment of living creatures both animal and vegetable Not so exactly I confess nor so particularly as the matter in it self or as a Treatise confined to that subject would require yet sufficiently for our intent In the performance whereof if more accurate searchers of nature shall find that we have peradventure been mistaken in the minute delivering of some particular bodies complexion their very correction I dare boldly say will justifie our principal scope which is to shew that all the great variety we see among bodies arises out of the commixion of the First Qualities and of the Elements for they will not be able to correct us upon any other grounds then those we have laid As may easily be perceiv'd if we cast a summary view upon the qualities of compounded bodies All which we shall find to spring out of rarity and density and to savour of their origine for the most manifest qualities of bodies may be reduced to certain pairs opposite to one another As namely some are liquid and flowing others are consistent some are soft others hard some are fatty viscuous and smooth others lean gritty and rough some gross others subtile some tough others brittle and the like Of which the liquid the soft the fat and the viscuous are so manifestly derived from rarity that we need not take any further pains to trace out their origine and the like is of their contraries from the contrary cause to wit of those bodies that are consistent hard lean and gritty all which evidently spring from density As for smoothness we have already shew'd how that proceeds from an airy or oily nature and by consequence from a certain degree of rarity And therefore roughness the contrary of it must proceed from a proportionable degree of density Toughness is also a kind of ductility which we have reduced to watriness that is to another degree of rarity and consequently brittleness must arise from the contrary degree of density Lastly grossness and subtilness consist in a difficulty or facility to be divided into small parts which appears to be nothing else but a certain determination of rarity and density And thus we see how the several complexions of bodies are reduced to the four Elements that compound them and the qualities of those bodies to the two primary differences of quantitative things by which the elements are diversified And out of this discourse it will be evident that these complexions and qualities though in diverse degrees must of necessity be found wherever there is any variation in bodies For seeing there can be no variation in bodies but by rarity and density and that the pure degrees of rarity and density make heat cold moisture and driness and in a word the four Elements 't is evident that wherever there is variety of bodies there must be the four Elements though peradventure far unlike these miked bodies which we call Elements And again because these Elements cannot consist without motion and by motion they of necessity produce Mixed bodies and forge out those Qualities which we come from explicating it must by like necessity follow that wherever there is any variety of active and passive bodies there mixed bodies likewise must reside of the same kinds and be indued with qualities of the like natures as those we have treated of though peradventure such as are in other places of the world remote from us may be in a degree far different from ours Since then it cannot be denied but that there must be notable variety of active and passive bodies wherever there is light neither can it be denied but that in all those Great Bodies from which light is reflected to us there must be a like variety of complexions and qualities and of bodies temper'd by them as we find here in the Orb we live in Which Systeme how different it is from that which Aristotle and the most of the School have deliver'd us as well in the evidencies of the proofs for its being so as in the position and model of it I leave to the prudent Readers to consider and judge Out of what has been already said 't is not hard to discover in what manner the composition of bodies is made In effecting which the main hinge wheron that motion depends is fire or heat as it likewise is in all other motions whatever Now because the composition of a mixed body proceeds from the action of one simple body or element upon the others it will not be amiss to declare by some example how this work passes for that purpose let us examine how fire or heat works upon his fellows By what we have formerly deliver'd 't is clear that fire streaming out from its centre and diffusing it self abroad so as to fill the circumference of a larger circle it must needs follow that the beams of it are most condens'd and compacted together near the centre and the further they stream from the centre the more thin and rarified they must grow yet this is with such moderation as we cannot any where discern that one beam doth not touch another and therfore the distances must be very smal Now let us suppose that fire happens to be in a viscuous and tenacious body and then consider what will happen in this case of one side the fire spreads it self abroad on the other side the parts of the tenacious body being moist as I have formerly determin'd their edges on all hands will stick fast to the dry beams of the fire that pass between them Then they stretching wider and wider from one another must needs draw with them the parts of that tenacious body which stick to them and stretch them into a greater widness or largness then they enjoy'd before from whence it follows that seeing there is no other body near therabouts but they two either there must be a vacuity left or else the tenacious body must hold and fill a greater space then it did before and consequently be more rare Contrariwise of any of the other elements be stronger then fire the denser Elements break off from their continu'd stream the little parts of fire which were gotten into their greater parts and sticking on all sides about them so enclose them that they have no more semblance of fire and
continual application to the body it thus anatomises hath harden'd as it were rosted some parts into such greatness and driness as they will not flie nor can be carried up with any moderate heat But great quantity of fire being mingled with the subtiler parts of his baked earth makes them very pungent and acrimonious in tast so that they are of the nature of ordinary Salt and so called and by the help of water may easily be separated from the more gross parts which then remain a dead and useless earth By this discourse 't is apparent that fire has been the instrument which hath wrought all these parts of an entire body into the forms they are in for whiles it carried away the fiery parts it swel'd the watry ones and whiles it lifted up them it digested the Aerial parts and whiles it drove up the Oyle it baked the earth and salt Again all these retaining for the most part the proper nature of the substance from whence they are extracted 't is evident that the substance is not dissolv'd for so the nature of the whole would be dissolv'd and quite destroy'd extinguish'd in every part but that onely some parts containing the whole substance or rather the nature of the whole substance in them are separated fromo ther parts that have likewise the same nature in them The third instrument for the separation and dissolution of bodies is Water whose proper matter to work upon is Salt and it serves to supply what the fire could not perform which is the separation of the salt from the earth in calcined bodies All the other parts fire was able to sever but in these he hath so baked the little humidity he hath left in them with their much earth as he cannot divide them any further and so though he incorporates himself with them yet he can carry nothing away with him If then pure water be put upon that chalk the subtilest dry parts of it easily joyn to the supervenient moysture and sticking close to it draw it down to them But because they are the lighter it happens to them as when a man in a boat pulls the land to him that comes not to him but he removes himself and his boat to it so these ascend in the water as they dissolve And the water more and more penetrating them and by addition of its parts making the humidity which glews their earthy parts together greater and greater makes a wider and wider separation between those little earthy parts and so imbues the whole body of the water with them into which they are dispersed in little atomes Those that are of biggest bulk remain lowest in the water and in the same measure as their quantities dissolve into less and less they ascend higher and higher till at length the water is fully replenish'd with them and they are diffused through the whole body of it whiles the more gross and heavy earthy parts having nothing in them to make a present combination between them and the water fall down to the bottome and settle under the water in dust In which because earth alone predominates in a very great excess we can expect no other virtue to be in it but that which is proper to mere earth to wit driness and weight Which ordinary Alchimists look not after and therfore call it Terra damnata but others find a fixing quality in it by which they perform very admirable operations Now if you prove the impregnated water from the Terra damnata and then evaporate it you will find a pure white substance remaining Which by its bulk shews it self to be very earthy and by its pricking and corrasive taste will inform you much fire is in it and by its easie dissolution in a moist place that water had a great share in the production of it And thus the salts of bodies are made and extracted Now as water dissolves salt so by the incorporation and virtue of that corrosive substance it doth more then salt it self can do for having gotten acrimony and more weight by the mixture and dissolution of salt in it it makes it self away into solide bodies even into metalls as we see in brass and iron which are easily rusted by salt dissolving upon them And according as the salts are stronger so this corrasive virtue encreases in them even so much as neither silver nor gold are free from their eating quality But they as well as the rest are divided into most small parts and made to swim in water in such sort as we have explicated above and wherof every ordinary Alchymist teaches the practise But this is not all salts help as well to melt hard bodies and metalls as to corrode them For fome fusible salts flowing upon them by the heat of the fire and others dissolv'd by the steam of the metal that incorporates with them as soon as they are in flux mingle with the natural juice of the metals and penetrate deeper then without them the fire could do and swell them and make them fit to run These are the principal ways of the two last instruments in dissolving of bodies taking each of them by it self But there remains one more of very great importance as well in the works of nature as of art in which both the former are joyned and concur and that is putrefaction Whose way of working is by gentle heat and moisture to wet and pierce the body it works upon wherby 't is made to swel and the hot parts of it being loosen'd they are at length drunk up and drown'd in the moist ones from whence by fire they are easily separated as we have already declared and those moist parts afterwards leaving it the substance remaines dry and falls in pieces for want of the glew that held it together CHAP. XVI An explication of certain Maxims touching the operations and qualities of bodies and whether the Elements be found pure in any part of the World OUt of what we have determin'd concerning the natural actions of bodies in their making and destroying one another 't is easie to understand the right meaning of some terms and the true reason of some maxims much used in the Schools As first when Philosophers attribute to all sorts of corporeal Agents a Sphere of Activity The sense of that manner of expression in fire appears plainly by what we have already declared of the nature and manner of operation of that Element And in like manner if we consider how the force of cold consists in a compression of the body that is made cold we may perceive that if in the cooled body there be any subtile parts which can break forth from the rest such compression wil make them do so Especially if the compression be of little parts of the compressed body within themselvs as well as of the outward bulk of the whole body round about For at first the compression of such causes in the body
uppermost stone and exactly in the middle of it Then by that ring pull it up perpendicularly and steadily and the undermost will follow sticking fast to the overmost and though they were not very perfectly polished yet the nethermost would follow for a while if the ring be suddenly plucked up but then it will soon fall down again Now this plainly shews that the cause of their sticking so strongly together when both the stones are very well polished is for that nothing can well enter between them to part them and so 't is reduced to the shortness of the air betwixt them which not being capable of so great an expansion nor admitting to be divided thick-ways so much as is necessary to fill the first growing distance between the two stones till new air finds a course thither that so the swelling of the one may hinder vacuity till the other come into the rescue the two stones must needs stick together to certain limits which limits will depend of the proportion that is between the weight and the continuity of the nethermost stone And when we have examin'd this we shall understand in what sense it is meant that Nature abhors from Vacuity and what means she uses to avoid it For to put it as an enemy that nature fights against or to discourse of effects that would follow from it in case it were admitted is a great mistake and a lost labour seeing it is nothing and therfore can do nothing but is meerly a form of expression to declare in short nothing else but that it is a contradiction or implication in terms and an impossibility in nature for Vacuity to have or be supposed to have a Being Thus then since in our case after we have cast all about we can pitch upon nothing to be consider'd but that the two stones touch one another and that they are weighty we must apply our selvs only to reflect upon the affects proceeding from these two causes their contiguity and their heaviness and we shall find that as the one of them namely the weight hinders the undermost from following the uppermost so contiguity obliges it to that course and according as the one overcoms the other so will this action be continued or interrupted Now that contiguity of substances makes one follow another is evident by what our Masters in Metaphysicks teach us when they shew that without this affect no motion at all could be made in the world nor any reason given for those motions we daily see For since the nature of quantity is such that whenever there is nothing between two parts of it they must needs touch and adhere and joyn to one another for how should they be kept asunder when there is nothing between them to to part them if you pull one part away either some new substance must come to be close to that which removes or else the other which was formerly close to it must still be close to it and so follow it for if nothing come between it is still close to it Thus then it being necessary that somthing must be joyn'd close to every thing Vacuity which is nothing is excluded from having any being in nature And when we say that one body must follow another to avoid vacuity the meaning is that under the necessity of a contradiction they must follow one another and that they cannot do otherwise For it would be a contradiction to say that nothing were between two things and yet that they are not joyn'd close to one another and therfore if you should say it you would in other words say they are close together and they are not close together In like manner to say that Vacuity is any where is a pure contradiction for Vacuity being nothing has no Being at all and yet by those words it is said to be in such a place so that they affirm it to be and not to be at the same time But now let us examine if there be no means to avoid this contradiction and vacuity other then by the adhesion following of one body upon the motion of another that is closely joyn'd to it and every where contiguous For sense is not easily quieted with such Metaphysical contemplations that seem to repugn against her dictamens and therefore for her satisfaction we can do no less then give her leave to range about and cast all waies in hope of finding some one that may better content her which when she finds that she cannot she will the less repine to yield her assent to the rigorous sequels and proofs of reason In this difficulty then after turning on every side I for my part can discern no pretence of probability in any other means but pulling down the lower stone by one corner that so there may be a gaping between the two stones to let in air by little and little And in this case you may say that by the intervention of air Vacuity is hinder'd and yet the lower stone is left at liberty to follow its own natural inclination and be govern'd by its weight But indeed if you consider the matter well you will find that the doing this requires a much greater force then to have the lower stone follow the upper for it cannot gape in a straight line to let in air since in that position it must open at the bottom where the angle is made at the same time that it opens at the mouth and then air requiring time to pass from the edges to the bottom it must in the mean while fal into the contradiction of Vacuity So that if it should open to let in air the stone to compass that effect must bend in such sort as wood doth when a wedg is put into it to cleave it Judge then what force it must be that should make hard marble of a great thickness bend like a wand and whether it would not rather break and slide off then do so you will allow that a much less will raise up the lower stone together with the uppermost It must then of necessity fall out that it will follow it if it be moved perpendicularly upwards And the like effect will be though it should be raised at oblique angles so that the lower-most edge do rest all the way upon somthing that may hinder the inferiour stone from sliding aside from the uppermost And this is the very case of all those other experiments of art and nature which we have mention'd above for the reason holds as well in water and liquide things as in solid bodies till the weight of the liquid body overcome's the continuity of it for then the thrid breaks and it will ascend no higher Which height Galileo tells us from the workmen in the Arsenal of Venice is 40 foot if the water be drawn up in a close pipe in which the advantage of the sides helps the ascent But others say that the invention is inlarged and that water
it upon a hedge as that dries away so will their sore amend In other parts they observe that if milk newly come from the cow in the boyling run over into the fire and that this happen often and near together to the same cows milk that cow will have her udder sore inflamed and the prevention is to cast salt immediately into the fire upon the milk The herb Persicaria if it be well rub'd upon Warts and then be laid in some fit place to putrifie causes the Warts to wear away as it rots some say the like of fresh Beef Many examples also there are of hurting living creatures by the like means which I set not down for fear of doing more harm by the evil inclination of some persons into whose hands they may fall then profit by their knowing them to whom I intend this work But to make these operations of nature not incredible let us remember how we have determin'd that every body whatever yields some steam or vents a kind of vapour from it self and consider how they must needs do so most of all that are hot and moist as bloud and milk and all wounds and sores generally are We see that the foot of a Hare or Bear leaves such an impression where the beast has passed as a dog can discern it a long time after and a Fox breaths out so strong a vapour that the hunters themselvs can wind it a great way off and a good while after he is parted from the place Now joyning this to the experiences we have already allow'd of concerning the attraction of heat we may conclude that if any of these vapours light upon a solid warm body which has the nature of a source to them they will naturally congregate and incorporate there and if those vapours be joyn'd with any medicative quality or body they will apply that medicament better then any Chirurgeon can Then if the steam of bloud bloud and spirits carry with it from the weapon or cloth the balsamike qualities of the salve or powder and with them settle upon the wound what can follow but a bettering in it Likewise if the steam of the corruption that is upon the clod carry the drying quality of the wind which sweeps over it when it hangs high in the air to the sore part of the cows foot why is it not possible that it should dry the corruption there as well as it dryes it upon the hedge And if the steam of burned milk can hurt by carrying fire to the dug why should not salt cast upon it be a preservative against it Or rather why should not salt hinder the fire from being carried thither Since the nature of salt always hinders and suppresses the activity of fire as we see by experience when we throw salt into the fire below to hinder the flaming of soot in the top of a chimney which presently ceases when new fire from beneath doth not continue it And thus we might proceed in sundry other effects to declare the reason and possibility were we certain of the truth of them therfore we remit this whole question to the authority of the testimonies CHAP. XIX Of three other motions belonging to particular bodies Filtration Restitution and Electrical attraction AFter these let us cast our eye upon another motion very familiar among Alchymists which they call Filtration It is effected by putting one end of a tongue or label of Flannen or Cotten or Flax into a vessel of water and letting the other end hang over the brim of it And it will by little and little draw all the water out of that vessel so that the end which hangs qâ—t be lower then the superficies of the water and make it all come over into any lower vessel you will reserve it in The end of this operation is when any water is mingled with gross and muddy parts not dissolv'd in the water to separate the pure light ones from the impure By which we are taught that the lighter parts of the water are those which most easily catch And if we will examine in particular how 't is likely this business passes we may conceive that the body or linguet by which the water ascends being a dry one some lighter parts of the water whose chance it is to be near the climbing body of Flax begin to stick fast to it and then they require nothing near so great force nor so much pressing to make them climb up along the flax as they would do to make them mount in the pure air As you may see if you hold a stick in running water shelving against the stream the water will run up along the stick much higher then it could be forced up in the open air without any support though the agent were much stronger then the current of the stream And a ball will on a rebound run much higher upon a shelving board then it would if nothing touch'd it And I have been told that if an egsshell fill'd with dew be set at the foot of a hollow stick the Sun will draw it to the top of the shelving stick wheras without a prop it will not stir it With much more reason then we may conceive that water finding as it were little steps in the Cotton to facilitate its journy upwards must ascend more easily then those other things do so as it once receive any impulse to drive it upwards For the gravity both of that water which is upon the Cotton as also of so many of the confining parts of water as can reach the Cotton is exceedingly allay'd either by sticking to the Cotton and so weighing in one bulk with that dry body or else by not tending down straight to the Center but resting as it were upon a steep plain according to what we said of the arm of a Syphon that hangs very sloping out of the water and therfore draws not after it a less proportion of water in the other arm that is more in a direct line to the Center by which means the water as soon as it begins to climb comes to stand in a kind of cone neither breaking from the water below its bulk being big enough to reach to it nor yet falling down to it But our chief labour must be to finde a cause that may make the water begin to ascend To which purpose consider how water of its own nature compresses it self together to exclude any other body lighter then it is Now in respect of the whole mass of the water those parts which stick to the cotton are to be acounted muchlighter then water not because in their own nature they are so but for the circumstances which accompany and give them a greater disposition to receive a motion upwards then much lighter bodies whiles they are destitute of such helps Wherfore as the bulk of water weighing and striving downwards it follows that if there were any air mingled with it it would to
in some countries where some one wind has a main predominance and reigns most continually as near the Seashore upon the western coast of England where the South-West wind blows constantly the greatest part of the year may be observed but this effect proceeding from a particular and extraordinary cause concerns not our matter in hand We are to examine the reason of the motion of Restitution which we generally see in young trees and branches of others as we said before In such we see that the earthy part which makes them stiff or rather stark abounds more then in the others that stand as they were bent at least in proportion to their natures but I conceive this is not the cause of the effect we enquire about but that 't is a subtile spirit which hath a great proportion of fire in it For as in rarefaction we found that fire which was either within or without the body to be rarified did cause the rarefaction either by entring into it or by working within it so seeing here the question is for a body to go out of a lesser superficies into a greater which is the progress of rarefaction and hapen's in the motion of restitution the work must needs be done by the force of heat And because this effect proceeds evidently out of the nature of the thing in which it is wrought and not from any outward cause we may conclude it has its origine from a heat within the thing it self or else that was in it and may be press'd to the outward parts of it and would sink into it again As for example when a young tree is bended both every mans conceit is and the nature of the thing makes us believe that the force which brings the tree back again to its figure comes from the inner side that is bent which is compress'd together as being shrunk into a circular figure from a straight one for when solid bodies that were plain on both sides are bent so as on each side to make a portion of a Circle the convex superficies will be longer then it was before when it was plain but the concave will be shorter And therfore we may conceive that the spirits which are in the contracted part being there squeez'd into less room then their nature well brooks work themselvs into a greater space or else that the spirits which are crush'd out of the convex side by the extension of it remain besieging it and strive to get in again in such manner as we have declared when we spoke of attraction wherin we shew'd how the emited spirits of any body will move to their own source and settle again in it if they be within a convenient compass and accordingly bring back the extended parts to their former situation or rather that both these causes in their kinds concur to drive the tree into its natural figure But as we see when a stick is broken 't is very hard to replace all the splinters every one in its proper situation so it must of necessity fall out in this bending that certain insensible parts both inward and outward are therby displaced and can hardly be perfectly rejoynted Whence it follows that as you see the splinters of a half broken stick meeting with one another hold the stick somwhat crooked so these invisible parts do the like in such bodies as after bending stand a little that way but because they are very little ones the tree or branch that has been never so much bended may so nothing be broken in it be set strait again by pains without any notable detriment of its strength And thus you see the reason of some bodies returning in part to their natural figures after the force leaves them that bent them Out of which you may proceed to those bodies that restore themselvs entirely whereof steel is the most eminent And of it we know that there is a fiery spirit in it which may be extracted out of it not only by the long operations of calcining digesting and distilling it but even by gross heating and then extinguishing it in wine and other convenient Liquors as Physicians use to do Which is also confirm'd by the burning of steel-dust in the flame of a candle before it has been thus wrought upon which after-wards it will not do wherby we are taught that originally there are store of spirits in steel till they are sucked out Being then assured that in steel there is such abundance of spirits and knowing that it is the nature of spirits to give a quick motion and seeing that duller spirits in trees make this motion of Restitution we need seek no further what it is that doth it in steel or in any other things that have the like nature which through the multitude of spirits that abound in them especially steel returns back with so strong a jerk that their whole body will tremble a great while after by the force of its own motion By what is said the nature of those bodies which shrink and stretch may easily be understood for they are generally composed of stringy parts to which if humidity happen to arrive they grow therby thicker and shorter As we see that drops of water getting into a new rope of a well or into a new cable will swell it much thicker and by consequence make it shorter Galileus notes such wetting to be of so great efficacy that it will shrink a new cable and shorten it notably notwithstanding the violence of a tempest the weight and jerks of a loaden ship strain it what is possible for them to stretch it Of this nature leather seems to be and parchment and divers other things which if they be proportionably moistned and no exteriour force apply'd to extend them will shrink up but if they be overweted they will become flaccide Again if they be suddenly dryed they 'l shrivel up but if they be fairly dried after moderate weting they will extend themselvs again to their first length The way having been open'd by what we have discoursed before we came to the motion of Restitution towards the discovery of the manner how heavy bodies may be forced upward contrary to their natural motion by very smal means in outward appearance let us now examine upon the same grounds if like motions to this of water may not be done in some other bodies in a subtiler manner In which more or less needs not trouble us since we know that neither quantitâ—â—or the operations of it consist in an indivisible or are limited or determin'd by periods they may not pass 'T is enough for us to find a ground for the possibility of the operation and then the perfecting and reducing of it to such a height as at first might seem impossible incredible we may leave to the Oeconomy of wise nature He that learns to read write or play on the Lute is in the beginning ready to lose heart at every step
needle will lie parallel to the axis of the stone And the reason of this is manifest for in that case the two poles being equidistant to the needle they draw it equally and by consequence the needle must remain parallel to the axis of the stone Nor doth it import that the inequality of the two poles of the stone is materially or quantitatively greater then the inequality of the two polles of the needle out of which it may at the first sight seem to follow that the stronger pole of the stone should draw the weaker pole of the needle nearer to it self then the weaker pole of the stone can be able to draw the stronger pole of the needle and by consequence that the needle should not lie parallel to the axis of the stone but incline somwhat to the stronger pole of it For after you have well consider'd the matter you will find that the strength of the pole of the stone cannot work according to its material greatness but is confined to work only according to the susceptibility of the needle which being a slender and thin body cannot receive so much as a thicker body may Wherfore seeing the strongest pole of the stone gives most strength to that pole of the needle which lies furthest from it it may well happen that the superiority of strength in the pole of the needle that is applied to the weaker pole of the stone may counterpoise the excess of the stronger pole of the stone over its opposite weaker pole though not in greatness and quantity yet in respect of the virtue which is communicable to the poles of the needle wherby its comportment to the poles of the stone is determin'd And indeed the needles lying parallel to the axis of the stone when the middle of it sticks to the equator of the stone convinces that upon the whole matter there is no excess in the efficacious working of either of the stone's poles but that their excess over one another in regard of themselvs is ballanced by the needles receiving it But if the needle hapen's to touch the loadstone in some part nearer one pole then the other in this case 't is manifest that the force of the stone is greater on the one side of the needles touch then on the other side because there is a greater quantity of the stone on the one side of the needle then on the other and by consequence the needle will incline that way which the greater force draws it so far forth as the other part doth not hinder it Now we know that if the greater part were divided from the rest and so were an entire Loadstone by it self that is if the Loadstone were cut off where the needle touches it then the needle would joyn it self to the pole that is to the end of that part and by consequence would be tending to it as a thing that is suck'd tends towards the sucker against the motion or force which comes from the lesser part and on the other side the lesser part of the stone which is on the other side of the point which the needle touches must hinder this inclination of the needle according to the proportion of its strength and so it followes that the needle will hang by its end not directly set to the end of the greater part but as much inclining towards it as the lesser part doth not hinder by striving to pull it the other way Out of which we gather the true cause of the needles declination to wit the proportion of working of the two unequal parts of the stone between which it touches and is joyn'd to the stone And we likewise discover their errour who judg that the part which draws iron is the next pole to the iron For 't is rather the contrary pole which attracts or to speak more properly 't is the whole body of the stone as streaming in lines almost parallel to the axis from the furthermost end to the other next the iron and in our case 't is that part of the stone which begins from the contrary pole and reaches to the needle For besides the light which this discourse gave us experience assures us that a Loadstone whose poles lie broadways not long-ways is more imperfect and draws more weakly then if the poles lay longways which would not be if the flâ—ours stream'd from all parts of the stone directly to the pole for then however the stone were cast the whole virtue of it would be in the poles Moreover if a needle were drawn freely upon the same Meridian from one pole to the other as soon as it were pass'd the Equator it would leap suddenly at the very first remove of the Equator where 't is parallel with the axis of the Loadstone from being so parallele to make an angle with the axis greater then a half right one â—o the end that it might look upon the pole which is supposed to be the only attractive that draws the needle which great change wrought all at once nature never causes nor admits but in all actions or motions uses to pass through all the Mediums whenever it goes from one extreme to another Besides there would be no variation of the needles aspect towards the North end of the stone for if every part sent its virtue immediately to the poles it were impossible that any other part whatever should be stronger then the polar part seeing that the polar part has the virtue even of that particular part and of all the other parts of the stone beside joyn'd in it self This therfore is evident that the virtue of the loadstone goes from end to end in parallel lines unless it be in such stones as have their polar parts narrower then the rest of the body of the stone for in them the stream will tend with some little declination towards the pole as it were by way of refraction Because without the stone the fluours from the pole of the earth coarct themselvs and so thicken their stream to croud into the stone as soon as they are sensible of any emanations from it that being as we have said before their readiest way to pass along and with in the stone the stream doth the like to meet the advenient stream where it is strongest and thickest which is at that narrow part of the stones end which is most prominent out And by this discourse we discover likewise another errour of them that imagine the Loadstone hath a sphere of activity round about it equal on all sides that is perfectly spherical if the stone be spherical Which clearly is a mistaken speculation for nature having so order'd all her agents that where the strength is greatest there the action must generally speaking extend it self furthest off and it being acknowledg'd that the Loadstone hath greatest strength in its Poles and least in the Equator it must of necessity follow that it works further by its Poles then
by its Equator And consequently it is impossible that its sphere of activity should be perfectly spherical Nor doth Cabeus his experience move us to conceive the loadstone hath a greater strength to retain an iron laid upon it by its Equator then by its Poles for to justifie his assertion he should have tried it in an iron wire that were so short as the poles could not have any notable operation upon the ends of it since otherwise the force of retaining it wil be attributed to the Poles according to what we have above deliver'd and not to the Equator The eighth position is that The intention of nature in all the operations of the Loadstone is to make an union betwixt the attractive and the atracted â—bodies Which is evident out of the sticking of them together as also out of the violence wherwith iron comes to a Loadstone which when it is drawn by a powerful one is so great that through the force of the blow hitting the stone it will rebound back and then fall again to the stone And in like manner a needle upon a pin if a Loadstone be set near it turns with so great a force towards the pole of the stone that it goes beyond it and coming back again the celerity wherwith it moves maketh it retire it self too far on the other side and so by many undulations at last it comes to rest directly opposite to the pole Likewise by the declination by means of which the iron to the stone or the stone to the earth approaches in such a disposition as is most convenient to joyn the due ends together And lastly out of the flying away of the contrary ends from one another which clearly is to no other purpose but that the due ends may come together And in general there is no doubt but ones going to another is instituted by the order of nature for their coming together and for their being together which is but a perseverance of their coming together The ninth position is that The nature of a Loadstone doth not sink deeply into the main body of the earth as to have the substance of its whole body be magnetical but only remans near the surface of it And this is evident by the inequality in virtue of the two ends for if this magnetick virtue were the nature of the whole body both ends would be equally strong For would the disposition of one of the ends be different from the disposition of the other Again there could be no variation of the tending towards the North for the bulk of the whole body would have a strength so eminently greater then the prominences and disparities of hils or seas as the varieties of these would be absolutely insensible Again if the motion of the Loadstone came from the body of the earth it would be perpetually from the center not from the Poles so there could be no declination more in one part of the earth then in another Nor would the Loadstone tend from North to South but from the centre to the circumference or rather from the circumference to the centre And so we may learn the difference between the loadstone and the earth in their attractive operations to wit that the earth doth not receive its influence from another body nor doth its magnetick virtue depend of another magnetick agent that impresses it into it which nevertheless is the most remarkable condition of a Loadstone Again the stongest vertue of the Loadstone is from pole to pole but the strongest virtue of the earth is from the centre upwards as appears by fireforks gaining a much greater magnetick strength in a short time then a Loadstone in a longer Neither can it be thence objected that the loadstone should therfore receive the earths influences more strongly from the centerwards then from the poles of the earth which by its operation and what we have discours'd of it is certain it doth not since the beds where Loadstones lie and are form'd be towards the bottome of that part or back of the earth which is imbued with magnetick virtue Again this virtue which we see in a Loadstone is substantial to it wheras the like virtue is but accidental to the earth by means of the Suns drawing the northern and southern exhalations to the Equator The last position is that The loadstone must be found over all the earth and in every country And so we see it is both because iron mines are found in some measure almost in all countries cause at least other sorts of the earth as we have declared of potearths cannot be wanting in any large extent of country which when they are baked and cool'd in due positions have this effect of the Loadstone and are of the nature of it And Dr. Gilbert shews that the loadstone is nothing else but the Ore of Steel or perfectest iron and that it is to be found of all colours and fashions and almost of all consistences So that we may easily conceive that the emanations of the Loadstone being every where as well as the causes of gravity the two motions of magnetick and weighty things both of them derive their origine from the same source I mean from the very same emanations coming from the earth which by a divers ordination of nature make this affect in the loadstone and that other in weighty things And who knows but that a like sucking to this which we have shew'd in magnetick things passes also in the motion of gravity in a word gravity bears a fair testimony in behalf of the magnetick force and the Loadstones working returns no mean verdict for the causes of gravity according to what we have delivered of them CHAP. XXII A Solution of certain Problemes concerning the Loadstone and a short sum of the whole doctrine touching it OUt of what is said upon this subject we may proceed to the Solution of certain questions or problemes which are or may be made in this matter And first of that which Dr. Gilbert disputes against all former writers of the Loadstone to wit which is the North and which the South pole of a stone Which seems to me only a question of the name for if by the name of North and South we understand that end of the stone which has that virtue that the North or South pole of the earth have then 't is certain that the end of the stone which looks to the South pole of the earth is to be called the North pole of the loadstone and contrariwise that which looks to the North is to be called the South pole of it But if by the names of North and South pole of the stone yoâ— mean those ends of it that lie and point to the North and South poles of the earth then you must reckon their poles contrariwise to the former account So that the terms being once defined there will remain no further controversie about the
point Dr. Gilbert seems also to have another controversie with all Writers to wit whether any bodies besides Magnetical ones be attractive Which he seems to deny all others to affirm But this also being fairly put will peradventure prove no controversie for the question is either in common of attraction or else in particular of such an attraction as is made by the loadone Of the first part there can be no doubt as we have declared above and is manifest betwixt gold and quicksilver when a man holding Gold in his mouth it draws to it the quicksilver that is in his body But for the attractive to draw a body to it self not wholly but one determinate part of the body drawn to one determinate part of the drawer is an attraction which for my part I cannot exemplifie in any other bodies but Magnetical ones A third question is Whether an iron that stands long unmoved in a window or any other part of a building perpendicularly to the earth contracts a Magnetical virtue of drawing or pointing towards the North in that end which looks downwards For Cabeus who wrote since Gilbert affirms it out of experience but either his experiment or his expression was defective For assuredly if the iron stands so in the Northern Hemisphere it will turn to the North and if in the Southern Hemisphere it will turn to the South for seeing the virtue of the loadstone proceeds from the earth and the earth has different tempers towards the North and toward the South pole as hath been already declared the virtue which comes out of the earth in the Northern Hemisphere will give to the end of the iron next it an inclination to the North pole and the earth of the Southern Hemisphere will yield the contrary disposition to the end which is nearest it The next Question is why a loadstone seems to love iron better then another loadstone The answer is because iron is indifferent in all its parts to receive the impression of a loadstone wheras another loadstone receives it only in a determinate part and therfore a loadstone draws iron more easily then it can another loadstone because it finds repugnance in the parts of another Loadstone unless it be exactly situated in a right position Besides iron seems to be compared to a Loadstone like a more humid body to a dryer of the same nature and the difference of male and female sexes in Animals manifestly shew the great appetence of conjunction between moisture and dryness when they belong to bodies of the same species Another question is that great one Why a Loadstone cap'd with steel takes up more iron then it would do if it were without that caping Another conclusion like this is that if by a Loadstone you take up an iron and by that iron a second iron and then pull away the second iron the first iron in some position will leave the Loadstone to stick to the second iron as long as the second iron is within the sphere of the Loadstones activity but if you remove the second out of that sphere then the first iron remaining within it though the other be out of it will leave the second and leap back to the Loadstone To the same purpose is this other conclusion that The greater the iron is which is entirely within the compass of the Loadstones virtue the more strongly the Loadstone will be moved to it and the more forcibly stick to it The reasons of all these three we must give at once for they hang all upon on string And in my conceit neither Gilbert nor Galileo have hit upon the right As for Gilbert he thinks that in iron there is originally the virtue of the loadstone but that it is as it were asleep till by the touch of the Loadstone it be awaked and set on work and therfore the virtue of bath joyn'd together is greater then the virtue of the Loadstone alone But if this were the reason the virtue of the iron would be greater in every regard and not only in sticking or in taking up wheras himself confesses that a cap'd stone draws no further then a naked stone nor hardly so far Besides it would continue its virtue out of the sphere of activity of the loadstone which it doth not Again seeing that if you compare them severally the virtue of the Loadstone is greater then the virtue of the iron why should not the middle iron stick closer to the stone then to the further iron which must of necessity have less virtue Galileo yeelds the cause of this effect that when an iron touches an iron there are more parts which touch one another then when a Loadstone touches the iron First because the Loadstone hath generally much impurity in it and therfore divers parts of it have no virtue wheras iron by being melted hath all its parts pure and secondly because iron can be smooth'd and polish'd more then a Loadstone can be and therfore its superficies touches in a manner with all its parts whereas divers parts of the stones superficies cannot touch by reason of its ruggedness And he confirms his opinion by experience for if you put the head of a needle to a bare stone and the point of it to an iron and then pluck away the iron the needle will leave the iron and stick to the stone but if you turn the needle the other way it will leave the stone and stick to the iron Out of which he infers that 't is the multitude of parts which causes the closs and strong sticking And it seems he found the same in the caping of his Loadstones for he used flat irons for that purpose which by their whole plane did take up other irons wheras Gilbert cap'd his with convex irons which not applying themselvs to other irons so strongly or with so many ports as Galileo's did would not by much take up so great weights as his Nevertheless it seems not to me that his answer is sufficient or that his reasons convince For we are to consider that the virtue which he puts in the iron must according to his own supposition proceed from the Loadstone and then what imports it whether the superficies of the iron which touches another iron be so exactly plain or no or that the parts of it be more solid then the parts of the stone For all this conduces nothing to make the virtue greater then it was since no more virtue can go from one iron to the other then goes from the Loadstone to the first iron and if this virtue cannot tie the first iron to the Loadstone it cannot proceed out of this virtue that the second iron be tyed to the first Again if a paper be put betwixt the cap and another iron it doth not hinder the magnetical virtue from passing through it to the iron but the virtue of taking up more weight then the naked stone was able to do is therby
to the iron though the other steam be never so great yet it cannot draw more then according to the proportion of its Antagonists coming from the iron Wherfore seeing the two steams betwixt the iron and the little Loadstone are more proportionable to one another and the steam coming out of the little loadstone is notably greater then the steam going from the iron to the greater Loadstone the conjunction must be made for the most part to the little loadstone And if this discourse doth not hold in the former part of the Probleme betwixt a second iron and Loadstone it is supplyed by the former reason which we gave for that particular purpose The third case depends also of this solution for the bigger an iron is so many more parts it hath to suck up the influence of the Loadstone and consequently doth it therby the more greedily and therfore the Loadstone must be carried to it more violently and when they aâ—e joyn'd stick more strongly The sixth question is Why the variations of the Needle from the true North in the Northern Hemisphere are greater the nearer you go to the Pole and lesser the nearer you approach to the Equator The reason wherof is plain in our doctrine For considering that the magnetick virtue of the earth streams from the North towards the Equator it follows of necessity that if there be two streams of magnetick flowrs issuing from the North one of them precisely from the pole the other from a part of the earth near the pole that the stream coming from the point by side the Pole be but a little the stronger of the two there will appear very little differences in their several operations after they have had a long space to mingle their emanations together which therby join and grow as it were into one stream wheras the nearer you come to the Pole the more you will find them severed and each of them working by its own virtue And very near the point which causes the variation each stream works singly by it self and therfore here the point of variation must be master and will carry the needle strongly to his course from the due North if his stream be never so little more efficacious then the other Again a line drawn from a point of the Earth wide of the Pole to a point of the Meridian near the Equator makes a less angle then a line drawn from the same point of the Earth to a point of the same Meridian nearer the Pole wherfore the variation being esteem'd by the quantities of the said angles it must needs be greater near the Pole then near the Equator though the cause be the same But because it may happen that in the parts near the Equator the variation may proceed from some piece of land not much more northerly then where the needle is but that it bears rather Easterly or Westerly from it and yet Gilbert's assertion goes universally when he says the variations in Southern regions are less then in Northern ones we must examine what may be the reason therof And presently the generation of the Loadstone shews it plainly For seeing the nature of the Loadstone proceeds out of this that the Sun works more upon the Torrid Zone then upon the poles and that his too strong operation is contrary to the Loadstone as being of the nature of fire it follows evidently that the lands of the Torrid Zone cannot be so magnetical generally speaking as the polar lands are and by consequence that a lesser land near the Pole will have a greater effect then a larger continent near the Equator and likewise a land further off towards the Pole will work more strongly then a nearer land which lyes towards the Equator The seventh question is Whether in the same part of the world a touched needle may at one time vary more from the true North point and at another time less In which Gilbert was resolute for the negative part but our latter Mathematicians are of another mind Three experiences were made neer London in three divers years The two first 42 years distant from one another and the third 12 years distant from the second And by them it is found that in the space of 54 years the Loadstone hath at London diminsh'd his variation from the North the quantity of 7 degrees and more But so that in the latter years the diminution hath sensibly gone faster then in the former These observations peradventure are but little credited by Strangers but we who know the worth of the men that made them cannot mistrust any notable errour in them for they were very able Mathematicians and made their observations with very great exactness and there were several judicious witnesses at the making of them as may be seen in Mr. Gillebrand's print concerning this subject And divers other particular persons confirm the same whose credit though each single might peradventure be slighted yet all in body make a great accession We must therfore cast about to find what may be the cause of an effect so paradox to the rest of the doctrine of the Loadstone for seeing that no one place can stand otherwise to the North of the earth at one time then at another how it is possible the needle should receive any new variation since all variation proceeds out of the inequality of the earth But when we consider that this effect proceeds not out of the main body of the earth but only out of the bark of it and that its bark may have divers tempers not as yet discover'd to us out of whose variety the influence of the earthy parts may be divers in respect of one certain place 't is not impossible but that such variation may be especially in England which Island lying open to the North by a great and vast Ocean may receive more particularly then other places the special influences and variation of the weather that happen in those Northeastern countreys from whence this influence comes to us If therfore there should be any cours of weather whose period were a hundred years for example or more or lesse and so might easily pass unmarked this variation might grow out of such a cours But in so obscure a thing we have already hazarded to guess too much And upon the whole matter of the Loadstone it serves our turn if we have proved as we conceive we have done fully that its motions which appear so admirable do not proceed from an occult quality but that the causes of them may be reduced to local motion and all perform'd by such corporeal instruments and means though peradventure more intricately disposed as all other effects are among bodies Whose ordering and disposing and particular progress there is no reason to despair of finding ouâ— would men but carefully apply themselvs to that work upon solid principles and with diligent experiences But because this matter has been very long and scatteringly
of them To come then to the matter Now that we have explicated the natures of those motions by means wherof bodies are made and destroy'd and in which they are to be consider'd chiefly as passive whiles some exterior agent working upon them causes such alterations in them and brings them to such pass as we see in the changes that are daily wrought among substances The next thing we are to imploy our selves about is to take a survey of those motions which some bodies have wherin they seem to be not so much patients as agents and contain within themselvs the principle of their own motion having no relation to any outward object more then to stir up that principle of motion and set it on work which when it is once in act hath as it were within the limits of its own kingdom and sever'd from commerce with all other bodies whatever many other subaltern motions over which it presides To which purpose we may consider that among the compounded bodies whose natures we have explicated there are some in whom the parts of different complexions are so small so wel mingled together that they make a compound which to our sense seems all quite through of one Homogeneous nature and however it be divided each part retains the entire and compleat nature of the whole Others again there are in which 't is easie to discern that the whole is made up of several great parts of very differing natures and tempers And of these there are two kinds one of such as their differing parts seem to have no relation to one another or correspondence together to perform any particular work in which all of them are necessary but rather they seem to be made what they are by chance and accident and if one part be sever'd from another each is an entire thing by it self of the same nature as it was in the whole and no harmony is destroy'd by such division As may be observ'd in some bodies dig'd out of Mines in which one may see lumps of Metal or stone and glass and such different substances in their several distinct situations perfectly compacted into one continuate body which if you divide the glass remains what it was before the Emerald is still an Emerald the silver is good silver and the like of the other substances the causes of which may be easily deduced out of what we have formerly said But there are other bodies in which this manifest and notable difference of parts carries with it such a subordination of one of them to another as we cannot doubt but that nature made such engines if so I may call them by design and intended that this variety should be in One thing whose unity and being what it is should depend of the harmony of the several differing parts and should be destroy'd by their separation As we see in living Creatures whose particular parts and members being once sever'd there is no longer a living creature to be found among them Now of this kind of bodies there are two sorts The first is of those that seem to be one continuate substance wherin we may observe one and the same constant progress throughout from the lowest to the highest part of it so that the operation of one part is not at all different from that of another but the whole body seems to be the course and throughfare of one constant action varying it self in divers occasions and occurrences according to the disposition of the subject The bodies of the second sort have their parts so notably separated one from the other and each have such a peculiar motion proper to them that one might conceive they were every one a complete distinct total thing by it self and that all of them were artificially tied together were it not that the subordination of these parts to one another is so great and the correspondence between them so strict the one not being able to subsist without the other from whom he derives what is needful for him and again being so useful to that other and having its action and motion so fitting and necessary for it as without it that other cannot be as plainly convinces that the compound of all these several parts must needs be one individuol thing I remember that when I travel'd in Spain I saw there two Engines that in some sort express the natures of these two kinds of bodies One at Toledo the other a Segovia both of them set on work by the current of the river in which the foundation of their machine was laid That at Toledo was to force up water at a great height from the river Tagus to the Alcazar the Kings palace that stands upon a high steep hill or rock almost perpendicular over the river In the bottome there was an indented wheel which turning round with the stream gave motion at the same time to the whole engine which consisted of a multitude of little troughs or square ladles set one over another in two parallel rows over against one another from the bottom to the top and upon two several divided frames of timber These troughs were closed at one end with a traverse board to retain the water from running out there which end being bigger then the rest of the trough made it somewhat like a ladle and the rest of it seem'd to be the handle with a channel in it the little end of which channel or trough was open to let the water pass freely away And these troughs were fasten'd by an axletree in the middle of them to the frame of timber that went from the bottome up to the top so that they could upon that center move at liberty either the shut end downwards or the open end like the beam of a ballance Now at a certain position of the root-wheel if so I may call it all one side of the machine sunk down a little lower towards the water and the other was raised a little higher Which motion was changed as soon as the ground-wheel had ended the remnant of his revolution for then the side that was lowest before sprung up and the other sunk down And thus the two sides of the machine were like two legs that by turns trod the water as in the Vintage men press Grapes in a watte Now the troughs that were fast'ned to the timber which descended turn'd that part of them downwards which was like a Box shut to hold the water and consequently the open end was up in the air like the arm of the ballance to which the lightest scale is fasten'd and in the mean time the troughs upon the ascending timber were moved by a contrary motion keeping their boxends aloft and letting the open ends incline downwards so that if any water were in them they would let it run out wher'as the others retain'd any that came into them VVhen you have made an image of this Machine in your phantasie consider what will follow out
Spirits with Animal Spirits and with Bloud and by these the Animal is heated nourished and made partaker of Sense and Motion Now refering the Particular motions of Living Creatures to another time we may observe that both kinds of them as well Vegetables as Animals agree in the nature of sustaining themselvs in the three common actions of generation nutrition and augmentation which are the begining the progress and the conserving of life To which three we may add the not so much action as passion of Death and of Sickness or decay which is the way to death CHAP. XXIV A more particular survey of the generation of Animals in which is discover'd what part of the Animal is first generated TO begin then with examining how Living Creatures are in gender'd our main question shall be Whether they be framed entirely at once or successively one part after another And if this latter way which part first Upon the discussion of which all that concerns generation will be explicated as much as concerns our purpose in hand To deduce this from its origine we may remember how our Masters tell us that when any living creature is past the heat of its augmentation or growing the superfluous nourishment settles it self in some appointed place of the body to serve for the production of some other Now it is evident that this superfluity comes from all parts of the body and may be said to contain in it after some sort the perfection of the whole living creature Be it how it will 't is manifest that the living creature is made of this superfluous moysture of the parent which according to the opinion of some being compounded of several parts derived from the several limbs of the parent those parts when they come to be fermented in convenient heat and moysture take their posture and situation according to the posture and disposition of parts that the living creature had from whence they issued and then they growing daily greater and solider the effects of moysture and heat at length become such a creature as that was from whence they had their origine Which an accident that I remember seems much to confirm It was of a Cat that had 't is tail cut off when it was very young which Cat hapning afterwards to have young ones half the kitlings proved without tails and the other half had them in an ordinary manner as if nature could supply but on one partners side not on both And another particular that I saw when I was at Argiers makes to this purpose which was a woman that having two thumbs upon the left hand four daughters that she had all resembled her in the same accident and so did a little child a girl of her eldest daughters but none of her sons Whiles I was there I had a particular curiosity to see them all and though it be not easily permited to Christans to speak familiarly with Mahometan women yet the condition I was in there and the civillity of the Basha gave me the opportunity of full view and discourse with them And the old woman told me that her mother and grandmother had been in the same manner But for them it rests upon her credit the others I saw my self But the opinion which these accidents seem to support though at the first view it seems smoothly to satisfie our inquiry and fairly to compass the making of a living creature yet looking further into it we shall find it fall exceeding short of its promising and meet with such difficulties as it cannot overcome For first let us cast about how this compound of several parts that servs for the generation of a new living creature can be gather'd from every part and member of the parent so to carry with it in little the complete nature of it The meaning hereof must be that this superfluous aliment either passes through all and every little part and particle of the parents body and in its passage receives somthing from them or else that it receives only from all similiar and great parts The former seems impossible for how can one imagine that such juice should circulate the whole body of an Animal and visit every atome of it and retire to the reserve where it is kept for generation and no part of it remain absolutely behind sticking to the flesh or bones that it bedews but that still some part returns back from every part of the Animal Besides consider those parts that are most remote from the channels which convey this juyce how when they are fuller of nourishment then they need the juyce which overflows from them comes to the next part and setling there and serving it for its due nourishment drives back into the channel that which was betwixt the channel and it self so that here there is no return at all from some of the remote parts and much of that juyce which is rejected never went far from the channel it self We may therfore safely conclude that 't is impossible every little part of the whole body should remit somthing impregnated and imbued with the nature of it But then you may peradventure say that every similiar part doth If so I would ask how it is possible that by fermentation only every part should regularly go to a determinate place to make that kind of Animal in which every similiar part is diffused to so great an extent How should the nature of flesh here become broad there round and take just the figure of the part it is to cover How should a bone here be hollow there be blady and in another part take the form of a rib and those many figures which we see of bones And the like we might ask of every other similiar part as of the veins and the rest Again seeing it must of necessity happen that at one time more is remitted from one part then from another how comes it to pass that in the collection the due proportion of nature is so punctually observed Shall we say that this is done by some cunning artificer whose work it is to set all these parts in their due posture which Aristotle attributes to the seed of the male But this is impossible for all this diversity of work is to be done at one time and in the same occasions which can no more be effected by one agent then multiplicity can immediately proceed from unity But besides that there can be no agent to dispose of the parts when they are gather'd 't is evident that a sensitive creature may be made without any such gathering of parts beforehand from another of the same kind for else how could vermine breed out of living bodies or out of corruption How could Rats come to fill ships into which never any were brought How could Frogs be ingendred in the air Eels of dewy turfs or of mud Toads of Ducks Fishs of Herns and the like To the same purpose when one species or kind of Animal
is changed into another as when a Caterpillar or a Silk-worm becomes a Flie 't is manifest there can be no such precedent collection of parts And therfore there is no remedy but we must seek out some other means and course of generation then this To which we may be lead by considering how a Living Creature is nourish'd and augmented for why should not the parts be made in Generation of a matter lik that which makes them in Nutrition If they be augmented by one kind of juyce that after several changes turns at length into flesh and bone and every sort of mixed body or similiar part wherof the sensitive creature is compounded and that joyns it self to what it finds already made why should not the same juyce with the same progress of heat and moysture and other due temperaments be converted at first into flesh and bone though none be formerly there to joyn it self to Let us then conclude that the juyce which serves for nourishment of the Animal being more then is requisite for that service the superfluous part of it is drain'd from the rest and reserv'd in a place fit for it where by little and little through digestion it gains strength and vigour and spirits to it self and becomes an homogeneal body such as other simple compounds are which by other degrees of heat moisture is chang'd into another kind of substance that again by other temperaments into an other And thus by the course of nature and by passing successively many degrees of temper and by receiving a total change in every one of them at length an Animal is made of such juice as afterwards serves to nourish him But to bring this to pass a shorter way and with greater facility some have been of opinion that all similar things of whatever substance are undiscernably mixed in every thing that is and that to the making of any body out of any thing there is no more required but to gather together those parts which are of that kind and to separate and cast away from them all those which are of a nature differing from them But this speculation will appear a very aiery and needless one we consider into how many several substances the same species of a thing may be immediately changed or rather how many several substances may be encreas'd immediately from several equal individuals of the same thing and then take an account how much of each individual is gone into each substance which it hath so increas'd For if we sum up the quantities that in the several substances are therby encreas'd we shall find they very much exceed the whole quantity of any one of the individuals which should not be if the supposition were true for every individual should be but one one total made up of the several different similar parts which encrease the several substances that extract out of them what is of their own nature This will be better understood by an example Suppose that a Man a Horse a Cow a Sheep and 500 more several species of living creatures should make a meal of Letuces To avoid all perplexity in conceiving the argument let us allow that every one did eat a pound and let us conceive another pound of this herb to be burned as much to be putrified under a Cabage root and the like under 500 plants more of divers species Then cast how much of every pound of letuce is turned into the substances that are made of them or encreas'd by them as how much ashes one pound hath made how much water hath been distil'd out of another pound how much a man hath been encreas'd by a third how much a horse by a fourth how much earth by the putrefaction of a fifth pound how much a Cabage hath been encreas'd by a sixth and so go over all the pounds that have been turned into substances of different species which may be multiplied as much as you please And when you have sum'd up all these several quantities you find them far to exceed the quantity of one pound which it would not do if every pound of Letuce were made up of several different similiar parts actually in it that are extracted by different substances of the natures of those parts and that no substance could be encreas'd by it unless pats of its nature were originally in the letuce On the other side if we but cast our eye back upon the principles we have laid where we discourse of the composition of bodies we shall discern how this work of changing one thing into another either in nutrition in augmention or in generation will appear not only possible but easie to be effected For out of them 't is made evident how the several varieties of solid and liquid bodies all differences of natural qualities all consistences and whatever else belongs to similar bodies results out of the pure and single mixture of rarity and density so that to make all such varieties as are necessary there 's no need of mingling or separating any other kinds of parts but only an art or power to mingle in due manner plain rare and dense bodies one with another Which very action and none other but with excellent method and order such as becomes the great Architect that hath design'd it is perform'd in the generation of a living creature which is made of a substance at first far unlike what it afterwards grows to be If we look upon this change in gross and consider but the two extremes to wit the first substance of which a living creature made and it self in its full perfection I confess it may well seem incredible how so excellent a creature can derive its origine from so mean a principle and so far remote and differing from what it grows to be But if we examine it in retail and go along anatomizing it in every step and degree that it changes by we shall find that every immediate change is so near and so palpably to be made by the concurrent causes of the matter prepared as we must conlude it cannot possibly become any other thing then just what it doth become Take a Bean or any other seed and put it into the earth and let water fall upon it can it be but the bean must swell The bean swelling can it chuse but break the skin The skin broken can it chuse by reason of the heat that is in it but push out more matter and do that action which we may call germinating Can these germs chuse but pierce the earth in small strings as they are able to make their way Can these strings chuse but be harden'd by the compression of the earth and by their own nature they being the heaviest parts of the fermented bean And can all this be any thing else but a root Afterwards the heat that is in the root mingling it self with more moisture and according to its nature springing upwards will it not follow
extracted like a quintessence out of the whole mass is reser'd in convenient receptacles or vessels till there be use of it and is the matter or seed of which a new Animal is to be made in whom will appear the effect of all the specifical virtues drawn by the bloud in its iterated courses by its circular motion through all the several parts of the parents body Whence it follows that if any part be wanting in the body wherof this seed is made or be superabundant in it whose virtue is not in the rest of the body the vertue of that part cannot be in the bloud or will be too strong in the bloud and by consequence it cannot be at all or it will be too much in the seed And the effect proceeding from the seed that is the young Animal will come into the world savouring of that origine unless the Mother's seed supply or temper what the Father 's was defective or superabundant in or contrariwise the Father's correct the errours of the Mother's But peradventure the Reader will tell us that such a specifical virtue cannot be gotten by concoction of the blood or by any petended impression in it unless some little particles of the nourished part remain in the blood and return back with it according to that maxim of Geber Quod non ingreditur non immutat no body can change another unless it enter into it and mixing it self with it become one with it And that so in effect by this explication we fall back into the opinion which we rejected To this I answer that the difference is very great between that opinion and ours as will appear evidently if you observe the two following assertions of theirs First they affirm that a living creature is made mâ—erly by the assembling together of similar parts which were hidden in those bodies from whence they are extracted in generation wheras we say that bloud coming to a part to irrigate it is by its passage through it and some little stay in it and by its frequent returns thither at length transmuted into the nature of that part and therby the specifical vertues of every part grow greater and are more diffused and extended Secondly they say that the Embryon is actually formed in the seed though in such little parts as it cannot be discerned till each part have enlarged and increased it self by drawing to it from the circumstant bodies more substance of their own nature But we say that there is one Homogenal substance made of the blood which hath been in all parts of the body and this is the seed which contains not in it any figure of the Animal from which it is refined or of the Animal into which it hath a capacity to be turned by the addition of other substances though it have in it the vertues of all the parts it hath often run through By which term of specifike vertues I hope we have said enough in sundry places of this discourse to keep men from conceiving that we mean any such inconceivable quality as modern Philosophers too frequently talk of when they know not what they say or think nor can give any account of But that it is such degrees and numbers of rare and dense parts mingled together as constitute a mixed body of such a temper and nature which degrees and proportions of rare and dense parts and their mixture together and incorporating into one Homogeneal substance is the effect resulting from the operations of the exteriour agent that cuts imbibes kneads and boyls it to such a temper Which exteriour agent in this case is each several part of the Animals body that this juice or blood runs through and that hath a particular temper belonging to it resulting out of such a proportion of rare and dense parts as we have even now spoken of and can no more be with-held from communicating its temper to the bloud that first soaks into it and soon after drains away again from it according as other succeeding parts of bloud drive it on then a mineral channel can chuse but communicate its vertue to a stream of water that runs through it and is continually grating off some of the substance of the Mineral earth and dissolving it into it self But to go on with our intended discourse The seed thus imbued with the specifical vertues of all the several parts of the parents body meeting in a fit receptacle the other parents seed and being there duly concocted becomes first a heart Which heart in this tender beginning of a new Animal contains the several virtues of all the parts that afterwards will grow out of it and be in the future Animal in the same manner as the heart of a complete Animal contains in it the specificke virtues of all the several parts of its own body by reason of the bloods continual resorting to it in a circle from all parts of its body and its being nourished by that juice to supply the continual consumption which the extreme heat of it must needs continually occasion in its own substance wherby the heart becoms in a manner the Compendium or abridgment of the whole Animal Now this heart in the growing Embryon being of the nature of fire as on the one side it streams out its hot parts so on the other it sucks oyl or fewel to nourish it self out of the adjacent moist parts which matter aggregated to it being sent abroad together with the other hot parts that steam from it both of them together stay and settle as soon as they are out of the reach of that violent heat that would not permit them to thicken or rest And there they grow into such a substance as is capable to be made of such a mixture and are linked to the heart by some of those strings that steam out from it for those steams likewise harden as we shew'd more particularly when we discours'd of the tender stalks of plants and in a word this becoms some other part of the Animal Which thus encreases by order one part being made after another till the whole living creature be completely framed So that now you see how mainly their opinion differs from ours since they say that there is actually in the seed a complete living creature for what else is a living creature but bones in such parts nerves in such others bloud and humours contain'd in such and such places all as in a living creature All which they say But we make the seed to be nothing else but one mixed body of one homogeneal nature throughout consisting of such a multiplicity of rare and dense parts so ballanced and proportioned in number and magnitude of those parts which are evenly shuffled and alike mingled in every little parcel of the whole substance in such sort that the operation of nature upon this seed may in a long time and with a due process bring out such figures situation and qualities as fluidity consisence
not impossible for us to do by reason that Authors have not left us the circumstances upon which we might groūd our judgment concerning them so particularly described as were necessary nor our selves have met with the commodity of making such experiences and of searching so into their beds as were requisite to determine solidly the reasons of them And indeed I conceive that oftentimes the relations which others have recorded of their generation would rather mislead then assist us since it is very familiar in many men to magnifie the exactness of Nature in framing effects by phansie to themselvs when to make their Wonder appear more just they will not fail to set off their story with all advantageous circumstances and help out what wants a little or comes but near the mark But to come closer to our purpose that is to the figures of living things We see that the roots in the earth are all of them figured almost in the same fashion for the heat residing in the midd'st of them pushes every way and therupon some of them become round but others more long then round according to the temper of the ground or the season of the year or the weather that happens and this not onely in divers kinds of Roots but even in several of the same kind That part of the plant which mounts upwards for the most part round and long the cause wherof is evident For the juice which is in the middle of it working upwards because the hardness of the bark will not let it out at the sides and coming in more and more abundance for the reasons we have above deliver'd encreases that part equally every way but upwards and therfore it must be equally thick and broad and consequently round but the length will exceed either of the other dimensions because the juice is driven up with a greater force and in more quantity then it is to the sides Yet the broadness and thickness are not so exactly uniform but that they exceed a little more at the bottom then at the top which is occasion'd partly by the contracting of juice into a narrower circuit the further it is from the source and partly by reason of the Branches which shooting forth convey away a great part of the Juice from the main stock Now if we consider the matter well we shall find that what is done in the whole tree the very same is likewise done in every little leaf of it For a leaf consists of little branches shooting out from one greater branch which is in the middle and again other less branches are derived from those second branches and so still lesser and lesser till they weave themselvs into a close work as thick as that which we see women use to fill up with Silk or Crewel when in Tentwork they embroyder leafs or flowers upon Canvas And this again is cover'd and as it were glew'd over by the humour which sticking to these little thrids stops up every little vacuity and by the air is hardened into such a skin as we see a leaf consists of And thus it appears how an account may be given of the figure of the leafs as well as of the figure of the main body of the whole tree the little branches of the leaf being proportionate in figure to the branches of the tree itself so that each leaf seems to be the Tree in little and the figure of the leaf depending of the course of these little branches so that if the greatest branch of the Tree be much longer then the others the leaf will be a long one but if the lesser branches spread broad-ways the leaf will likewise be a broad one so far as even to be notch'd at the outsides round about it in great or little notches according to the proportion of the Trees Branches These Leafs when they first break out are foulded inwards in such sort as the smalness and roundness of the passage in the wood through which they issue constrains them to be where nevertheless the driness of their parts keep them asunder as that one leaf doth not incorporate it self with another But so soon as they feel the heat of the Sun after they are broken out into liberty their tender branches by little and little grow more straight the concave parts of them drawing more towards the Sun because he extracts and sucks their moysture from their hinder parts into their former that are more exposed to his beams and thereby the hinder parts are contracted and grow shorter and those before grow longer Which if it be in excess makes the leaf become crooked the contrary way as we see in divers flowers and in sundry leaves during the Summers heat witness the Ivie Roses full blown Tulips and all flowers in form of Bells and indeed all kinds of flowers whatever when the Sun hath wrought upon them to that degree we speak of and that their joyning to their stalk and the next parts thereto allow them scope to obey the impulse of those outward causes And when any do vary from this rule we shall as plainly see other manifest causes producing those different effects as now we do those working in this manner As for Fruits though we see that when they grow at liberty upon the Tree they seem to have a particular figure allotted them by nature yet in truth it is the order'd series of natural causes and not an intrinsecal formative virtue which breeds this effect as is evident by the great power which art hath to change their figures at pleasure wherof you may see examples enough in Campanella and every curious Gardener can furnish you with store Out of these and such like principles a man that would make it his study with less trouble of tediousness then that patient contemplator of one of natures little works the Bees whom we mention'd a while agone might without all doubt trace the causes in the growing of an Embryon till he discover'd the reason of every bones figure of every notable hole or passage in them of the Ligaments by which they are tied together of the membranes that cover them and of all the other parts of the body How out of a first Masse that was soft and had no such parts distinguishable in it every one of them came to be formed by contracting that Masse in one place by dilating it in another by moistning it in a third by drying it here hard'ning it there Ut his exordia primis Omnia ipse tener hominis concreverit orbis till in the end this admirable machine and frame of mans body was composed and fashioned up by such little and almost insensible steps and degres Which when it is look'd upon in bulk and entirely-formed seems impossible to have been made and sprung merely out of these principles without an Intelligence immediately working and moulding it at every turn from the beginning to the end But withall we cannot chuse but break
to the sides of the ventricles and consequently new bloud drops in So that in conclusion we see the motion of the heart depends originally of its fibers irrigated by the blood and not from the force of the vapour as Monsieur des Cartes supposes This motion of the heart drives the blood which is warm'd and spiritualiz'd by being boyl'd in this furnace through due passages into the arteries whence it runs into the veins and is a main cause of making and nourishing other parts as the Liver the Lungs the Brains and whatsoever else depends of those veins and arteries through which the bloud goes Which being ever freshly heated and receiving the tincture of the hearts nature by passing through the heart wherever it stayes and curdles it grows into a substance of a nature conformable to the heart though every one of such substances be of exceeding different conditions in themselves the very grossest excrements not being excluded from some participation of that nature But if you desire to follow the blood all along every step in its progress from the heart round about the body till it return back again to its center Dr. Harvey who most acutely teaches this doctrine must be your guide He will shew you how it issues from the heart by the Arteries from whence it goes on warming the flesh til it arrive to some of the extremities of the body and against it is grown so cool by long absence from the fountain of its heart and by evaporating its own stock of spirits without any new supply that it hath need of being warmed anew it findes it self return'd back again to the Heart and is there heated again which return is made by the Veins as its going forwards is perform'd only by the Arteries And were it not for this continual circulation of the blood and this new heating it in its proper caldron the Heart it could not be avoided but that the extreme parts of the body would soon grow cold and die For flesh being of it self of a cold nature as is apparent in dead flesh and being kept warm meerly by the blood that bedews it and the bloud likewise being of a nature that soon grows cold and congeals unless it be preserv'd in due temper by actual heat working upon it how can we imagine that they two singly without any other assistance should keep one another warm especially in those parts that are far distant from the heart by only being together Surely we must allow the blood which is a substance fit for motion to have recourse back to the heart where only it can be supply'd with new heat and spirits and from thence be driven out again by its pulses or strokes which are its shuttings And as fast as it flies out like a reeking thick steam which rises from perfumed water falling upon a heated pan that which is next before it must flie yet further on to make way for it and newt arterial blood stil issuing forth at every pulse it must still drive on what issued thence the last precedent pulse and that part must press on what is next before it And thus it fares with the whole mass of blood which having no other course but in the body must at length run round and by new vessels which are the veins return back to the place from whence it issued first and by that time it comes thither it is grown cool and thick needs a vigorous restauration of spirits and a new rarifying that then it may warm the flesh it passes again through without which it would suddenly grow stone cold As is manifest if by tying or cutting the arteries you intercept the blood which is to nourish any part for then that part grows presently cold and benum'd But referring the particulars of this doctrine to Dr. Harvey who hath both invented and perfected it our task in hand calls upon us to declare in common the residue of motions that all Living Creatures agree in How Generation is perform'd we have determin'd in the past discourse Our next consideration then ought to be of Nutrition and Augmentation Between which there is very little difference in the nature of their actions and the difference of their names is grounded more upon the different result in the period of them then upon the thing it self as will by and by appear Thus then is the progress of this matter As soon as a living creature is formed it endeavours straight to augment it self and employs it self only about that the parts of it being yet too young and tender to perform the other functions which nature hath produced them for That is to say the Living Creature at its first production is in such a state and condition that it is able to do nothing else but by means of the great heat in it to turn into its own substance the abundance of moysture that overflows it They who are curious in this matter tell us that the performance of this work consists in five actions which they call Attraction Adhesion Concoction Assimulation and Unition The nature of Atraction we have already declared when we explicated how the heart and the root sends juice into the other parts of the Animal or Plant for they abounding in themselves with inward heat and besides that much other circumstant heat working likewise upon them it cannot be otherwise but that they must needs suck and draw into them the moisture that is about them As for Adhesion the nature of that is likewise explicated when we shew'd how such parts as are moist but especially aerial or oily ones such as are made by the operation of a soft and continual heat are catching and easily stick to any body they happen to touch and how a little part of moysture between two dry parts joyns them together Upon which occasion it is to be noted that parts of the same kind joyn best together and therfore the powder of glass is used to ciment broken glass withal as we have touch'd somwhere above and the powder of marble to ciment marble with and so of other bodies In like manner Alchimists find no better expedient to extract a small proportion of silver mixed with a great one of gold then to put more silver to it nor any more effectual way to get out the heart or tincture or spirits of any thing they distil or make an extract of then to infuse its own flegme upon it and to water it with that Now whether the reason of this be that continuity because it is an unity must be firmest between parts that are most conformable to one another and consequently nearest one among themselves or whether it be for some other hidden cause belongs not to this place to discourse but in fine so it is And the adhesion is strongest of such parts as are most conformable to that which needs encrease and nourishment and that is made up by the other three actions Of which
Concoction is nothing else but a thickning of that juice which already sticks to any part of the Animals body by the good digestion that heat makes in it And Assimilation is the effect of Concoction for this juice being used in the same manner as the first juice was that made the part wherto this is to be joyn'd it cannot chuse but become like it in substance And then there being no other substance between it is of it self united to it without any further help Hitherto this action belongs to Nutrition But if on the one side the heat and spirituality of the blood and on the other side the due temper and disposition of the part be such as the bloud is greedily suck'd into the part which therby swells to make room for it and will not let it go away but turns it into a like substance as it self is and is greater in quantity then what is consumed and decayes continually by transpiration then this action is called likewise Augmentation Which Galen explicates by a sport the boys of Ionia used who were accustom'd to fill a bladder with wind and when they could force no more into it they could rub the bladder and after rubbing of it they found it capable of receiving new breath and so they would proceed on till their bladder were as full as by use they knew it could be made Now saith he nature doth the like by filling our flesh and other parts with bloud that is to say it stretches the fibers but she hath over and above a power which the boys had not namely to make the fibers as strong after they are stretched to their utmost extension as they were before they were extended whence it happens that she can extend them again as well as at the first and this without end as far as concerns that part The reason wherof is because she extends them by means of a liquor which is of the same nature as that wherof they were made at first and from thence it followes that by concoction that liquour settles in the parts of the fibers which have most need and so makes those parts as great in the length they are extended to as they were in their shortness before they were drawn out Whereby the whole part of the Animal wherin this happens grows greater and the like being done in every part as well as in any one single one the whole Animal becomes bigger and is in such sort augmented Out of all which discourse we may collect that in the essential composition of Living Creatures there may peradventure be a phisical possibility for them to continue always without decay and so become immortals even in their bodies if all hurtful accidents coming from without might be prevented For seeing that a man besides the encrease which he makes of himself can also impart to his children a vertue by which they are able to do the like and to give again to theirs as much as they receiv'd from their Fathers 't is clear that what makes him die is no more the want of any radical power in him to encrease or nourish himself then in fire it is the want of power to burn which makes it go out But it must be some accidental want which Gallen attributes chiefly to the driness of our bones and sinews c. as you may in him see more at large For driness with density alows not easie admittance to moysture and therfore it causes the heat which is in the dry body either to evaporate or to be extinguish'd and want of heat is that from whence the failing of life proceeds which he thinks cannot be prevented by any art or industry And herein God hath express'd his great mercy and goodness towards us For seeing that by the corruption of our own nature we are so immers'd in flesh and blood as we should for ever delight to wallow in their mire without raising our thoughts at any time above that low and brutal condition he hath engaged us by a happy necessity to think of and provide for a nobler and far more excellent state of living that will never change or end In pursuance of which inevitable ordinance Man as if he were grown weary and out of love with this life and scorn'd any Term in his farm here since he cannot purchase the Fee-simple of it hastens on his death by his unwary and rash use of meats which poyson his blood and then his infected blood passing through his whole body must needs in like manner taint it all at once For the redress of which mischief the assistance of physick is made use of and that passing likewise the same way purifies the blood and recovers the corruption occasion'd by the peccant humour or other whiles gathering it together it thrusts and carries out that evil guest by the passages contriv'd by nature to disburden the body of unprofitable or hurtful supersluites CHAP. XXVII Of the motions of Sence and of the Sensible Qualities in general and in particular of those which belong to Touch Tast and Smelling HAving thus brought on the course of Nature as high as Living Creatures whose chief species or division is those that have sense and having declared the operations which are common to the whole tribe of them which includes both Plants and Animals 't is now time we take a particular view of those whose action and passion is the reason why that chief portion of life is termed sensitive I mean the Senses and the qualities by which the outward world comes into the living creature through his senses Which when we shall have gone through we shall scarcely have left any qualities among bodies to plead for a spiritual manner of being or working that is for a selfentity an instantaneous operation which kind of things and properties vulgar Philosophy is very earnest to attribute to our senses with what reason and upon what ground let us now consider These qualities are reduced to five several heads answerable to so many different wayes wherby we receive notice of the bodies that are without us And accordingly they constitute a like number of different Senses of every one of which we will discourse particularly when we have examined the natures of the qualities that affect them But now all the consideration we shall need to have of them is only this That it is manifest the organs in us by which sensible qualites work upon us are corporeal and made of the like ingredients as the rest of our body is and therfore must of necessity be liable to suffer evil and receive good as all other bodies do from those active qualities which make and mar all things within the limits of Nature By which terms of Evil and Good I mean those effects that are averse or conformable to the particular nature of any thing and therby tend to the preservation or destruction of that individual Now we receiving from our senses the knowledge
red The reason hereof is that The colours which appear in the glasse are of the nature of those luminous colours we first explicated that arise from looking upon white and black bordering together For a candle standing in the air is as it were a white situated between two blacks the circumstant dusky air having the nature of a black so then that side of the candle which is seen through the thicker part of the glass appears red and that which is seen through the thinner appears blew in the same manner as when we look through the glass Whereas the colours shine contrariwise upon a paper or reflecting object as we have already declared together with the reasons of both these appearances each fitted to its proper case of looking through the glass upon the luminous object surrounded with darkness in the one and of observing the effect wrought by the same luminous object in some medium or upon some reflectent superficies in the other And to confirm this if a white paper be set standing hollow before the glass like half a hollow pillar whose flats stands edgeways towards the glass so as both the edges may be seen through it the further edge will seem blew and the nearer will be red and the like will happen if the paper be held in the free air parallel to the lower superficies of the glass without any black carpet to limit both ends of it which serves to make the colours the smarter So that in both cases the air serves manifestly for a black in the first between the two white edges and in the second limiting the two white ends and by consequence the air about the candle must likewise serve for two blacks including the light candle between them Several other delightful experiments of luminous colour I might produce to confirm the grounds I have laid for the nature and making of them But I conceive these I have mention'd are abundantly enough for the end I propose to my self Therfore I will take my leave of this subtle and nice subject referring my Reader if he be curious to entertain himself with a full variety of such shining wonders to our ingenious Countreyman and my worthy friend Mr. Hall who at my last being at Liege shew'd me there most of the experiences I have mention'd together with several other very fine and remarkable curiosities concerning light which he promised me he would shortly publish in a work that he had already cast and almost finished upon that svbject And in it I doubt not but He will give entire satisfaction to all the doubts and Problems that may occur in this subject wheras my little exercise formerly in making experiments of this kind and my less conveniency of attempting any now makes me content my self with thus spining a course thred from wooll carded me by others that may run through the whole doctrine of colours whose causes have hitherto been so much admired and that it will do so I am strongly perswaded both because if I look upon the causes which I have assigned à prirori me thinks they appear very agreeable to nature and to reason and if I apply them to the several Phenomens which Mr. Hall shew'd me and to as many others as I have otherwise met with I find they agree exactly with them and render a full account of them And thus you have the whole nature of luminous colours resolv'd into the mixion of light and darkness by the due ordering of which who have skil therin may produce any middle colour he please as I my self have seen the experience of infinite changes in such sort made so that it seems to me nothing can be more manifest then that luminous colours are generated in the way here deliver'd Of which how that gentle and obedient Philosophy of Qualities readily obedient to what hard task soever you assign it will render a rational account and what discreet vertue it will give the same things to produce different colours and maked different appearances meerly by such nice changes of situation I do not well understand But peradventure the Patrones of it may say that every such circumstance is a Conditio sine qua non and therwith no doubt their Auditors will be much the wiser in comprehending the particular nature of light and of the colours that have their origine from it The Rainbow for whose sake most men handle this matter of luminous colours is generated in the first of the two ways we have deliver'd for the production of such colours and hath its origine from refraction when the eye being at a convenient distance from the refracting body looks upon it to discern what apears in it The speculation of which may be found in that excellent discourse of Mounsir des Cartes which is the sixth of his Meteors where he hath with great accurateness deliver'd a most ingenious doctrine of this mystery had not his bad chance of missing in a former principle as I conceive somwhat obscured it For he there gives the cause so neat and so justly calculated to the apearances as no man can doubt but that he hath found out the true reason of this wonder of nature which hath perplex'd so many great wits as may almost be seen with our very eyes when looking upon the fresh dew in a Sunshiny morning we may in due positions perceive the Rainbow colours not three yards distant from us in which we may distinguish even single drops with their effects But he having deterned the nature of light to consist in motion and proceeding consequently concludes colours to be but certain kinds of motion by which I fear it is impossible that any good account should be given of the experiences we see But what we have already said in that point I conceive is sufficient to give the Reader satisfaction therin and to secure him that the generation of the colours in the Rain-bow as well as all other colours is reduced to the mingling of light and darkness which is our principal intent to prove Adding therto by way of advertisement for others whose leisure may permit them to make use thereof that who shall ballance the proportions of luminous colours may peradventure make himself a step to judg of the natures of those bodes which really and constantly wear like dyes for the figures of the least parts of such bodies joyntly with the connexion or mingling of them with pores must of necessity be that which makes them reflect light to our eyes in such proportions as the luminous colours of their tincture and semblance do For two things are to be consider'd in bodies in order to reflecting of light either the extancies and cavities of them or their hardness and softness As for the first the proportions of light mingled with darkness will be varied according as the extancies or the cavities exceed and as each of them is great or small since cavities have the nature of darkness in respect
not content to give us terms with out explicating them but will force us to believe contradictions Telling us that Life consisted in this That the same thing hath a power to work upon it self and that Sensation is a working of the active part of the same sense upon its passive part and yet will admit no parts in it but will have the same indivisible power work upon it self And this with such violence and down-bearing of all opposition that they deem him not considerable in the Schools who shall offer only to doubt of what they teach him hereabout but brand him with the censure of one who knows not and contradicts the very first principles of Philosophy Wherefore 't is requisite we should look somewhat more particularly into the manner how sensation is made Monsir des Cartes who by his great and Heroick Attempts and by shewing mankind how to steer and husband their reason to best advantage hath left us no excuse for being ignorant of any thing worth the knowing explicating the nature of Sense is of opinion that the bodies without us in certain circumstances give a blow upon our exterior Organes from whence by the continuity of the parts that blow or motion is continued till it come to our brain and seat of knowledge upon which it gives a stroke answerable to that which the outward sense first received And there this knock causing a particular effect according to the particular nature of the motion which depends of the nature of the object that produces it our soul and mind hath notice by this means of every thing that knocks at our gates and by the great variety of knocks or motions that our brain feeles which rises from as great a variety of natures in the objects that cause them we are enabled to judg of the nature and conditions of every thing we converse withal As for example he conceives Light to be nothing else but a percussion made by the illuminant upon the air or upon the ethereal substance which he puts to be mixed with and to run through all bodies which being a continuate medium between the illuminant and our sense the percussion upon that strikes also our sense which he calls the nerve that reaches from the place strucken to wit from the bottom of your eye to the brain Now by reason of the continuity of this string or nerve he conceives that the blow made upon the outward end of it by the other is convei'd by the other end of it to the brain the end striking the brain in the same measure as the other struck the other end of it like the Jack of a Virginal which strikes the sounding cord according as the Musitians hand presses upon the stop The part of the brain which is thus strucken he supposes to be the phantasie where he deems the soul resides and thereby takes notice of the Motion and Object that are without And what is said thus of Sight is to be applyed proportionably to the rest of the Senses This then is the summe of Monsir des Cartes his opinion which he hath very finely expressed with all the advantages that opposite examples significant words and clear method can give to a witty Discourse Which yet is but a part of the commendations he deserves for what he hath done on this particular He is over and above all this the first that I have ever met with who hath published any conceptions of this nature wherby to make the operations of sense intellegible Certainly this praise will ever belong to him that he hath given the first hint of speaking groundingly and to the purpose upon this Subject and whoever shall carry it any further as what important Mystery was ever born and perfected at once must acknowledge to have derived his light from him For my part I shall so far agree with him as to allow motion alone sufficient to work sensation in us and not only to allow it sufficient but also to profess that not only this but no other effect whatever can be wrought in us but motion and by means of motion Which is evident out of what we have already deliver'd speaking of bodies in general that all action among them either is local motion or else follows it and no less evident out of what we have declared in particular concerning the operations of the outward senses and the objects that work upon them and therfore whoever shall in this matter require any thing further then a difference of motion he must first seek other instruments in objects to cause it For examining from their very origine the natures of all the bodies we converse withal we cannot find any ground to believe they have power or means to work any thing beyond motion But I shall crave leave to differ from him in determining what is the subject of this motion wherby the brain judges of the nature of the thing that causes it He will allow no local change of any thing in a man further then certain vibrations of strings which he gives the objects to play upon from the very sense up to the brain and by their different manners of shaking the brain he will have it know what kind of thing it is that strikes the outward sense without removing any thing within our body from one place to another But I shall go the more common way and make the Spirits to be the porters of all news to the brain only adding thereto that these news which they carry thither are material participations of the bodies that work upon the outward organs of the senses and passing through them mingle themselvs with the Spirits and so go whether they carry them that is to the brain to which from all parts of the body they have immediate resort and a perpetual communication with it So that to exercise Sense which the Latines call sentire but in English we have no one word common to our several particular motions of divers perceptions by sense is Our brain to receive an impression from the extern object by the operation or mediation of an organical part made for that purpose some one of those which we term an extern Sense from which impression usually flows some motion proper to the living creature And thus you see that the outward Senses are not truly Senses as if the power of sensation were in them but in another meaning to wit so far as they are instruments of qualifying or conveying the object to the brain Now that the Spirits are the instruments of this conveyance is evident by what we daily see that if a man be very attentive to some one extern object as to the hearing or seeing of somthing that much delights or displeases him he neither hears or sees any thing but what his mind is bent upon though all that while his eyes and ears be open and several of their objects be present which at other times would affect him
have formerly delivered But Anatomists find other Tool and Instruments that seem fit to work and forge bodies withal which we cannot imagine nature made in vain There is a Hammer and an Anvile wherof the Hammer striking upon the Anvile must of necessity beat off such little parts of the brainy streams as flying about light and stick upon the top of the Anvile These by the trembling of the air following its course cannot miss of being carried up to that part of the brain wherto the air within the ear is driven by the impulse of the found and as soon as they have given their knock they rebound back again into the cells of the brain fitted for harbors to such winged messengers where they remain lodged with quietness till they be call'd for again to renew the effect with the sound made at first And the various blows which the Hammer strikes according to the various vibrations of the Tympanum to which the Hammer is fasten'd and therfore is govern'd by its motions must needs make great differences of bignesses and cause great variety of smartnesses of motion in the little bodies they forge The last Sense is of Seeing whose action we cannot doubt is perform'd by the reflection of light to our eye from the bodies which we see and this light comes impregnated with a tincture drawn from the superficies of the object it is reflected from that is it brings along with it several of the little atomes which of themselvs stream and it cuts from the body it struck upon and rebounds from and they mingling themselvs with the light in company of it get into the eye whose fabrick is fit to gather and unite those species as you may see by the Anatomy of it And from the eye their journey is but a short one to the brain in which we cannot suspect they should lose their force considering how others that come from organes further off conserves theirs and likewise considering the nature of the optick spirits which are conceiv'd to be the most refin'd of all that are in mans body Now that light is mingled with such little atomes issuing out of the bodies from which it is reflected appears evidently enough out of what we have said of the nature and operations of fire and light and it seems confirm'd by what I have often observ'd in some chambers where people seldom come which having their windows to the South so as the Sun lies upon them a great part of the day in his greatest strength and their curtains being continually drawn over them the glass becomes dyed very deep of the same colour the Curtain is of Which can proceed from no other cause but that the beams which shoot through the glass being reflected back from the Curtain take somthing along with them from the superficies of it which being of a more solid corpulence then they is left behind as it were in the strainer when they come to press themselves through passages and pores too little for it to accompany them in and so those atomes of colour stick upon the glass which they cannot penetrate Another confirmation of it is that in certain positions the Sun reflecting from strong colours will cast that very colour upon some other place as I have often experienced in lively Scarlet and cloth of some other smart colours and this not in that gloating wise as it makes colours of pure light but like a true real dye and so as the colour will appear the same to a man wherever he stands Having thus shew'd in all our Senses the conveniency and agreeableness of our opinion with nature which hath been deduced out of the nature of the objects the nature of our spirits the nature and situation of our nerves and lastly from the property of our brain our next consideration shall be of the difficulty that occurs in Monsir des Cartes his opinion First we know not how to reconcile the repugnancies appearing in his position of the motion of the Ether especiaclly in light For that Ethereal substance being extreme rare must perforce be either extreme liquid or extreme brittle if the first it cannot choose but bow and be pressed in foulds and bodies of unequal motions swiming every where in it and so 't is impossible it should bring to the eye any constant apparition of the first mover But let us suppose there were no such general interruptions every where incountring and disturbing the conveyance of the first simple motion yet how can we conceive that a push given so far off in so liquid an element can continue its force so far We see that the greatest thunders and concussions which at any time happen among us cannot drive and impart their impulse the ten thousandth part of the vast distance which the Sun is removed from our eye and can we imagine that a little touch of that luminous body should make an impression upon us by moving another so extreamly liquid and subtile as the Ether is supposed which like an immense Ocean tossed with all varieties of motion lies between it and us But admit there were no difficulty nor repugnance in the medium to convey to us a stroke made upon it by the Suns motion let us at least examine what kind of motions we must allow in the Sun to cause this effect Certainly it must needs be a motion towards us or else it cannot strike and drive the medium forward to make it strike upon us And if it be so either the Sun must perpetually be coming nearer and nearer to us or else it must ever and anon be receding backwards as well as moving forwards Both which are too chymerical for so great a wit to conceit Now if the Ether be brittle it must needs reflect upon every rub it meets with in its way and must be broken and shiver'd by every body that moves across it and therfore must always make an uncertain and most disorderly percussion upon the eye Then again after it is arrived to the sense 't is no ways likely it should be convey'd from thence to the brain or that nature intended such a kind of instrument as a nerve to continue a precise determinate motion For if you consider how a Lute string or any other such medium conveys a motion made in it you will find that to do it well and clearly it must be stretch'd throughout to its full extent with a kind of stiffness whereas our nerves are not straight but lie crooked in our body and are very lither till upon occasion spirits coming into them swell them out Besides they are bound to slesh and to other parts of the body which being cessible must needs dull the stroke and not permit it to be carried far And lastly the nerves are subject to be at every turn contracted and dilated upon their own account without any relation to the strokes beating upon them from an extern agent which is by no means a convenient
it swells according to the encrease of the Moon which whether it be true or no there can be no doubt but that it being of a substance which is full of skins and strings is capable of being stretch'd and of swelling upon light occasions and of falling or sinking again upon as light as being easily penetrable by vapours and liquors whose nature it is to swell and to extend that which they enter into Out of which it follows that it must be the nature of the Nerves to do the like and indeed so much the more by how much more dry they are than the brain for we see that to a certain measure drier things are more capable of extention by the ingression of wet than moist things are because these are not capable of receiving much more wet into them These things being premised let us imagine that the brain being first swell'd afterwards contracts it self and it must of necessity follow that seeing the Nerves are all open towards the brain though their concavities cannot be discern'd the spirits and moisture in the brain must needs be press'd into the Nerves which being already stored with spirits sufficiently to the proportion of their hard skins this addition will make them swell and grow hard as a Balloon doth which being competently full of air hath nevertheless more air press'd into it Since therfore the Masters of Anatomy teach us that in every muscle there is a nerve which is spread into a number of little branches along that muscle it must follow that if these little branches be swollen the flesh likewise of that muscle must also needs be swollen Now the muscle having both its ends fastned the one in a greater bone the other in a lesser and there being least resistance on that part where the bone is lesser and more movable the swelling of the muscle cannot choose but draw the little bone towards the great one and by consequence move that little bone and this is that which Philosophers usually call Voluntary motion For since our knowledg remains in the brain whatever is done by knowledg must be done by the brain and most of what the brain works for the common service of the living creature proceeds also from knowledg that is from the motion of fansy which we have express'd This matter being thus far declared we may now enter upon the explication of certain effects which peradventure might have challeng'd room in the precedent Chapter but indeed could not well be handled without first supposing this last discourse and it is what is meant by those powers that are call'd Natural Faculties which however in their particulars they be manifold in a living creature yet whenever any of them is resolved it appears to be compounded of some of these five to wit the Attractive the Retentive the Secretive the Concoctive and the Expulsive faculty Of which the Attractive the Secretive and the Concoctive seem not to belong to the nervs for though we may conceive that the part of the Animal turns it self towards the thing which it attracts nevertheless that very turning seems not to be done by vertue of the muscles and nervs but rather in a natural way as the motion of the heart is perform'd in such sort as we have formerly declared As for example if the stomach when it is greedy of meat draws it self up towards the throat it seems rather to be a kind of dryness and wrapping such as we see in bladders or leather either by fire or cold which make them shrivel up and grow hard than a true faculty of the living creature to seek after meat Nor need we extend our discourse any further about these three faculties seeing that we have already declared in common how attraction drying and mixture of active bodies with passive ones is perform'd which needs but applying to these particulars to explicate fully their nature As for example if the Kidneys draw the matter of Urine to them out of the Veinet it may be by any of the following three manners to wit either by draught by wet or by steam For if the serous parts that are in the blood which runs in the Veins touch some dry parts conformable to their nature tending towards the Kidneys they will infallibly adhere more to those dry parts than to the rest of the blood Which if they do in so great a quantity that they reach to other further parts more dry than these they will leave the first parts to go to the second and thus by little and little will draw a line of Urine from the blood if the blood abound with it and the nearer it comes to the Kidneys the stronger still the attraction will be The like will happen if the serosity which is in the blood touch some part weted with a like serosity or where such hath lately passed For as we see water will run more easily upon a wet part of a board or a stone than on a dry one so you cannot doubt but that if the serous part which is mix'd with the blood light upon a current of its own nature it will stick more to that than to the current of the blood and so part from the blood to go that way which the current of its own nature goes Besides it cannot be doubted but that from the Kidnyes and from the passages between the Kidneyes and the Veins in which the blood is convey'd there arises a steam whose nature is to incorporate it self with serous matter out of whose body it hath been extracted This steam therfore flying still to the serous blood which passes by must of necessity precipitate as I may say the serous parts of the blood or rather must filter them out of their main stock and so will make them run in that current from which it self flows And thus you see how Attraction and Secretion are made for the drawing of the serosity without drawing the blood is the parting of the Urine from the blood And this example of the Kidneys operation may be apply'd to the attractions of all the other parts Now the Concoctive faculty which is the last of the three we took together consists of two parts one is as it were a drying of the humour which is to be concocted the other is a mingling the substance of the vessel in which the humour is concocted with the humour it self For as if you boyl divers kinds of liquors in brass pans the pans will taint the liquor with the quality of the brass and therfore Physicians forbid the use of such in the boiling of several medicines so much more in a living creatures body there can be no doubt but that the vessel in which any humour is concocted gives a tincture therto Now concoction consisting in these two 't is evident what the concoctive vertue is to wit heat and the specifical property of vessel which by heat is mingled with the humour There remain yet the
in part the other defect Hope on the other side is in such sort defective from joy that nevertheless it hath a kind of constancy and moderate quantity and regularity in its motion and therefore is accounted to be the least hurtful of all the passions and that which more prolongs mans life And thus you see how those motions which we call passions are engender'd in the heart and what they are Let us then in the next place consider what will follow in the rest of the body out of these varieties of Passions once rais'd in the heart and sent into the brain 'T is evident that according to the nature and quality of these motions the heart must needs in every one of them void out of it self into the arteries a greater or lesser quantity of blood and that in divers fashions and the arteries which lie fittest to receive these sudden egestions of blood are those which go into the brain which course being directly upwards we cannot doubt but that it is the hottest and subtilest part of the blood and the fullest of spirits that flies that way These spirits then running a long and perplexed journey up and down in the brain by various meanders and anfractuosities are there mingled with the humid steam of the brain it self and therwith cooled and come at last to smoak at liberty in the hollow ventricles of the brain by reeking out of the little arterial branches that weave the plexus choroides or net we spoke of erewhile and they being now grown heavy fall by their natural course into that part or process of the brain which is called medulla spinalis or the marrow of the back-bone which being beset by the nervs that run through the body it cannot happen otherwise but that these thick'ned and descending spirits must either fall themselvs into those nervs or else press into them other spirits which are before them that without such new force to drive them violently forwards would have slided down more leisurely Now this motion being downwards and meeting with no obstacle till it arrive to its utmost period that way the lowest nervs are those which naturally feel the communication of these spirits first But 't is true if the flowing tide of them be great and plentiful all the other nerves will also be so suddenly fill'd upon the filling of the lowermost that the succession of their swellings will hardly be perceptible as a sudden and violent inundation of water seems to rise on the sides of the channel as it doth at at the Mill-dam though reason assures us it must begin there because there it is first stop't On the contrary side if the spirits be few they may be in such a proportion as to fill only the lower nervs and to communicate little of themselvs to any of the others And this is the case in the passion of fear which being stored with fewer spirits than any other passion that causes a motion in the body it moves the leggs most and so carries the animal that is afraid with violence from the object that affrights him Although in truth it is a faint hope of escaping mingled with fear which begets this motion for when fear is single and at its height it stops all motion by contracting the spirits and thence is called Stupor as well as grief for the same reason And accordingly we see extreme cowards in the extremity of their fear have not the courage to run away no more than to defend or help themselvs by any other motions But if there be more abundance of spirits then the upper parts are also moved as well as the leggs whose motion contributes to defence but the brain it self and the senses which are in the head being the first in the course of this floud of spirits that is sent from the heart to the head 't is impossible but that some part of them should be press'd into the nervs of those senses and so will make the animal vigilant and attentive to the cause of its fear or grief But if the fear be so great that it contracts all the spirits and quite hinders their motion as in the case we touch'd above then it leaves also the nervs of the senses destitute of spirits and so by too strong apprehension of a danger the animal neither sees nor apprehends it but as easily precipitates it self into it as it happens to avoid it being meerly govern'd by chance and may peradventure seem valiant through extremity of fear And thus you see in common how all the natural operations of the body follow by natural consequence out of the passions of the mind without needing to attribute discourse or reason either to men or beasts to perform them Although at first sight some of them may appear to those that look not into their principles and true causes to flow from a source of intelligence wheras 't is evident by what we have laid open they all proceed from the due ranging and ordering of quantitative parts so or so proportioned by rarity and density And there is no doubt but who would follow this search deeply might certainly retrive the reasons of all those external motions which we see use to accompany the several passions in Men and Beasts But for our intent we have said enough to shew by what kind of order and course of nature they may be effected without confining our selves over scrupulously to every cincumstance that we have touch'd and to give a hint wherby others that will make this inquiry their task may compile an intire and well grounded and intelligible doctrine of this matter Only we will add one advertisment more which is that these external motions caused by passion are of two kinds for some of them are as it were the beginnings of the actions which nature intends to have follow out of the passions that cause them but others are only bare signs of passions that produce them and are made by the connexion of parts unnecessary for the main action that is to follow out of the passion with other parts that by the passion are necessarily moved As for example when an hungry mans mouth waters at the sight of good meat it is a kind of beginning of eating or of preparation for eating for when we eat nature draws a moisture into our mouth to humectate our meat and convey the tast of it into the nervs of the tongue which are to make report of it to the brain but when we laugh the motion of our face aims at no further end and follows only by the connexion of those muscles which draw the face in such a sort to some inward parts that are moved by the passion out of which laughing proceeds But we must not leave this subject without some mention of the Diaphragma into which the other branch of those nervs that are called of the sixth conjugation comes for the first branch we have said goes into the heart and carries
peradventure very seldom upon doing something out of which the desired effect follows as it cannot choose but fall out now and then though chance only govern their actions and when their action proves succesful it leaves such an impression in the memory that whenever the like occasion occurrs that animal will follow the same method for the same specieses do come together from the memory into the fantasie But the many attempts that miscarry and the ineffectual motions which straights do cast beasts upon are never observ'd nor are there any stories recorded of them no more than in the Temple of Neptune were kept upon the registers the relations of those unfortunate wretches who making vows to that God in their distress were nevertheless drowned Thus peradventure when the Fox sees his labour in chasing the hens to be to no purpose and that by his pursute of them he drives them further out of his reach he laies himself down to rest with a watchful eye and perceiving those silly animals to grow bolder and bolder by their not seeing him stir he continues his lying still till some one of them comes within his reach and then on a sudden he springs up and catches her Or peradventure some poultry might have strai'd within his reach whiles he was asleep and have then wakened him with some noise they made and so he happned to seise upon one of them without either design or pains taking before-hand By such degrees he might chance to catch one the first time and they being setled in his memory together with the effect it hap'ned that another time when hunger pressed him and sent up to his brain like spirits to those which ascended thither whiles he say watching the hens these spirits brought the other from his memory into the fantasie in such sort as we have shew'd in the last Chapter and so drove him to the same course till by frequent repetition it became ordinary and familiar with him And then they that look only upon the performance of the artifice are apt to infer discourse and a design of reason out of the orderly conduct of it But how can we concieve the Fox hath judgment to know when the hen is come within his leap and accordingly offers not at her till then unless we resort to some other principles than what is yet declared The answer to this objection I think will not be hard to find for if the motion which the presence of the object makes in the heart be proportion'd out by nature as there is no doubt but it is it will not be so great and powerful as to make the Fox leap at it till it be arrived so near him that he by his nimbleness can reach it and so without any aim further than by the meer flux of his passion conveniently rais'd he doth the feat But if his passion be too violent it makes him miss his aim as we may frequently observe both in men and beasts and particularly when fear presses either of them to leap over a ditch which being too broad he lights in the midst of it The same watchfulness and desire to have the poulen which then sit upon a tree out of his reach makes him fix his eyes on them when they are at roost and at length either the brightness and sparkilng of them dazles the birds and makes them come down to him as flies do in the night about the flame of a candle or as fishes do to a light in a boats head or else they are afraid and their fear increasing their spirits return to the heart which therby is oppressed and their outward parts are bereav'd of strength and motion from whence it follows necessarily that their footing looses their hold fast and they tumble down half dead with fear which happens also frequently to cats when they look wishly upon little birds that sit quietly Or peradventure their fear makes them giddy as when some man looking down a precipice from a dangerous standing falls by the turning of his brain though nothing be behind him to thrust him forwards Or it may be some steam comes from the Fox which draws such creatures to him as 't is reported that a great and very poisonous Toad will do a Weasel who will run about the Toad a great while and still make his circle lesser and lesser till at length he peâ—ishes in the center were his foe sits still and draws him to him Which he doth in such sort as animated Mercury will draw leaf-gold duly prepared or as the Load stone attracts Iron and yet 't is apparent the Weasel comes not with his good will but that there are some powerful chains steaming from the body of the Toad which pluck him thither against his liking for by his motions and runing he will express the greatest fear that can be The method which Foxes practise to rid themselvs of their fleas if it be true is obvious enough for them to fall upon for in Summer their sleas together with their thick fur'd coat cannot choose but cause an exceeding great itching and heat in their bodies which will readily invite them to go into the water to cool themselves As the Merchants at the Isles of Zante and of Cephalonia told me when I was there it was the custom of our English Dogs who were habituated to a colder clime to run into the Sea in the heat of Summer and lie there most part of the day with only their noses out of the water that they might draw breath and would sleep there with their heads laid upon some stone which raised them up whiles their bodies were cover'd with the Sea and those Dogs which did not thus would in one Summer usually be kill'd with heat and Fleas Now when the Fox feels the ease that the coolness of the water affords that part of him which sits in it he goes further and further yet would not put himself to swim which is a labour and would heat him and therfore he avoids it so that whiles he thus cools himself in some shady place for 't is natural to him in such an occasion to resort to the cool shade rather than to I le in the Son and in such there being for the most part some boughs hanging over the water it happens naturally enough that he takes some of the lowest in his mouth to support him and save hi m the labour of swiming whiles he lies at his ease soaking and cooling himself in the River By which means it comes to pass that the Fleas finding no part of him free from water creep up the bough to rescue themselvs from drowning and so when he is cool'd enough he goes away and leaves them there In all which finding a benefit and satisfaction whenever the like occasion brings those species from his memory into his fantasy he betakes himself to the same course and therin finding his remedy at length it grows familiar to him In like manner
I am obliged to make plain but the latter concerns this Treatise no more than it would do a man to enquire anxiously into the particulars of what it is that a beast is doing whiles looking upon it at a great distance he perceivs plainly that it moves it self and his errant is but to be assured whether it be alive or dead which the moving of it self in common sufficiently demonstrates without descending into a particular search of what his motions are But let us come to the matter First I conceive no man will make any difficulty in allowing that it is the temper of the blood and spirits in Birds brought therto by the quality of their food and the season of the year which makes them couple with one another and not any aim or desire of having young ones that occasions this action in them Then it follows that the Hens eggs will encrease in her belly and when they grow big they cannot choose but be troublesome unto her and therfore must of necessity breed in her an inclination to rest in some soft place and to be rid of them And as we see a Dog or a Cat press'd by nature searches about to find a convenient place to disburthen themselvs in not only of their young ones but even of their excrements so do Birds whose eggs within them making them heavy and unfit to flie they begin to sit much and are pleas'd in a soft and warm place and thereupon are delighted with straws and mosse and other gentle substances and so carry them to their sitting place Which that they do not by design is evident by the manner of it for when they have met with a straw or other fit material they flie not with it directly to their nest but first to a bough of some tree or to the top of a house and there they hop and dance a while with it in their beaks and from thence skip to another place where they entertain themselvs in like manner and at last they get to their nest Where if the straws should lie confusedly their ends would prick and hurt them and therfore they turn and alter their positions till they lie smooth which we that look upon the effect and compare them with our performing of like actions if we had occasion may call a judicious ordering of them wheras in them it is nothing but removing such things as press upon their sense till they cause them no more pain or unquierness Their plaistering of their nests may be attributed to the great heat reigning in them at that time which makes them still be dabling in moist clay and water and gravel without which all birds will soon grow sick blind and at length die which for the coolness of it they bring home to their nests in their beaks and upon their feet and when it grows dry and consequently troublesome to them they wipe it off and rub their dirty parts upon the place where they use to sit and then flie for more to refresh themselvs with Out of all which actions set on foot by the wise orderer of nature to compass a remote end quite different from the immediate end that every one of them is done for there results a fit and convenient place for these little builders that know not what they do whiles they build themselvs houses to lie and lay their eggs in which the next year when the like occasion occurrs they build again peradventure then as much through memory of the former as upon their temper and other circumstances moving their fantasy so as we have set down In like manner that whiles the Halcyon layes and hatches her eggs the Sea is calm needs no more be attributed to the wisdom and providence of that bird in choosing a fit season than to any good nature or discourse in that rouling and merciless Element as though it had a pious care of preserving the eggs committed to his trust no such supplements are requisite to be added to the distributions of nature who hath set material causes on foot to produce a conjuncture of both those effects at the same period of time for the propagation of this animal's species In fine both the time and place of the Halcyon's breeding and the manner and order and season of all birds making their nests proceeds from secret motions which require great observing and attention to understand them and serve for directions to every bird according to her kind to make her nest fittest for her use Which secret motions we cannot doubt but are material ones and aâ—se out of the constitution and temper of their bodies and spirits which in like circumstances are alike in them all for all the birds of one kind make their nests exactly alike Which they would not do if this work proceeded from reason in them and were govern'd by their own election and design as we see it happen among men upon all occasions either of building houses or of making clothes or of what action soever is guided by their reason governing their fantasy in all which we see so great variety and inconstancy Therfore this invariability in the birds operations must proceed from a higher intellect that hath determinately and precisely ordered a complex or assembly of sundry causes to meet infallibly and by necessity for the production of an effect he hath designed and so the birds are but material instruments to perform without their knowledg or reflexion a superiour reason's counsels even as in a clock that is composed of several pieces and wheels all the parts conspire to give notice of the several effluxes and periods of time which the maker hath order'd it for And though this be a work of reason and discourse in him that set it together yet the instrumental performance of it depends meerly of local motion and the revolutions of bodies so orderly proportion'd to one another that their effects cannot fail when once the engine is wound up In like manner then the Bird is the engine of the Artificer infinitely more perfect and knowing and dexterous than a poor clock-maker and the plummets which make it go are the row and order of causes chain'd together which by the design of the supream workman bring to pass such effects as we see in the building of their nests and in doing such other actions as may be compared to the strikings of the clock and the ringing of the alarm at due times And as that King of Claina upon his first seeing a Watch thought it a living and judicious creature because it moved so regularly of it self and believ'd it to be dead when it was run out till the opening and winding it up discover'd to him the artifice of it So any man may be excused that looking upon these strange actions and this admirable oeconomy of some living creatures should believe them endew'd with reason till he have well reflected upon every particular circumstance of their nature and operations for
then he will discern how these are but material instruments of a rational agent working by them from whose orderly prescriptions they have not power to swerve in the least circumstance that is Every one of which consider'd singly by it self hath a face of no more diffrently than that for example an Engineer should so order his matters that a Mine should be ready to play exactly at such an hour by leaving such a proportion of kindled match hanging our of one of the barrels of powder whiles in the mean time he either sleeps or attends to somthing else And when you have once gain'd thus much of your self to agree to an orderly course and generation of any single effect by the power of a material cause working in it raise but your discourse a strain higher and look with reverence and duty up-the Immensity of That Provident Architect out of whose hands these master-pieces issue and to whom it is as easy to make a chain of causes of a thousand or million of links as to make one link alone and then you will no longer stick at allowing the whole oeconomy of those actions to be nothing else but a production of material effects by a due ranging and ordering of material causes But let us return to our theam As we see that milk coming into the breasts of live-bearing female creatures when they grow very big heats and makes them seek the mouths of their young ones to disburthen and cool them so the carriage and bigness of the Eggs heats exceedingly the breasts and bodies of the Birds and this causes them to be still rubbing of their breasts against the sides of the nests wherto their unwieldiness then contines them very much and with their Beaks to be still picking their Feathers which being then apt to fall off and mew as we see the hair of women with child is apt to shed it happens that by then they are ready to lay their Eggs they have a soft bed of their own Feathers made in their Nests over their courser mattress of straws they first brought thither And then the Eggs powerful attracting of the annoying heat from the Hens breast whose imbibing of the warmth and stone-like shell cannot choose but cool her much invites her to sit constantly upon them till sitting hatches them And 't is evident that this sitting must proceed from their temper at that time or from some other immediate cause which works that effect and not from a judgment that doth it for a remote end for house-wives tells us that at such a season their Hens will be sitting in every convenient place they come to as though they had Eggs to hatch when never a one is under them so as it seems that at such time there is some inconvenience in their bodies which by sitting is eased When the Chickens are hatched what wonder is it if the little cryings of tender creatures of a like nature and language with their Dam move those affections or passions in her bosome which causes her to feed them and so defend and breed them till they be able to shift for themselvs For all this there needs no discourse or reason but only the motion of the blood about the heart which we have determin'd to be passion stir'd by the young ones chirpings so as may carry them to those actions which by nature the supreme intellect are order'd for their preservation Wherin the Birds as we have already said are but passive instruments and know not why they do those actions but do them they must whenever such and such objects which infallibly work in their due times make such and such impressions upon their fantasies like the allarum that necessarily strikes when the hand of the Dial comes to such a point or the Gun-powder that necessarily makes a ruine and breach in the wall when the burning of the match reaches to it Now this love in the Dam growing by little and little wearisome and troublesome to her and not being able to supply their encreased needs which they grow every day stronger to provide for of themselvs the strait commerce begins to die on both sides and by these degrees the Dam leaves her young ones to their own conduct And thus you see how this long series of actions may have orderly causes made and chain'd together by him that knew what was fitting for the work he went about Of which though 't is likely I have missed the right ones as it cannot choose but happen in all disquisitions where one is the first to break the Ice and so slenderly informed of the particular circumstances of the matter in question as I profess to be in this yet I concieve this discourse plainly shews that he who hath done more than we are able to comprehend and understand may have set causes sufficient for all these effects in a better order and in completer ranks than those we have here expressed and yet in them so coursely hew'd out appears a possibility of having the work done by corporeal agents Surely it were very well worth the while for some curious and judicious person to observe carefully and often the several steps of nature in this progress for I am strongly perswaded that by such industry we might in time arrive to very particular knowledge of the immediate and precise causes that work all these effects And I conceive that such observation needs not be very troublesome as not requiring any great variety of creatures to institute it upon for by marking carefully all that passes among our home-bred Hens I believe it were easy to guess very nearly at all the rest CHAP. XXXVIII Of Prescience of future events Providences the knowing of things never seen before and such other actions observed in some living creatures which seem to be even above the reason that is in man himself THe fourth and last kind of actions which we may with astonishment observ among beasts I conceive will avail little to infer that the creatures which do them are endew'd with reason and understanding for such they are as if we should admit that yet we should still be as far to seek for the causes whence they proceed What should move a Lamb to tremble at the first sight of a Woolf or a Hen at a Kite never before seen neither the grimest Mastiff nor the biggest Owl will at all affright them That which in the ordinary course of nature causes beasts to be afraid of men or of other beasts is the hurt and evil they recive from them which coming into their fantasie together with the Idea of him that did it is also lodg'd together with it in the memory from whence they come link'd or glew'd together when ever the stroke of any new object calls either of them back into the fantasie This is confirm'd by the tameness of the birds and beasts which the first discoverers of Islands not inhabited by men found in those they met with there
had never come into his fantasie accompanied with other circumstances than of play or of warmth and therfore hunger which calls only the species of meat out of the memory into the fantasy would never bring the Deer thither for remedy of that passion And that which often happens to those men in whom the fantasie only works is not much unlike to this among whom I have seen some frentick persons that if they be perswaded they are tyed and cannot stir from the place where they are will lye still and make great complaints for their imprisonment and not go a step to reach any meat or drink that should lie in sight near them though they were never so much pressed with hunger or thirst The reason is evident for the apprehension of being tyed is so strong in their fantasie that their fantasie can send no spirits into other parts of their body wherby to cause motion And thus the Deer was beholding to the Tyger's fantasie not to his discourse of moral honesty for his life The like of this Tyger and Deer is to be seen every day in the Tower of London where a little Dog that was bred with a Lion from his birth is so familiar and bold with him that they not only sleep together but somtimes the Dog will be angry with him and bite him which the Lion never resents from him though any other Dog that is put to him he presently tears in pieces And thus we plainly see how it comes about that beasts may have strange aversions from things which are of an annoying or destructive nature to them even at the first sight of them and again may have great likings of other things in a manner contrary to their nature without needing to allow them reason wherby to discourse and judge what is hurtful to them or to instruct the Tyger we have spoken of or Androdus's Lion the duties of friendship and gratitude The Longing marks which are oftentimes seen in children and remain with them all their life seem to be an off-spring of the same root or cause but in truth they proceed from another though of kin to this for the operation of the seed is pass'd when these Longing marks are imprinted the child being then already form'd and quickn'd and they seem to be made suddenly as by the print of a seal Therfore to render the cause of them let us consider another sympathy which is more plain and common We see that the laughing of one man will set another on laughing that sees him laugh though he know not the cause why the first man laughs and the like we see in yawning and stretching which breed the like effect in the looker on I have heard of a man that seeing a roasted Pig after our English fashion with the mouth gaping could not shut his own mouth as long as he look'd upon the Pigs and of another that when he saw any man make a certain motion with his hand could not choose but he must make the same so that being a Tyler by his Trade and having one hand imploy'd with holding his tools while he held himself with the other upon the eav's of a house he was mending a man standing below on the ground made that sign or motion to him wherupon he quited his holdfast to imitate that motion and fell down in danger of breaking his neck All these effects proceed out of the action of the seen object upon the fantasie of the looker on which making the picture or likeness of its own action in the others fantasie makes his spirits run to the same parts and consequenty move the same members that is do the same actions And hence it is that when we hear one speak with love and tenderness of an absent person we are also inclined to love that person though we never saw nor heard of him before and that whatever a good Oratour delivers well that is with a semblance of passion agreeable to his words raises of its own nature like affection in the hearers aod that generally men learn and imitate without design the customs and manners of the company they much haunt To apply this to our intent 't is easie to conceive that although the child in the mothers wombe can neither see nor hear what the mother doth nevertheless there cannot pass any great or violent motion in the mothers body wherof some effect doth not reach to the child which is then one continuate piece with her and the proper effect of motion or trembling in one body being to produce a like motion or trembling in another as we see in that ordinary example of tuned strings wherof one is moved at the striking of the other by reason of the stroke given to the air which finding a movable easily moved with a motion of the same tenour communicates motion to it it follows that the fantasie of the child being as it were well tuned to the fantasie of the mother and the mothers fantasie making a special and very quick motion in her own whole body as we see sudden passions do this motion or trembling of the mother must needs cause the like motion and trembling in the child even to the very swiftness of the mothers motion Now as we see when one blushes the blood comes into his face so the blood runs in the mother to a certain place where she is strucken by the thing long'd for and the like hap'ning to the child the violence of that sudden motion dyes the mark or print of the thing in the tender skin of it the blood in some measure piercing the skin and not returning wholly into its natural course which effect is not permanent in the mother because her skin being harder doth not receive the blood into it but sends it back again without receiving a tincture from it Far more easie is it to discover the secret cause of many antipathies or sympathies which are seen in children and endure with them the greatest part if not the whole term of their life without any apparent ground for them As some do not love Cheese others Garlick others Ducks others divers other kinds of meat which their parents loved well and yet in token that this aversion is natural to them and not arising from some dislike accidentally taken and imprinted in their fantasie they will be much harmed if they chance to eat any such meat though by the much disguising it they neither know nor so much as suspect they have done so The story of the Lady Hennage who was of the Bed-chamber to the late Queen Elizabeth that had her cheek blister'd by laying a Rose upon it whiles she was asleep to try if her antipathy against that flower were so great as she used to pretend is famous in the Court of England A Kinsman of mine whiles he was a Child had like to have died of drought before his Nurse came to understand that he had an antipathy against Beer
feel it and that the Air being changed by the forerunners of worse weather works upon the crasiest parts of our body when the others feel not so small a change So beasts are more sensible than we for they have less to distract them of the first degrees of a changing weather and that mutation of the air without them makes some change within them which they express by some outward actions or gestures Now they who observe how such mutations and actions are constantly in them before such or such weather think they know beforehand that rain for example or wind or drought is coming according to the several signs they have mark'd in them Which proceeds out of the narrowness of their discourse that makes them resort to the same causes when ever they meet with like effects and so they conceive that things must needs pass in Beasts after the same tenour as they do in men And this is a general and main errour runing through all the conceptions of mankind unless great heed be taken to prevent it that what subject soever they speculate on whether it be of substances that have a superiour nature to theirs or of creatures inferiour to them they are still apt to bring them to their own standard and to frame such conceptions of them as they would do of themselvs As when they will have Angels discourse and move and be in place in such sort as is natural to men or when they will have beasts ratiocinate and understand upon their observing some orderly actions perform'd by them which in men would proceed from discourse and reason And this dangerous Rock against which many fine conceptions suffer shipwrack whoever studies truth must have a main caution to avoid Sed nos immensum spatiis confecimus aequor Et jam tempus equum fumantia solvere colle CONCLVSION THus at last by Gods assistance we have climb'd up to the top of the Hill from whence looking down over the whole region of bodies we may delight our selvs with seeing what a height the weary steps we ascended by have brought us to 'T is true the path we have walk'd in is of late so untrodden and so overgrown with briars as it hath not been without much labour that we have made our way through And peradventure it may seem toilsome to others to follow us especially such as are not much enured to like journeys but I hope the fruit which both we and they are now arrived to gather of our pains in this general view we have taken of the Empire of matter and of corporeal agents is such as none of us hath reason to be ill satisfied with the imploying of them For what can more powerfully delight or more nobly entertain an understanding soul than the search and discovery of those works of nature which being in their effects so plainly exposed to our eyes are in their causes so abstruâ—e and hidden from our comprehension as through despair of success they deter most men from enquiring into them And I am perswaded that by this summary discourse short indeed in regard of so large a scope how ever my lame expressions may peradventure make it appear tedious it appears evidently that none of natures greatest secrets wherof our senses give us notice in the effects are so overshaded with an impenetrable veil but that the diligent and wary hand of reason might unmask and shew them to us in their naked and genuine forms and delight us with the contemplation of their native beauties if we had as much care and constancy in the pursuit of them as we daily see men have in heaping up wealth or in striving to satisfie their boundless ambitions or in making their senses swim in the muddy lake of base and contemptible pleasures For who shall throughly consider and weigh what we have hitherto said will plainly see a continual and orderly progress from the simplest highest and most common conception that we frame of a Body in general to the furthest and most abstruse effects that in particular are to be found in any Body whatever I mean any that is meerly corporeal without mixture of a nobler nature for hitherto we have not moved nor so much as look'd out of that Orb. He shall find one continued thread spun out from the begining to the end He will see that the various twisting of the two species of Bodies Rare and Dense make the yarn of which all things and actions within the sphere of matter are woven And though peradventure in the drawing out of the thread there may be some little bracks or the stuff made of it be not every where so close wrought as a better workman at more leisure might have done yet truly I believe that the very consent of things throughout is such as demonstrates that the main contexture of the doctrine I have here touch'd is beyond quarreling at It may well be that in sundry particulars I have not lighted on exact truth and I am so far from maintaining peremptorily any thing I have here said as I shall most readily hearken to whatever shall be objected against it and be as ready upon cause to desert my own opinions and yield to better Reason But withal I conceive that as the failing of a brick here and there in the rearing of the walls of a house doth nothing at all prejudice the strength and security of the fabrick no more I hope will the slight escapes which so difficult a task as this is subject to endamage or weaken the main body of what I have here deliver'd I have not yet seen any piece upon this subject made up with this method begining from the simplest and plainest notions and composing them orderly till all the principal variety which their nature is capable of be gone through and therfore it cannot be expected but the first model of this kind and moulded by one distracted with continual thoughts of a much different strain and whose exercise as well as profession hath allow'd him but little commerce with books and study must needs be very rough hew'd and require a great deal of polishing Which whoever shall do and be as exact and orderly in treating of Philosophy and Theology as Mathematicians are in delivering their Sciences I assure my self that Demonstrations might be made and would proceed in them as currently and the conclusions be as certain and full as in the Mathematicks themselves But that is not all these Demonstrations would have the odds exceedingly of the other and be to us inestimably more advantagious for out of them spring much higher and nobler effects for mans use and life than out of any Mathematical ones Especially when they extend themselvs to the government of Man as Man which is an art as far beyond all the rules of Physick or other government of our Body or Temporal goods as the End is beyond the Means we employ to gain it for all the others but serve instrumentally to
Which being so no body can quarrel with us for Aristotle's sake who as he was the greatest Logician and Metaphysician and universal Scholar peradventure that ever lived and so highly esteem'd that the good turn which Sylla did the world in saving his works was thought to recompence his many outragious cruelties and tyranny so his name must never be mention'd among Scholars but with reverence for his unparalleld'd worth and with gratitude for the large stock of knowledge he hath enriched us with Yet withal we are to consider that since his reign was but at the beginning of Sciences he could not choose but have some defects and shortnesses among his many great and admirable perfections SECOND TREATISE DECLARING THE NATURE AND OPERATIONS OF MANS SOUL OUT OF WHICH THE IMMORTALITY OF REASONABLE SOULS IS CONVINCED LONDON Printed in the Year 1669. PREFACE 'T Is now high time for us to cast an Eye on the other Leaf of our Accounts or peradventure I may more properly say to fall to the perusal of our own accounts for hitherto our time and pains have been taken up in examining and casting the accounts of others to the end that from the Foot and Total of them we may drive on our own the more smoothly In ours then we shall meet with a new Capital we shall discover a new World of a quite different strain and nature from that which all this while we have imploy'd our selves about We will enter into them with taking a survey of the great Master of all that large Family we have so summarily view'd I mean of Man as Man that is not as he is subject to those Laws wherby other bodies are govern'd for therin he hath no preeminence to raise him out of their throng but as he exceeds the rest of Creatures subject to his managing and rules over nature her self making her serve his designes and subjecting her noblest powers to his Laws and is distinguish'd from all other creatures whatever To the end we may discover whether that principle in him from whence those actions proceed which are properly his be but some refined composition of the same kind we have already treated of or whether it derives its Sourse and Origine from some higher Spring and Stock and be of a quite different nature Having then by our former Treatise master'd the oppositions which else would have taken arms against us when we should have been in the midst of our edifice and clear'd the objections which lay in our way from the perverse Qualities of the Souls Neighbours the several Common-wealths of Bodies we must now begin with David to gather together our Materials and take a survey of our own provisions that so we may proceed with Solomon to the sacred building of Gods Temple But before we go about it it will not be amiss that we shew the reason why we have made our Porch so great and added so long an entry that the house is not likely to have therto a correspondent bulk and when the necessity of doing so shall appear I hope my pains will meet with a favourable censure and receive a fair admittance We proposed to our selves to shew That our Souls are immortal wherupon casting about to find the grounds of Immortality and discerning it to be a negative we conceiv'd that we ought to begin our search with enquiring what Mortality is and what be the causes of it Which when we should have discover'd and brought the Soul to their test if we found they trench'd not upon her nor any way concern'd her condition we might safely conclude that of necessity she must be immortal Looking then into the causes of mortality we saw that all Bodies round about us were Mortal whence perceiving that Mortality extended it self as far corporeity we found our selvs obliged if we would free the Soul from that Law to shew that she is not corporeal This could not be done without enquiring what corporeity was Now it being a rule among Logicians that a definition cannot be good unless it comprehend and reach to every particular of that which is defined we perceiv'd it impossible to know compleatly what a Body is without taking a general view of all those things which we comprise under the name and meaning of Bodies This is the cause we spent so much time in the First Treatise and I hope to good purpose for there we found that the nature of a Body consisted in being made of parts that all the Differences of Bodies are reduced to having more or less parts in comparison to their substance thus and thus order'd and lastly that all their operations are nothing else but Local Motions which follows naturally out of having parts So as it appears evidently from hence that if any thing have a being and yet have no parts it is not a body but a substance of another quality and condition and consequently if we can find the Soul's being to be without parts and that her operations are no local translation we evidently conclude her to be an immaterial or spiritual substance Peradventure it may be objected that all this might have been done a much more shorter way than we have taken and that we needed not have branc'd our discourse into so many particulars nor driven them so home as we have done but might have taken out our first rise from this ground which is as evident as light of reason can make it that seeing we know bigness and a body to be one and the same as well in the notion as in the thing it must of necessity follow that what hath not parts nor works nor is wrought upon by Division is not a Body I confess this Objection appears very reasonable and the consideration of it weigh'd so much with me as were all men of a free judgment and not imbued with artificial errours I would for its sake have saved my self a great deal of pains but I find as in the former Treatise I have frequently complain'd that there is crept into the world a Fansy so contrary to this pregnant truth and that it is so deeply setled in many mens minds not of the meanest note as all we have said is peradventure too little to root it out If any satisfied with the rational Maxime we even now mentioned therfore not deeming it needful to employ his time in reading the former Treatise should wish to know how this is come to pass I shall here represent to to him the Summe of what I have more at large scatter'd in several places of the former Treatise And shall intreat him to consider how Nature teaches us to call the Proprieties of things wherby one is distinguished from another the Qualities of those things and that according to their varieties they have divers names suited out to divers of them some being called Habits others Powers and others by other names Now what Aristotle and the Learned Grecians meant by these things is clear by the examples
but one still it will be no less accommodated to that one As for example He that makes a right apprehension of a Sun doth not by that conception determine whether there be many Suns or but one and if every one of the Stars which we call fixed be Suns to other Earths it fits them all and if there be no other Sun than that which shines to us it is satisfied and taken up with that So likewise before the production of Eve the notion of a man was as fully taken up by Adam alone as it is now by his numerous progeny that fills the world nor doth our understanding when that term is pronounced consider out of the force of the term whether there be many men or only one Another propriety in mans apprehension not much unlike to this is that he is able to comprise a Multitude in one indivisible notion and yet that notion shall express the multiplicity of what it containâ— As we see in Numbers where the indivisible conception of ten a hundred a thousand c. plainly expresses the subject to be many yet that notion of the number binds them up as I may say into one bundle that in it self admits no division nor will permit that the least part be taken from it for if it be the whole bundle is destroy'd and vanishes as when I take ten if one be diminish'd from it it is no longer ten but nine It fares in like manner with the conceptions we frame of All and Every one as it doth with Numbers for if but one be deficient it is but a part and not all or every one So that these notions do indivisibly terminate a Multitude And like to this notion is the name or term whole in respect of things which as yet have not division but are capable of being divided for it is so rigorous that if the least atome or thought be wanting it is no longer the whole but only a part And this is as much as at present appears needfull to be said concerning Single apprehensions Unless I be permitted to add for a conclusion this little note which peradventure might have been more properly set down in another place where we discoursed of Being but that it occurr'd not then to me that Apprehension being rooted in the nature of Being the power of it spreads it self as far as the extent of Being and consequently reaches to all things whatever for whatever is a thing hath Being and that to which Being doth not reach is nothing Nay it is not limited there but grasps even at nothing and aimes to make a notion of it and plants its generation multiplying it self by negations of whatever is Hence we have the notions of Deafness Dumbness Blindness Lameness Baldness Death Sin and of all Evils whatever by the want of such Goods as are sensible to us CHAP. II. Of Thinking and Knowing HAving thus declared the nature of single apprehensions the method we have prescrib'd our selves requires that we examine in the next place what effect the joyning them together may have for from thence spring Enuntiations or Judgments which are in the next rank after simple Apprehensions and the materials whereof Discourses are immediately framed as when of the two apprehensions knife and sharp we may make this Enunciation the knife is sharp In this enquiry the first thing that occurrs to us is to consider in what manner two differing simple Apprehensions become joyn'd to one another And we shall find that they are not tyed together like several distinct things in one bundle or like stones in a heap where all that are compris'd under one multitude are yet circumscrib'd within their own limits and thereby wholly distinguish'd from each other but that they are as it were grafted upon one stock which being common to both gives the same life to both and so becoming one with each of them makes them to be one and the same thing between themselves And this is the notion of Being or Existence in the subject we speak of which as we have already shew'd is the Basis and Foundation of all other Apprehensions and by being common and indifferent to all is the fittest glew to unite those that are capable of such conjunction And accordingly we see that most of our speech runs upon this strain that this is that or doth that which is as much to say as is doing that that Socrates is a man or that Socrates runs which signifies is runing and the like and since our speech proceeds from the conceptions of our mind 't is clear that as the words which express Being or Existence joyn together the other words that we use or at least the greatest part of them so likewise in our mind the Apprehension of Being is the glew that joyns our Apprehensions corresponding to our words All which will appear to be said with great reason if we reflect on it For when diverse apprehensions may be thus joyn'd together it is indeed that one and the same thing affecting us veral ways and under different considerations those different expressions beget different apprehensions in us and so till we examine the matter every one of them seems to be a different thing but when we trace these streams up to the Fountain-Head we discern that all of them belong to one and the same thing and that by being in that thing they are among themselvs the very same thing however they affect us variously and therfore may truly be said to be one as indeed they are And consequently nothing is more fit to joyn together in our mind those different apprehensions than the apprehension of Being which makes us apprehend as one thing those notions which really and in the thing it self are but one as we have often touched both in the former Treatise and lately in this For this is the way to joyn things in the mind intelligently and according to the proper nature of the mind which receiving impressions from things existent ought to consider those impressions as they flow from the very things and not as they are in the mind it self and by mediation of those impressions must take a survey of the things themselvs and not stay at the intellectual impressions they make in her And consequently must apprehend those things to be one in themselvs though in us they be not so according to the course of our Original and Legitimate apprehensions of things which is as they are existent that is as they are in their own nature and in themselvs and not according to the discourses and secondary apprehensions we make of the images we find of them in our mind And thus things are rightly joyn'd by apprehension without caution in which particular we shall run into great errors in our discourse For if we be not very careful herein we are apt to mistake the use of the impressions we receive from things and to ground our judgments concerning them according
our Sensual part and its antagonist which maintains the resolution set by reason and observe how exceedingly their courses and proceedings differ from one another we shall more plainly discern the nature and power and efficacy of both of them We may perceive that the motions against Reason rise up turbulently as it were in billows and like a hill of boiling water as truly Passion is a conglobation of spirits put us into an unquiet and distemper'd heat and confusion On the other side Reason endeavours to keep us in our due temper by somtimes commanding down this growing sea otherwhile contenting in some measure the desires of it and so diverting another way its unruly force somtimes she terrifies it by the proposal of offensive things joyn'd to those 't is so earnest to enjoy again somtimes she prevents it by cuting off all the causes and helps that promote on its impotent desires and by engaging before hand the power of it in other things and the like All which evidently convince that as Reason hath a great strength and power in opposition of Sense so it must be a quite different thing and of a contrary nature to it We may add that the work of Reason can never be well perform'd but in a great quiet and tranquillity wheras the motions of Passion are always accompanied with disorder and perturbation So as it appears manifestly that the force of Reason is not purely the force of its Instruments but the force of its instruments as they are guided and as the quantities of them are proportioned by it And this force of Reason is different from the force of its instruments of themselvs as the force of a Song is different from the force of the same sounds wherof it is composed taken without that Order which the Musitian puts in them for otherwise the more spirits that are rais'd by any thought which Spirits are the Instruments whereby Reason performs all her operations in us the more strongly reason should work the contrary of which is evident for we see that too great abundance of Spirits confounds Reason This is as much as at present I intend to insist upon for proof that our Understanding hath its proper and distinct operations and works in a peculiar manner and in a quite different strain from all that is done by our Senses Peradventure some may conceive that the watchfulness and recalling of our thoughts back to their enjoyn'd work when they break loose and run astray and our not letting them range abroad at random doth also convince this assertion but I confess ingenuously the testimony of it seems not clear to me and therfore I rank it not with those that I would have if it may be solidly weighty and undeniable to one who shall consider maturely the bottom and full efficaciousness of them Of such a few or any one is enough to settle ones mind in the belief of a truth and I hope that this which I have labour'd for in this Chapter is so sufficiently proved as we need not make up our evidence with number of Testimonies But to shew the exceptions I take against this argument let us examine how this act within us which we call watchfulness is perform'd Truly me-thinks it appears to be nothing else but the promptitude and recourse of some spirits that are proper for this effect which by a mans earnestness in his resolution take a strong impression and so are still ready to knock frequently at the door of our understanding and therby enable it with power to recal our stray'd thoughts Nay the very reflection itself which we make upon our thoughts seems to me only this that the object beating upon the fansie carries back with it at its retiring from thence some little particle or atome of the brain or Septum Lucidum against which it beats sticking upon it in like manner as upon another occasion we instanced in a Ball rebounding from a green Mud-wall to which some of the matter of the wall must needs adhere Now this object together with the addition it gets by its stroak upon the fansie rebounding thence and having no more to do there at present betakes it self to rest quietly in some Cell it is disposed into in the brain as we have deliver'd at large in our former Treatise where we discoursed of Memory but whenever it is called for again by the fansie or upon any other occasion returns thither it comes as it were capped with this additional piece it acquir'd formerly in the fansie and so makes a representation of its own having been formerly there Yet be these actions perform'd how they will it cannot be deny'd but both of them are such as are not fit nor would be any ways useful to creatures that have not the power of ordering their own thoughts and fansies but are govern'd throughout meerly by an uniform course of nature Which ordering of thoughts being an operation feasible only by rational creatures and none others these two actions which would be in vain where such ordering is not used seem to be specially ordain'd by nature for the service of Reason and of the Understanding although peradventure a precise proper working of the understanding do not clearly shine in it Much less can we by experience find among all the actions we have hither to spoken of that our Reason or Understanding works singly and alone by it self without the assistance and consortship of the fansie and as little can I tell how to go about to seek any experience of it But what Reason may do in this particular we shall hereafter enquire and end this Chapter with collecting out of what is said how it fares with us when we do any thing against Reason or against our own knowledge If this happen by surprise 't is plain that the watch of Reason was not so strong as it should have been to prevent the admittance or continuance of those thoughts which work that transgression Again if it be occasion'd by Passion 't is evident that in this case the multitude and violence of those spirits which Passion sends boyling up to the fansie is so great as the other spirits which are in the jurisdiction and government of Reason are not able for the present to ballence them and stay their impetuosity whiles she makes truth appear Somtimes we may observe that Reason hath warning enough to mustet together all her forces to encounter as it were in battail the assault of some concupiscence that sends his unruly bands to take possession of the fansie and constrain it to serve their desires and by it to bring Reason to their bent Now if in this pitch'd field she lose the bridle and be carried away against her own resolutions and forced like a captive to obey the others laws 't is clear that her strength was not so great as the contrary factions The cause of which is evident for we know she can do nothing but by the
speak were not determined and such determination of the matter is an effect of the Understanding If I had spoken of things as I did of men or chairs there had been more than three or ten it is then evident that what determined my speech made the number be three or ten Again we see that the notion of ten is but one notion or as the name of ten is but one sign so it argues that there is but one notion by which it is the sign of ten things Besides we see that Arithmeticians find out the proprieties and particular nature of any determinate number and therfore we may conclude that every number hath a definition and peculiar nature of its own as it is a Number If then this definition or nature or notion of ten be a corporeal one it is a corporeal similitude of the object But it is like to any one of the things or to all the ten If to any one then that one will be ten if it be like to the whole made of ten then that whole being but one ten will be just one and not ten things Besides to be ten expresly implys to be not one how then can that be a material thing which by being one represents many seeing that in material things one and many are opposite and exclude one another from the same subject And yet this notion could not represent many together but by being one Again if it be a material notion or similitude it is either in an indivisible of the brain or in a divisible part of it I mean that the whole essence of the notion be in every part never so little of the brain or that one part of the essence be in one part of the brain and another in another part of it If you say that the whole essence is in every part of the brain though never so little you make it impossible to be a body for you put the likeness of ten determinate bodies in an indivisible manner seeing that what by division grows not less hath the nature of an indivisible But if you say that divers parts of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 divers parts of the brain then you make it impossible the notion of ten should be indivisible since it self is composed of several parts In a word ten things cannot be represented materially but by ten other things and there it is most evident that the Soul which represents ten by one thing or notion doth not represent the ten materialy and consequently that her self is immaterial What we have now said will be confirmed by considering the terms All and whole for 't is clear that these terms also are of the nature of numbers but withal express particularly that no part is wanting If then the notion of All or whole be said to be material or quantitative it must be divisible but if you divide it no part remains All or whole it is not therfore divisible nor consequently material And as this argument is manifestly applyable to numbers so if we look into the arguments concerning numbers you will find all them likewise apply able to these terms All and whole Out of what hath been hitherto discover'd we may gather this note that it is the nature of the Soul to draw from divisibility to indivisibility from multitude to unity from indeterminateness and confusion to a clarity determination as appears evidently in this last example of Collections in which whether we take numbers or other collective terms we see that throughout their natures consist in such a perfect indivisibility as no part can be separated without destroying the essence of the notion Nay things which in themselvs are many and consist in parts in the mind get an impartible nature for ten is no longer ten if it be divided nor all is all if any thing be taken away In the same manner though Philosophy teach us there be neither Points in Bigness nor Instants in Motion or Time yet Nature makes us express all Bigness by Points and all Time by Instants the Soul ever fixing it self upon indivisibility And this is the reason why we attribute the nature of Substance to all our notions If we see a thing white or black or do or suffer or be in a place or in time presently in our apprehensi◠〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these modifications of the thing like substance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we call them by Substantive names Whiteness Action Ubication Duration c. Now the reason of this is because a Substance that is a thing subsisting of and determined within it self is a fit and steady ground for the Soul to fix it self on wheras these other Appendixes of Substance would not afford her easie footing to build her structures on if â—he consider'd them as truly they are in themselvs and therefore in her notion she gives them the qualities of Substance But withal it happens many times that by her doing thus if she be not very wary she is deceiv'd and falls into gross errors One thing more we must remember to take notice of and it is that if we wil compare the notions in our Understanding with the signs which beating in our Fansie beget those notions we shall find that these are but barely signs and do not in their own nature express either the notions they raise or the things they are signs of This is evident in the images of the sounds we call Words for 't is clear they have no likeness either with the things they signifie or with the thoughts they beget in us And we shall find it no less true of other images for example the exteriour impressions of sensible qualities which seem by themselvs to be in the understanding for if we consider the matter well we shall perceive that we understand nothing more by them than we do by meer Words and that to work or discourse out of them we must seek into the objects and their definitions wherof we learn nothing by those first impressions For it seems that for example hot or red or sweet to a man that first sees or feels or tasts them signifies nothing els but a thing which makes such an apprehension in his Soul or such a phantasm in his interiour sense and nevertheless as yet the man perhaps knows not that he hath a soul or an interiour sense nor reflects so far as to consider that this motion passes by his exteriour sense but his apprehension is immediately carried to the thing without him and he imagins that the impression he feels is the thing he feels And so he that should feel himself heated by a burning glass were not acquainted with the vertue of such a glass would think the glass were hot yet certainly his first apprehension is of the motion made in his fansie though he imagins it elswhere which impression he conceivs to be the nature of the thing that makes it And thus we see that the conversion of the Soul is immediately to a thing without
their having such a kind of Eternity belonging to them argue a capacity of infinite time or duration in our Soul that comprehends them CHAP. VII That our Discoursing proves our Soul to be incorporeal HAving thus run over those proofs for the immateriality of our Soul which arise out of her manner of working when she judges in the next place we are to enquire what others her manner of Discoursing will afford us We are sure that since our Discourse is composed of Judgments and of single Apprehensions it cannot choose but furnish us with all those Pregnant Arguments that we drew from them But that will not serve our turn we look after new Evidence and we shall see it will give it us with full hands It consists in this that when we Discourse we may easily perceive there is more at one time in our Mind than we can discover to be in our Fantasie For we find that in our Fantasie as one Proposition comes another is gone and though they that are gone seem to be ready at a call yet they are not in presence as being things which consist in motion and that require place and therefore the one justles the other out of the place it possessed But if it fared in like manner in our inward Soul we could never attain to knowledg For 't is manifest that our Soul is not assured of a Conclusion but by her seeing the Premises if then the Premises be taken away the Conclusion that rests upon them falls to the ground but they are taken away if they be out of our mend therfore when our understanding yields its assent to a Conclusion it must of necessity have the Premises still in it But we must not rest here this consideration will carry us on a wonderous deal farther We know that he who goes to frame a new demonstration in any Subject must be certain he takes nothing contrary to what he hath learned in many Books likewise that he who will make a Latine Verse or reads a Poem knows there is nothing in all that Poem contrary to his 〈◊〉 dia do we not then manifestly perceive a certain remainder of all these in his Soul The like is in all aâ— in which â—e that goes about any work according to art shews he hath in his head all the rules of that art though he do not distinctly remember or call them to mind while he works For if he have them not how doth he work by them Since then 't is clear he thinks not of them at that time 't is as clear that more is in the Soul at one time than is in his Fantasie or than can be there by material bodies which we have shew'd is the way wherby all things come into the Fantasie though it be the nimblest and the subtilest Agent of all corporeal things whatever Another consideration wherby to evince the immateriality of the Soul concerns the proceeding of Syllogisms by links fast'ned to one another whence we may take notice that every one of them is a step to another and consequently 't is manifest that according to the nature of the Soul they must be altogether in her since if any one were absent all the rest that follow'd and depended upon that one would have no grounding or fixedness in the Soul Now if to this we add that what is to be known is absolutely and liquidly infinite there cannot be brought or expected a more pregnant and home-wit ness of our Souls spirituality it following out of these grounds that the Soul by its nature is not only capable of but expresly order'd to an infinite knowledg of infinite objects altogether For these two finite infinite science are so vastly different from one another that if the same subject be capable of both it must of necessity be order'd to infinite as to its chiefest act and end And thus out of capacity in this subject its being ordered is well infer'd though in other matters peradventure the consequence may not be good And accordingly who looks into Geometry Arithmetick Logick or even nature it self will evidently see that the objects of knowledg are every way and in every Science multipliable without end Neither ought this to be neglected that a great part of the Souls objects and indeed of those that are most natural to her is above the capacity and out of the reach of material things All Metaphysicks abstract from quantity the investigation of God of Angels of the Soul it self either concludes immateriality or at least works about it What shall I say of Logical notions those which are call'd the second intentions about which there is so much business both in the Schools and in the World 'T is sufficient that we have already express'd how all our notions are respective But in particular the motives of humane actions are very abstracted considerations as for example Hope of things to Come Memory of things Past Vertue Vice Honour Shame and the like To these let us add that when we teach or explicate any thing to ignorant persons we must frame our own apprehensions to their capacity and speak such things as they may comprehend which capacity or extent of comprehension we cannot see or perceive by any sense but judg it meerly by our Reason and Understanding Wherfore since our operation is mainly and chiefly on and by such motives as are not liable to material principles and compositions it is evident that the spring-head from whence such operation flows must also be immaterial and incorporeal I am not ignorant that this Argument uses to be answer'd by urging that the Soul likewise knows Deafness Dumbness Blindness and such other notions of Nothings and yet is not from thence infer'd to be Nothing it conceives God and Eternity and yet it is neither from it self as God is nor eternal In like manner say they it may know incorporeal things and yet not be therfore it self incorporeal To this I reply first wishing them not to mistake me but to give my argument its full force and weight for there is a very great difference between the knowing of a thing in a strained toilsome and confused manner and the having a thing for its ordinary matter and subject of negotiation this argues connaturality between the Soul and what it is so conversant about but that doth not Now what is inferr'd out of whole Sciences and Arts concerns a main stock of the Souls business and not some extraordinary vertue or powers she hath But to come up to close to the answer I say that if we being throughly acquainted with material things can find that it is not in the possibility of any such to be the likeness of an immaterial thing and from thence inferr that our Soul for being fraught with immaterial notions is not material our conclusion is well collected and a very good one for the premises out of which we gather it are within our kenning and therfore if
comprehending all the circumstances or it But what I intend is that the nature of the Soul consider'd in it self is such as hath a capacity and may reach to this manner of working whence I infer that she is not a Body but a Spirit without determining whether she work thus in the body or out of it that enquiry belongs not to this place it will follow by and by But for the present having consider'd to what kind of working the nature of the Soul in abstract is capable of attaining we will conclude this Chapter with reflecting on those actions of hers which fall daily under our remark as being exercised in the Body In all of them we may observe that she proceeds with a certain Universalitity indifferency beyond the practice of all other creatures whatever For example if a man be spoken to or ask'd of a hundred several things that he never thought of before in all his life he will immediately shape pertinent replie's to all that is said return fiting answers to every question As Whither such a man goes How long this staff is What colour that mans cloaths are of c. To all which to as many things more as you will so they be within the compass of his knowledg he straight answers differently and to the purpose Whence 't is manifest that his answers do not proceed upon set gimals or strings wherof one being struck moves the rest in a set order which we have shew'd is the course in all actions done by Beasts but out of a principle within him which of it self is indifferent to all things and therfore can readily apply it self to the answer according as by the question it is moved And the like may be observ'd in his actions which he varyes according to the occasions presented I remember how Sir Phillip Sidney the Phoenix of the age he lived in the glory of our Nation the patern to posterity of a compleat a Gallant a perfect Gentleman aptly calls our hands the Instruments of Instruments from Aristotle who terms them Organa organorum or universal instruments fitly moulded to be employ'd in any service Nature hath to all other Creatures appropriated their instruments to determinate actions but to Man she hath in these given such as might be apply'd to any kind of work whatever And accordingly we see that the same kind of Bird still builds her nest and breeds her young in the same way without any the least variation at all but men build their Houses as they please sometimes upon hills somtimes in vales somtimes under the earth and somtimes upon the tops of trees and the manners of breeding or instructing their Children are as divers as the Customs of Nations and Towns And in all other actions our Masters note it for a property peculiar to Man that he uses to arrive to the same end by divers means as to transport our selvs to some place we would go to either by water or by horse or by coach or by litter as we please wheras we see no such variety in like actions of other living creatures All which being so we may conclude that the Souls proceeding either to answers or to action argues clearly that she hath within her self such an indifferency as is joyn'd with a means to determine this indifferency the contrary wherof we see in all corporeal Engines for they have every step in the whole course of their ways chaulk'd out to them by their very framing as hath been amply declared in the first Treatise and have the determination of the work from end to end set down and given them by their artificer and maker And therfore 't is most evident that the Soul cannot he a thing composed or framed of material and quantitative parts seeing she hath not her ways set down to her but frames them of her self according to the accidents that occurr The same nature of the Soul discovers it self in the quiet proceeding of Reason when it works with greatest strength and vigour as well knowing that its efficaciousness consists not in the multitude of parts which Passion breeds but in the well ordering of those it already hath under its command Wheras the strength of Quantity and the encrease of its strength consists in the multitude of its parts as will evidently appear to whom shall consider this point deeply Thus we have in a summary manner gone through all the Operations of the Soul which in the begining of this latter Treatise we heap'd together as Materials wherwith to raise an immaterial and spiritual building Neither I hope will our Reader be offended with us for being more succinct and concise in all our discourse concerning our Soul than where we deliver'd the doctrine of Bodies for the difficultness of this subject and the nicety required to the expressing our conceptions concerning it wherin as the proverb is a hair is to be cloven would not allow us that liberty of ranging about as when we treated of Bodies What occurrs among them may be illustrated by examples within our own orb and of their own pitch but to display the operations of a Soul we can find no instances able to reach them they would rather embroil and darken them For the exact propriety of words must be strictly and rigorously observ'd in them and the Reader shall penetrate more into the nature and depth of them by serious meditation and reflection upon the hints we have here given efficacious enough I hope to excite those thoughts he should have for this purpose and to steer them the right way than by much and voluminous reading or hearing long and polish'd discourses on this subject For my part if what I have here said should to any man appear not sufficient to convince that our Soul is of a spiritual and far different nature from all such things as in our First Treatise we have discours'd on and taken for the heads and most general kinds of Bodies to which all other particular ones and their motions may be reduced I shall become a suitor to him to take This Subject into his handling where it begins to be unwieldy for mine and to declare to us upon the principles we have setled in the first Treatise and upon considering the nature of a Body which is the first of all our notions how these particulars we have reflected upon in mans actions can be drawn out of them For I can find no possible means to link them together a vast and impenetrable Ocean lyes between the discoveries we have made on each side of its shores which forbids all commerce between them at least on the dark Bodies side which hath not wings to soar into the region of Intellectual light By those principles we have traced out the course and progress of all operations belonging to Sense and how Beasts do or may perform all their actions even to their most refined and subtilest operations but beyond
not bound for the continuation of that things Being to prove that it is not changed but on the other side he tbat averrs it changed is bound to bring in his evidence of a sufficient cause to change it for to have a thing remain is natures own dictamen and follows out of the causes which gave it Being but to make an alteration supposes a change in the causes and therfore the obligation of proof lyes on that side Nevertheless to give satisfaction to those who are earnest to see every article positively proved we will make that part to our Province Let us then remember that Immortality signifies a negation or not-having of Mortality and that a positive term is required to express a change by since nature teaches us that whatever is will remain with the Being it hath unless it be forced out of it If then we shew that Mans Soul hath not those grounds in her which make all things we see to be mortal we must be allow'd to have acquitted our selvs of the charg of proving her Immortal For this end let us look round about us and inquire of all the things we meet with by what means they are changed and come to a period and are no more The pure Elements will tell you that they have their change by rarefaction and condensation and no otherwise Mixed bodies by alteration of their mixture Smal bodies by the activity of the Elements working upon them and by the means of rarefaction and condensation entring into their very constitution and breeding another temperament by separation of some of their parts and in their stead mingling others Plants and trees and other living creatures will tell you that their nourishment being insinuated through their whole bodies by subtile pores and blind passages if they either be stop'd by any accident or else fill'd with bad nourishment the mixture of the whole fails of it self and they come to die Those things which are violently destroy'd we see are made away for the most part by division so fire by division destroyes all that comes in its way so living creatures are destroy'd by parting their blood from their flesh or one member from another or by the evaporation or extinction of their natural heat In fine we are sure that all things which within our knowledg lose their Being do so by reason of their Quantity which by division or by rarefaction and compression gains some new temperature that doth not consist with their former temper After these premisses I need say no more the conclusion displays it self readily and plainly without any further trouble For if our labour hath been hitherto to shew that our Soul is indivisible and that her operations are such as admit not quantitative parts in her 't is clear she cannot be mortal by any of those ways wherby we see things round about us to perish The like argument we may frame out of Local motion For seeing that all the alterative actions we are acquainted with be perform'd by local motion as is deliver'd both in gross and by retail in our first Treatise and that Aristotle and all understanding Philosophers agree there can be no Local motion in an indivisible thing the reason wherof is evident to whomsoever reflects upon the nature of Place and of Local motion 't is manifest there can be no motion to hurt the Soul since she is concluded to be indivisible The common argument likewise used in this matter amounts to the same effect to wit that since things are destroy'd only by their contraries that thing which hath no contrary is not subject to destruction which principle both Reason and Experience every where confirm but a humane Soul is not subject to contrariety therfore such an one cannot be destroy'd The truth of the assumption may be known two ways First because all the contrarieties that are found within our cognisance rise out of the primary opposition of Rarity and Density from which the Soul being absolutely free she likewise is so from all that grows out of that root and Secondly we may be sure that our Soul can receive no harm from contrariety since all contraries are so far from hurting her as contrary wise the one helps her in the contemplation of the other And as for contradiction in thoughts which at different times our Soul is capable of admitting experience teaches us that such thoughts change in her without any prejudice to her substance they being accidents and having their contrariety only betwixt themselvs within her but no opposition at all to her which only is the contrariety that may have power to harm her and therfore whethersoever of such contrary thoughts be in the Soul pertains no more to her subsistence than it doth to the subsistence of a Body whether it be here or there on the right hand or on the left And thus I conceive my task is perform'd and that I am discharg'd of my undertaking to shew the Souls Immortality which imports no more than to shew that the causes of other things mortality do not reach her Yet being well perswaded that my Reader will not be offended with the addition of any new light in this dark subject I will strive to discover if it be possible some positive proof or guess out of the property and nature of the Soul it self why she must remain and enjoy another life after this To this end let us cast our eye back upon what hath been already said concerning her nature We found that Truth is the natural perfection of Mans Soul and that she cannot be assured of truth naturally otherwise than by evidence and therfore 't is manifest that evidence of truth is the full compleat perfection at which the Soul doth aim We found also that the Soul is capable of an absolute infinity of truth or evidence To these two we will ad only one thing more which of it self is past question and therfore needs no proof and then we will deduce our conclusion and this is that a mans Soul is a far nobler and perfecter part of him than his Body and therfore by the rules of nature and wisedom his Body was made for his Soul and not his Soul finally for his Body These grounds being thus lay'd let us examine whether our Soul doth in this life arrive to the end she was ordain'd for or no and if she do not then it must follow of necessity that our Body was made but for a passage by which our Soul should be ferried over into that state where she is to attain to that end for which her nature is fram'd and fited The great skill and artifice of Nature shewing and assuring us that she never fails of compassing her end even in her meanest works and therfore without doubt she would not break her course in her greatest whereof man is absolutely the head and chief among all those we are acquainted with Now what the end is to which our
Soul ayms is evident since the perfection of every thing in the end for which it is made the perfection then and end of the Soul being evidence she being capable of infinite evidence let us inquire whether in this life she may compass it or no. To determine this question let us compare infinite evidence to that evidence which the greatest and most knowing man that ever lived hath acquir'd by the work of nature alone or to the evidence which by aym we may imagine possible ever to happen any one man should arrive to and balancing them well together let us judg whether all that any man can know here is not in respect of what a mans Soul is capable of to be stiled as nothing and deservs not the name of evidence nor to be accounted of that nature And if our sentence conclude upon this let us acknowledg that our Soul arrives not to her perfection nor enjoys her end in this world and therfore must have infallibly an other habitation inthe next world to which nature intends her Experience teaches us that we cannot fully comprehend any one of natures works and those Philosophers who in a disciplinable way search into nature therfore are called Mathematicians after they have written large volums of some very slender subject ever find that they have left untouch'd an endless abyss of knowledg for whomsoever shall please to build upon their foundations that they can never arrive near saying all that may be said â—f hat subject though they have said never so much of it We may not then make difficulty to believe that the wisest and learnedest men in the world have reason to profess with the father of Philosophers that indeed they know nothing And if so how far are they from that happiness perfection which consists in knowing all things Of which full sea we nevertheless find even in this low ebb our Soul is a chanel capable and is framed a fit vessel and instrument to receive it when the tide shall come in upon it which we are sure it can not do till the banks of our Body which hinder it be broken down This last consideration without doubt hath added no small corroboration to our former proofs which are so numerous so clear as peradventure it may appear superfluous to say any more to this point since one convinceing argument establishes the verity of a conclusion as efficaciously as a hundred therfore Mathematicians use but one single proof in all their Propositions after which other supernumerary ones would be but tedious Nevertheless since all the several ways by which we may look into the nature of our Soul the importantest subject we can busie our thoughts upon cannot fail of being pleasing and delightful to us we must not omit to reflect a little upon that great property of our Soul by which she is able to move to work without her self being moved or touched To which adding that all Life consists in motion and that all motion of Bodies comes from some other thing without them we may evidently conclude that our Soul who can move withot receiving her motion from abroad hath in her se lf a spring of life for which she is not beholding as Bodies are o some extrinsecal cause of a nature like to her but only to him who gave her to be what she is But if she have such a spring of Life within her it were unreasonable to imagine that she died upon the occasion of the death of anohther thing that exercises no action of life but as it is caused by another Neither we may neglect that ordinary consideration which takes notice that our Soul makes use of Propositions of eternal truth which we have above produced among our proofs for her being of a spiritual nature and shall now imploy it for the proving her Immortal by considering that the notion of Being which settles these Propositions so as they fear no mutation or shaking by time is the very riot of the Soul that which gives her nature which shews it self in all her operations So that if from Being arrives to these Propositions to fear no time the like must of necessity betide also the substance of the Soul And thus we see that her nature is out of the reach of time that she can comprehend time and set it limits can think of things beyond it and cast about for them All which are clear testimonies that she is free and secure from the all-devouring and destroying tyranny of that Saturnial Conqueror of the whole world of matter and of Bodies whose servant is Death After all these proofs drawn from the nature of the Soul it self every one of them of force to convince her Immortality I must crave leave to add one consideration more though it seems to belong to anothers harvest namely to the Science of Morals and it is that the position of mortality in the Soul takes away all morality and changes men into beasts by taking away the ground of all difference in those things which are to govern our actions For supposing that the Soul dyes with the Body and seeing that man hath a comprehension or notion of time without end 't is evident that the spain of this life must needs appear contemptible to him that well considers and weighs it against the other infinite duration And by consequence all the goods and evils which are parts of this life must needs become as despicable and inconsiderable so that better or worse in this life hath not any appearance of difference between them at least not enough to make him labour with paâ—n to compass the one and eschew the other and for that end to cross his present inclination in any thing and engage himself in any the least difficult task And so it would ensue that if to an understanding man some course or actions were proposed as better than that he were going about or for the instant had a mind to he would relish it as a great Merchant or a Banquier would do whom dealing for Millions one should presse with earnestness to change his resolved course for the gain of a farthing more this way than the other which being inconsiderable he would not trouble his head with it nor stop at what he was in hand with In like manner whoever is perswaded that for an infinite of time he shall be nothing without sense of all things he scorns for this little twinkling of his life to take any present pains to be in the next moment well or to avoid being ill since in this case dying is a secure remedy to any present evil and he is as ready to die now as a hundred years hence Nor can he esteem the loss of a hundred years to be a matter of moment and therfore he will without any further guidance or discourse betake himself to do whatever his present inclination bears him to with most facility
Substance exempted from Place and Time yet present to both an actual and present knowledg of all things that may be known and a skil or rule even by what it self is to all things whatever This she is if she be perfect but if she be imperfect then is she all this to the proportion of her growth if so I may say and she is powerful according to the measure of her knowledg and of her will So that in fine a Separated Soul is of a nature to have and to know and to govern all things I may reasonably suspect that my saying how imperfect Souls are rules to the proportion of their growth may have occasion'd great reflection and bred some trouble in the curious and heedful Reader I confess this expression was deliver'd by me only to free my self for the present from the labour of shewing what knowledg every Separated Soul hath but upon second thoughts I find that such sliding over this difficult point will not serve my turn nor save me the pains of untying this knot for unless I explicate what I mean by that speech I shall leave my Reader in great doubt and anxiety Which to free him from I must wade a little further in this question of the extent of a separated Souls knowledg into which I have thus upon the by engaged my self But let him first be advertis'd that I do not here meddle with what a Separated Soul may know by Revelatation or by Supernatural means but that I only track out her natural paths and guess at what she is or knows by that light which her conversation in her body affords us Our entrance into this matter must be to consider what mutation in respect of knowledg a Soul's first change out of her Body makes in her for it is not unlikely but nature may some way enlighten us so far as to understand what must follow out of the negation of the Bodies consortship added to what we know of her and Natures other works in this world This then first occurrs that surely she cannot choose but still know in that state all that she knew while she was in the Body since we are certain the Body hath no part in that which is true knowledg as is above declared when we shew'd first that all true knowledg is respective secondly that the first impressions of the fansy do not reach to the interiour Soul and lastly that she works by much more than what hath any actual correspondence in the fansy and that all things are united to her by the force of Being From which last it follows that all things she knows are her self and she is all that she knows wherefore if she keeps her self and her own Being she must needs keep the knowledg of all that she knew in this world Next she must undoubtedly know then somwhat more than she knew in the Body For since out of the things she already knows others will follow by the meer ordering and connexion of them and the Souls proper work is to order things we cannot doubt but that both the things she knows in this world must of necessity be order'd in her to the best advantage and likewise that all that will be known which wants no other cause for the knowing of it but the ordering of these things For if the nature of a thing were Order who can doubt but what were put into that thing were put into Order Now that the nature of the Soul is such we collect easily For since all order proceeds from her it must be acknowledg'd that Order is first in her but what is in her is her nature her nature then is Order and what is in her is order'd In saying of which I do not mean that there is such an order between the notions of a Separated Soul as is between material things that are order'd by the Soul while she is in the Body for since the Soul is an adaequate cause of such order that is to say a cause which can make any one such and the whole kind of it it follows that such order is not in her for if it were she would be cause of her self or of her own parts Order therfore in her must signifie a thing more eminent than such inferiour Order in which resides the power of making that inferiour Order and this is nothing else but the connexion of her notions by the necessity of Being which we have often explicated And out of this eminent or superiour kind of Order our conclusion follows no less than if the inferiour Order which we see in our fansies while our Soul is in our Body did reside in our interiour Soul for it is the necessity of identification which doth the effect and makes the Soul know and the order of fantasms is but a precedent condition in the bodily Agent that it may work upon the Soul and if more fantasms than one could be together this order would not be necessary Out of this a notable and vast conclusion manifestly follows to wit that if a Soul can know any one thing more when she is out of the Body than what she knew while she was in the Body without any manner of doubt she knows all that can be drawn and forced out of these knowledges which she had in her Body How much this is and how far it will reach I am afraid to speak Only I intreat Mathematicians and such as are acquainted with the manner how Sciences proceed to consider how some of their Definitions are made to wit by composing together sundry known terms and giving a new name to the compound that results out of them Wherfore clear it is that out of fewer notions had at the first the Soul can make many more and the more she hath or makes the more she can multiply Again the Maximes which are necessary to be added to the Definitions for gaining of knowledg we see are also compounded of ordinary and known terms So that a Separated Soul can want neither the Definitions nor the Maximes out of which the Books of Sciences are composed and therfore neither can the Sciences themselves be wanting to her Now if we consider that in the same fashion as Demonstrations are made and knowledg is acquired in one Science by the same means there is a transcendence from Science to Science and that there is a connexion among all the Sciences which fall into the consideration of man and indeed among all at least corporal things for of spiritual things we cannot so assuredly affirm it though their perfection may perswade us that there is rather a greater connexion among them than among corporal things it will follow that a Soul which hath but any indifferent knowledg in This World shall be replenish'd with all knowledg in the Next But how much is this indifferent knowledg that for this purpose is requir'd in this world Upon mature consideration of this point 't is true I find it
this world a man settles his heart constantly upon any transitory end as upon wealth corporeal delights honour power and the like which are too short breath'd attendants to follow him so long a journey as into the next then all the powers of his Soul even after she hath left her Body will be still longing after that dear Idol of her affections and for the want of it she will not value the great knowledg she shall then be indued with nor care for any good she possesses Like a man who being surrounded with a full sea and swoln tide of all specious objects that may please and delight him hath by unlucky chance suffered his violent affections and impotent desires to be intangled in some mean love that either neglects him or he is hinder'd from enjoing and therby that litle drop of gall or rather that privation of a mean contentment which truly in it self is nothing infects and poysons the whole draught of happiness that but for this woud swell him up to the height of his wishes But no comparisons of sorrows griefs or anguishes in this life where our earthly dwelling doth so clog and allay and dull the sense of our Soul which only feels and relishes either delight or wo can arrive to shadow out the misery of a Separated Soul so affected whose strains are so excessively vehement and whose nature is a pure activity and herself all sense all knowledg 'T is true I confess that in a man such motions in part proceed from passion and therfore I will allow that so much of them as have their origine meerly and only from thence shal dye with the Body and not have made any impression in the Separated Soul But besides the stream of passion we may in such motions observe also the work of reason for she both approves and employes her powers to compass and gain what the other presents and by legitimate discourse draws consequences out of that principle or judgment which makes the byas it then leans to and these are undeniable effects of a spiâ—itual judgment setled in the Soul And therfore as far as these motions proceed from spiritual judgments so far 't is clear they must remain in the Separated Soul Peradventure what I have said may be liable to a mistake as though I conceiv'd that these spiritual judgments are made in the Soul according to right reason and to legitimate discourse whereas I mean nothing less But esteeming an overstrong judgment in the Separated Soul to be proportionable to a passion in the Body I conceit that as passion sets reason on work to find out means whereby she may arrive to her ends so may this judgment set reason on float with those acts which follow consequently upon it though inconsequent to the whole body of reason because the disorder there is in the excess of this judgment over others whose force according to nature ought to be greater than it So that if we would frame a conception of a disorder'd Soul when it is out of the Body we may imagine it correspondent to a Body whose one part were biger than could stand in proportion with another as if the hand to use the example we brought before were greater than the arm could manage or the foot larger and heavier than the leg and thigh could wield To which add that every part were active and working of it self so as though it could not be govern'd yet would it continually have its own operation which would be contrary to the operation of the arm or leg and consequently it would ever be tending to imcompossible operations And by that means both one member would always disagree from the other and neither of them attain any effect at all not unlike the fansie of the Poets who fain'd a monster which the term'd Scylla whose inferiour parts were a company of Dogs ever snarling and quarreling among themselvs and yet were unseverable from one another as being comparts of the same substance But to declare this important doctrine more dogmatically let us consider that of necessity a disorder'd Soul hath these following judgments settled in her Namely that she is not well that she cannot be well without her desired good that it is impossible for her to compass that good and lastly that this state she is in is by all means possible to be avoided not by changing her judgment for that is her self but by procuring the satisfaction she desires and this with all the power and total inclination of her activity and possibility This then being the temper of a disorder'd Separated Soul it is easie to conceive what a said condition such an one remains then in which is infinitely more than any affliction that can happen to a man in this world for since even here all our joys and griefs proceed from our Soul we must needs allow that when she shall be free from the burthen of her Body which doth exceedingly impeach and limit her operations and activity all her actions will be then far greater and more efficacious But because this point is of highest consequence we may not slightsly pass it over but we will endeavour if we can to discover the wonderful efficacie and force of a Separated Soul's operations that from thence we may the better collect how great her happiness or misery will be in the next life Let us then consider how an Act or judgment of the Soul may be more forcible either by it self or by the multiplication of such helps as concur with it To begin with considering the Act in it self we know that the certainest way to measure the strength of it is to take a survey of the force which shews it self in its effect for they being relatives to one another each of them discovers the others nature Now this we will doe after our ordinary manner by comparing the spiritual effects issuing from a judgment in the Soul to material effects proceeding from the operations and motions of Bodies In these we may observe three things by which we may estimate their efficaciousness some actions dure a longer time others take up a greater place and others again work the like effect in a greater place and in a shorter time wich last sort of all others proceed from the most powerful and most forcible agents If then in these considerations we compare a Separated Soul to a Body what an infinity of strength and efficacity will the meanest of those pure substances have beyond the most powerful and active Body that can be imagined in nature For we have already shew'd how a Separated Soul comprehends at once all place and all times so that her activity requires no application to place or time but she is of her self mistress of both comprehending all quantity whatever in an indivisible apprehension and ranking all the parts of motion in their compleat and knowing at once order what is to happen in every one of them On the other
atome of thy vast greatness and with the hard and tough blows of strict and wary reasoning we have strucken out some few sparks of that glorious light which invirons and swells thee or rather which is thee 't is high time I should retire my self out of the turbulent and slippery field of eager strife and litigious disputation to make my accounts with thee where no outward noise may distract nor any thing intermeddle between us excepting only that Eternal Verity which by thee shines upon my faint and gloomy eys and in which I see whatever doth or can content thee in me I have discover'd that thou my Soul wilt survive me and so survive me as thou wilt also survive the mortality and changes which belong to me and which are but accidentary to thee meerly because thou art in me Then shall the vicissitude of time and the inequality of dispositions in thee be turn'd into the constancy of immortality and into the evenness of one being never to end and never to receive a change or succession to better or worse When my eye of Contemplation hath been fix'd on this brâ—ght Sun as long as it is able to endure the radiant beams of it whose redundant light veils the looker on with a dark mist let me turn it for a little space upon the straight passage and narrow gullet through which thou strivest my Soul with faint and weary steps during thy hazardous voyage upon the earth to make thy self away And let me examine what comparison there is between thy two conditions the present one wherin thou now findest thy self immersed in flesh and blood and the future state that will betide thee when thou shall be melted out of this gross oar and refined from this mean alloy Let my term of life be of a thousand long years longer than ever hap'ned to our aged forefathers who stored the earth with their numerous progeny by out-living their skill to number the diffused multitudes that swarm'd from their loins Let me during this long space be sole Emperor and absolute Lord of all the huge globe of land and water compassed with Adam's offspring Let all my subjects ly prostrate at my feet with obedience and aw distilling their active thoughts in studying day and night to invent new pleasures and delight for me Let Nature conspire with them to give me a constant and vigorous health a perpetual spring of Youth that may to the full relish whatever good all they can fancy Let gravest Prelates and greatest Princes serve instead of flatterers to highten my joys and yet those joys be rais'd above their power of flattery Let the Wisedom of this vast Family whose sentiments are maxims and oracles to govern the worlds beliefs and actions esteem reverence and adore me in the secretest and most recluse withdrawings of their hearts Let all the Wealth which to this very day hath ever been torn out of the bowels of the Earth and all the Treasures which the Sea hides from the view of greedy men swel round about me whilst all the world besides lyes gaping to receive the crums that fall neglected by me from my full loaden table Let my imagination be as vast as the unfathomed Universe and my felicity as accomplish'd as my imagination can reach to so that wallowing in pleasure I be not able to think how to increase it or what to wish for more than that which I possess and enjoy Thus when my thoughts are at a stand can raise my present happiness no higher let me call to mind how this long Lease of pleasant dayes will in time come to an end this bottom of a thousand joyful years will at length be unwound and nothing remain of it and then my Soul thy infinitly-longer-lived Immortality will succeed thy never ending date will begin a new account impossible to be sum'd up and beyond all proportion infinitly exceeding the happiness we have rudely aim'd to express so that no comparison can be admited between them For suppose First that such it were as the least and shortest of those manifold joys which swel it to that height we have fancy'd were equal to al the contentment thou shouldst enjoy in a whole million of years yet millions of years may be so often multiply'd as at length the slender and limited contentments supposed in them may equalize and out go the whole heap of overflowing bliss rais'd so high in the large extent of these thousand happy years Which when they are cast into a total sum and I compare it with the unmeasurable Eternity which only measures thee then I see that all this huge product of Algebraical multiplication appears as nothing in respect of thy remaining and never-ending survivance is less than the least point in regard of the immense Universe But then if it be true as it is most true that thy least spark and moment of real happiness in that blessed Eternity thou hopest for is infinitely greater and nobler than the whole mass of fancyed joys of my thousand years life here on earth how infinitely wil the value of thy duration exceed all proportion in regard of the felicity I had imagined my self And seeing there is no proportion between them let me sadly reflect on my own present condition let me examine what it is I so busily and anxiously employ my thoughts and precious time upon let me consider my own courses and whither they lead me let me take a survey of the lives and actions of the greatest part of the world which make so loud a noise about my ears And then may I justly sigh out from the bottom of my anguished heart To what purpose have I hitherto lived To what purpose are all these millions of toilsome Ants that live and labour about me To what purpose were Caesar's and Alexander's To what purpose Aristotle's and Archimedes's How miserably foolish are those conquering Tyrants that divide the world with their lawless Swords What sensless Idiots those acute Philosophers who tear mens wits in pieces by their different ways and subtile Logick striving to shew men Beatitudes in This World seeking for that which if they had found were but a nothing of a nothing in respect of true Beatitude He only is wise who neglecting all that flesh blood desires endeavors to purchase at any rate This Felicity which Thy survivance promises the least degree of which so far surmounts all the heaps which the Giants of the earth are able to raise by throwing hills on hills and striving in vain to scale and reach those eternities which reside above the Skies Alas how fondly doth mankind suffer it self to be deluded How true it is that the only thing necessary proves the only that is neglected Look up my Soul and fix thine eye upon that truth which eternal light makes so clear to thee shining upon thy face with so great evidence as defies the noon-tide Sun in its greatest brightness And this it is
that every action of thine be it never so slight is mainly mischievous or be it never so bedeckt with those specious considerations which the wise men of the world judg important is foolish absurd and unworthy of a man unworthy of one that understands and acknowledges thy dignity if in it there be any speck or through it there appear any spark of those mean and flat motives which with a false byas draw any way aside from attaining that happiness we expect in thee That happiness ought to be the end and mark we level at that the rule and model of all our actions that the measure of every circumstance of every atome of whatever we bestow so precious a thing upon as the employment of thee is But we must not so slightly pass over the intenseness and vehemence of that Felicity which thou my Soul shalt injoy when thou art sever'd from thy benuming compartner I see evidently that thou dost not survive a simple dull essence but art replenish'd with a vast incomprehensible extent of riches delight within thy self I see that golden chain which here by long discourses fills huge volumes of Books and dives into the Hidden natures of several Bodies all in thee resumed into one circle or link which contains in it self the large scope of whatever screwing discourse can reach to I see it comprehend and master the whole world of Bodies I see every particular nature as it were imbossed out to the life in thy celestial garment I see every solitary substance rank'd in its due place and order not crush'd or throng'd by the multitude of its fellows but each of them in its full extent in the full propriety of every part and effect of it and distinguish'd into more divisions than ever nature sever'd it into In thee I see an infinite multitude enjoy place enough I see that neither height nor profundity nor longitude nor latitude are able to exempt themselvs from thy defused powers they faddom all they comprehend all they master all they inrich thee with the stock of all and thou thy self art all and somwhat more than all and yet now but one of all I see that every one of this all in thee encreases the strength by which thou know'st any other of the same all al encreases the knowledg of all by a multiplication beyond the skill of Arithmetick being in its kind absolutely infinite by having a nature incapable of being either infinite or finite I see again that those things which have not knowledg are situated in the lowest and meanest rank of creatures and are in no wise comparable to those which know I see there is no pleasure at all no happiness no felicity but by and in knowledg Experience teaches me how the purer and nobler race of mankind adores in their hearts this idol of knowledg and scorns whatever else they seem to court and be fond of And I see that this excess or Sea of knowledg which is in thee grows not by the succession of one thought after another but it is like a full swoln Ocean never ebing on any coast but equally pushing at all its bounds and tumbling out its flowing waves on every side and into every creek so that every where it makes high tide Or like a pure Sun which from all parts of it shoots its radiant beams with a like extremity of violence And I see likewise that this admirable knowledg is not begotten and conserv'd in thee by the accidentary help of defective causes but rooted in thy self and steep'd in thy own essence like an unextinguishable sourse of a perpetual streaming fire or the living head of an everruning spring beholding to none out of thy self save only to thy Almighty Creator and begging of none but being in thy self all that of which thou should'st beg This then my Soul being thy lot and such a height of pleasure being reserv'd for thee such an extremity of felicity within a short space attending thee can any degenerate thought ever gain strength enough to shake the evidence which these considerations implant and rivet in thee Can any dull oblivion deface this so lively and so beautiful image or any length of time draw in thy memory a veil between it and thy present attention Can any perversity so distort thy straight eys that thou should'st not look alwaies fix'd on this Mark and level thy aim directly at this White How is it possible that thou canst brook to live and not expire presently therby to ingulf thy self and be throughly imbibed with such an overflowing bliss Why dost thou not break the walls and chains of thy flesh and blood and leap into this glorious liberty Here Stoicks you are to use your swords Upon these considerations you may justifie the letting out the blood which by your discourses you seem so prodigal of To die upon these terms is not to part with that which you fondly call happy life feeding your selvs and flattering your hearts with empty words but rather it is to plunge your selvs into a felicity you were never able to imagine or frame to your misguided thoughts any scantling of But nature pulls me by the ear and warns me from being so wrongful to her as to conceive that so wise a governess should to no advantage condemn mankind to so long a banishment as the ordinary extent of his dull life wearisom pilgrimage here under the Sun reaches to Can we imagine she would allow him so much lazy time to effect nothing in Or can we suspect she intends him no further advantage than what an abortive child arrives to in his mothers womb For whatever the nets and toils of discourse can circle in all that he who but once knows that himself is can attain to as fully as he that is enrich'd with the Science of all things in the world For the connexion of things is so linked together that proceeding from any one you reach the knowledg of many and from many you cannot 〈◊〉 of attaining all So that a Separated Soul which but knows her self cannot choose but know her Body too and from her Body she cannot miss in proceeding from the causes of them both as far as immediate causes proceed from others over them and as little can she be ignorant of all the effects of those causes she reaches to And thus all that huge masse of knowleg and happ ness which we have consider'd in our last reflection amounts to no more than the silliest Soul buried in warm blood can and will infallibly attain to when its time comes We 〈◊〉 then assure our selvs that just nature hath provided and 〈◊〉 a greater measure of such felicity for longer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 much greater as may well be worth the pains and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so miserable and tedious a passage as here my Soul 〈◊〉 â—gglest through For certainly if the dull percussion which by natures institution hammers out a spiritual Soul from gross 〈◊〉
finds Here thou wilt prove how true that rich man said who of his gains pronounced that he had gotten little with great labor and great sums with little So if thou bestow'st well thy time thy latter sums will bring thee in huge accounts of gain upon small expence of pains or imployment wheras thy first beginings are toilsome and full of pain and bring in but slender profit By this time my Soul I am sure thou art satisfied that the excess of knowledg pleasure which thou shalt enjoy is vastly beyond any thou art capable of here But how may we esteem the just proportion they have to one another Or rather is not the pleasure of a Separated Soul so infinitly beyond all that can be relish'd by one embodied here in clay that there is no proportion between them At least though we are not able to measure the one let us do our best to aim and guess at the improportion between them and rejoyce that we find it beyond our reach to conceive or imagine any thing nigh the truth and huge excess of thy good my Soul over the most I am capable of in this world 'T is agreed that the vehemence and intensness of any pleasure is proportionable to the activity power energy of the subject which is affected with such pleasure and to the gravitation bent and pressure such a subject hath to the object that delights it Now to rove at the force and activity wherewith a Separated Soul weighs and strives to joyn it self to what its nature carries it to let us begin with considering the proportion of celerity and forcibleness wherwhith heavy bodies move downwards I see a pound weight in one scale of the Ballance weighs up the other empty one with great celerity But if into that you imagine a million of pounds to be put you may well conceive that this great excess would carry up the single pound weight with so much violence and speed as would hardly afford your eye liberty to observe the velocity of the motion Let me multiply this million of pounds by the whole globe of the Earth by the vast extent of the great Orb made by the Sun 's or Earth's motion about the center of the World by the incomprehensibility of that immense storehouse of matter and of bodies which is design'd in lump by the name of the Universe of which we know no more but that it is beyond all hope of being known during this mortal life Thus when I have heap'd together a bulk of weight equal to this unweildy machine let me multiply the strength of its velocity and pressure over the least atome imaginable in nature as far beyond the limits of gravity as the ingenious skil wherwhith Archimedes numbred the least grains of sand that would fill the world can carry it And when I have thus wearied my self and exhausted the power of Arithmetick and of Aâ—gebra I find there is still a proportion betweent hat atome and this unutterable weight I see it is all quantitative all finite all this excess vanishes to nothing becomes invisible like twinkling Stars at the rising of the much brighter Sun as soon as the lowest and meanest Substance shines out of that orb where they reside that scorn divisibility and are out of the reach of quantity and matter How vehement then must the activity and energy be where with so puissant a Substance shoots itself to its desired object and when it injoyes it how violent must the extasie and transport be wherwith it is delighted How is it possible then formâ— narrow heart to frame an apprehension of the infinite excess of thy pleasure my Soul over all the pleasure this limited world caâ— afford which is all measured by such petty proportions How should I stamp a figure of thy immense greatness into my material imagination Here I loose my power of speaking because I have too much to speak of I must become silent and dumb because all the words and language I can use express not the thousandth nor the millionth part of what I evidently see to be true All I can say is that whatever I think or imagine is not That and that it is not like any of those things to some of which unless it be like 't is impossible for me to make any proportion or similitude to it What then shall I do but lay my self down in mine own shadow and there rejoyce that Thou art a light so great as I am not able to endure the dazling splendor of thy rays that thy pleasure is so excessive as no part of it can enter into my circumscribed heart without dilating it so wide that it must break in sunder and that thy happiness is so infinite as the highest pitch I can hope for to glut my self with during this dark night of my tedious pilgrimage here on earth is to see evidently that it is impossible for me in this life to frame any scantling of it muchless to know how great it is Shall I then once again presume to breake out into impatience at my delay of so great bliss and cry out that I am content with the meanest share of this exuberant felicity I care not for the exaggerations which a longer life may heap up to it I am sure here is sufficient to swell my heart beyond it self to satisfie my thirsty Soul to dissolve and melt all my powers and to transform me totally into a self-blessed creature Away away all tedious hopes not only in this life but even of all increase in the next I will leap boldly into that fountain of Bliss and cast my self headlong into that sea of Felicity where I can neither apprehend shallow waters nor fear I shall be so immers'd and drown'd as to meet with any shelf or dry ground to moderate and stint my happiness A self-activity an unbounded extent an essence free from time and place assure me sufficiently that I need desire no more Which way soever I look I lose my sight in seeing an infinity round about me Length without points Breadth without Lines Depth without any surface All content all pleasure all restless rest all an unquietness and transport of delight all an extasie of fruition Happy forgetfulness how deeply am I obliged to thee for making room for this Soul-ravishing contemplation by removing this while all other images of things be far from me I would to God thou might'st endure whiles I endure that so I might be drown'd in this present thought and never wake again but into the enjoying and accompletion of my present enflamed desires But alas that may not be The eternal light whom my Soul and I have chosen for Arbiter to determine to us what is most expedient for us will not permit it We must return and that into fears and miseries For as a good life breeds encrease of happiness so doth an evil one heap up Iliads of wo. First my Soul before I venture
the hazard thou runst therin as though the difficulty of avoiding it were so extream as might amount to an impossibility I allow the thoughts that arm thee with wise caution to secure thy self cannot be too deep nor too serious but when thou hast providently stored thy self with such call thy spirits manfully about thee And to encourage thee to fight confidently or rather to secure thee of victory so thouwilt not forsake thy self turn thine eyes round about thee and consider how wise Nature that hath prescribed an end and period to all her Plants hath furnish'd them all with due and orderly means to artain therto and though particulars somtimes miscarry in their journey since contingency is entayl'd to all created things yet in the generality and for the most part they all arrive to the scope she levels them at Why then should we imagine that so judicious and far-looking an Architect whom we see so accurate in his meaner works should have framed this masterpiece of the world to perish by the way never to attain that great end for which he made it even after 't is prepared and arm'd with al advantagious circumstances agreeable to its nature That Artificer we know deserves the stile of silly who frames such tools as fail in their performance when they are appli'd to the action for which they were intended We see all sorts of Trees for the most part bear their fruit in due season which is the end they are design'd to and the last and highest emolument they are made to afford us Few Beasts we see there are but contribute to our service what we look for from them The Swine affords good flesh the Sheep good wool the Cow good milk the Sable warm and soft fur the Ox bends his sturdy neck to the yoak the spiritful Horse dutifully bears the Souldier and the sinewy Mule and stronger Camel Convey weighty merchandise Why then shal even the better sort of Mankind the chief the top the head of all the works of Nature be apprehended to miscarry from his end in so vast a proportion as that it should be deem'd in a manner impossible even for those few for so they are in respect of the other numerous multitude of the worser sort to attain to that felicity which is natural to them Thou my Soul art the form and that supream part of me which gives being both to me and to my body who then can doubt but that all the rest of me is framed fitting and serviceable for thee For what reason were there that thou should'st be implanted in a soil which cannot bear thy fruit The form of a Hog I see is engrafted in a body fit and appropriated for a Swines operations the form of a Horse of a Lion of a Wolf all of them have their organs proportioned to the mastering piece within them their Soul And is it credible that only Man should have his inferiour parts rais'd so highly in rebellion against his Soul the greatest Mistress beyond proportion among all forms as that it shall be impossible for her to suppress their mutinies though she guide her self never so exactly by the prescripts of that rule which is born with her Can it be suspected that his form which is infinitely mounted above the power of Matter should through the very necessity and principles of its own nature be more liable to contingency than those that are engulfed and drown'd in It since we know that contingency defectibility and change are the chidren of gross and mishapen matter Alas it is too true that nature is in us unhappily wrested from her original and due course We find by sad experience that although her depravation be not so total as to blind entirely the eye of Reason she sees by yet it is so great as to carry vehemently our affections quite cross to what she proposes us as Best However let the Incentives of flesh blood be never so violent to tumble humane nature down the hill yet if a contrary force more efficacious than they with all their turhulent misty steams impel it another way it must needs obey that stronger power Let us then examine whose motives the Soul's or the Sense's in their own nature work most efficaciously in Man We are sure that what pleasure he receivs he receivs by means of his Soul even all corporal pleasure for be the working object never so agreeable and pleasing to him he reaps thence smal delight if in the mean time his Soul's attention be carried another way from it Certainly then those things must affect the Soul most powerfully which are connatural to her and which she seises on and relishes immediately rather those impure ones which come sophisticated to her through the muddy channels of the Senses And accordingly all experience teaches us that her pleasures when they are fully savored are much stronger than the pleasures of our Senses Observe but the different comportments of an Ambitious and of a Sensual man and you will evidently perceive far stronger motions and more vehement strains in the former who hath his desires bent to the satisfaction of his Mind than in the other who ayms but at the pleasures of his Body Let us look upon the common face of mankind and we shall see the most illustrious and noble part taken with Learning with Power with Honour and the other part which makes Sense their Idol moves in a lower and baser orbe under the others is in a servile degree to them Since then humane nature is of it self more inclined to the contentments of the active mind than of the dull sense who can doubt but that the way of those pure contentments must be far sweeter than the gross and troubled streams of sensual pleasures Which if it be certainly man in his own nature is more apt to follow that and when he chances to wander out of that smooth and easie road his steps are painful and wearisome ones and if he do not presently perceive them such it is because it fares with him as with those that walk in their sleep and stray into rough and stony passages or among thistles and briars whiles peradventure some illuding dream bewitches their fansies and perswades them they are in some pleasant garden till waking if at least they wake before they fall into a deadly precipice they find their feet all gored and their bodies all scratch'd and torn If any sensual man should doubt of this great truth and find it hard to perswade himself that intellectual pleasures which to his depraved taste seem cold and flat ones should be more active and intense than those feculent ones which so violently transport him let him but exercise himself a while in those entertainments which delight the mind taking leave during that space of those unruly ones which agitate the body and continue doing thus till by long practice he hath made them easie and babituated himself to them And I will engage
my word that he will find this change so advantageous to him even in contentment and delight that he will not easily be brought back to his former course of life Experience shews us that whatever is long customary to us turns into our nature so much that even diseases and poisons by diâ—turne use mould and temper to themselves those bodies which are habituated to them in such sort that those pests of nature must be kept on foot and fed on for our sustenance How much more then must the most connatural exercise of mental pleasure turn so substantially into our being that after some good practice in it we shall not be able without great strugling and reluctation to live without it The violence of fruition in those foul puddles of flesh and bloud presently gluts with satiety and is attended with annoy and dislike and the often using and repeating it wears away that edg of pleasure which only makes it sweet and valuable even to them that set their hearts on it and nothing heightens it but an irritation by a convenient hunger and abstinence Contrarywise in the Soul the greater and more violent the pleasure is the more intense and vehement the fruition is and the oftner it is repeated so much the greater appetite and desire we have to return to the same and nothing provokes us more than the entire and absolute fruition of it If a suddain change from one extream of flesh and bloud to the other opposite pole of spiritual delights and entertainments seem harsh to him whose thoughts by long assuefaction are glew'd to corporal objects let him begin with gently bridling in his inferiour motions under a fair rule of government If he cannot presently suppress and totally mortifie their clamorous desires let him at least moderate and steer them according to the bent of reason If we wil but follow this course which nature teaches us to heighten even our sensual delights and pleasures by reasonable moderation of them to their own advantage we shall find her so kind a mother to us that of her self she will aâ— length quel and dis-ncumber us of all our enemies If we but temparately attend her work she will quietly waft us over to our desired end to our beloved happiness In a few years by boyling away our unruly heat she will abate and in the end quite wear away the sense of those transporting pleasures we used to take so much delight in the fruition of With in a while rheums will so clog our tongue and palates that we shall but flatly relish the most poinant meates Our dulâ—'d ear 's will no longer devour with delight the ravishing sound of sweet harmonies Our dim eyes will carry to our heavy fansie but confused news of any beautiful and pleasing objects Our stopp'd nosethrils will afford no passage for spiritual perfumes to warn and recreate our moist and drowsie brain In a word nature will ere long warn us to take a long farewel of all those contentments and delights which require a strong vigorous athletike habite of body to enjoy She will shew us by seting our graves before our eyes how vain this glitering fansie of Honour is how unprofitable the staff of Power to underprop our falling being how more burthensome than helpful are those massie heaps of Gold and Silver which when we have the greatest use we make of them is but to look on them and court them with our dazled eyes while they encompass us with armies of traytors and hungry wolves to teare them from us and us in pieces for their sake Thus will nature of her self in a short time dull those weapons that offend us and destroy the enemies of those verities that shine upon us Courage then my Soul and neither fear to live nor yet desire to die If thou continuest in thy Body 't is easie for thee and sweet and contentsome to heap up treasures for Eternity And if thou partest from it thy hopes are great and fair that the journey thou art going is to a world of unknown felicity Take heart then and march on with a secure diligence and expect the hand of bounteous nature to dispose of thee according as she hath wisely and benignly provided for thee And fear not but that if thou hast kept a reasonable amity with her she will pass thee to where thou shalt never more be in danger of jaring with her nor of feeling within thy self the unkind blows of contrary powers fighting in thee whiles thou bleedest with the wounds that each side gives nor of changing thy once gain'd happiness into a contrary condition according to the vicissitudes of all humane affairs But shall for ever be swell'd to the utmost extent of thy infinite nature with this torrent with this abiss of joy pleasure and delight But here my Soul well maist thou stand amazed at this great word For ever What will this be when fleeting time shall be converted into permanent Eternity Sharpen thy sight to look into this vast profundity Suppose that half an hour were resumed into one instant or indivisible of time what a strange kind of durance would that be I see that half an hour is divisible without end into halfs and halfs of halfs and quarters of quarters and after myriads of divisions no parcel is so little but that it hath an infinite superproportion to an indivisible instant What a prodigious thing then must it be to have an instant equalise half an hour Were it but some ordinary notion or quiddity as of magnitude of place of activity or the like in which this excellency of an indivisibles equalizing a large extent were consider'd my fantasie would offer to wrestle with it and peradventure by strong abstraction and deep retirement into the Closet of Judgment I might hazard to frame some likeness of it But that wherin this multiplication is is the noblest the highest and the root of all other notions it is Being and Existence it self I my self while I am have my existence determined but to one poor instant of time and beyond that I am assured of nothing My slender thred of Being may break I still find it may break asunder as near to that instant as I can suppose any thing to be near it and when I shall have supposed Here it may break nearer and nearer and I can never arrive to settle the nearest point where it may snap in two But when time shall be no more or at least shall in respect of me be turn'd into Eternity this this frail Existence of mine will be stretch'd out beyond the extent of all-conquering time What stange thing then is this admirable multiplication of Existence or how may I be able to comprehend it Existence is that which comprehends all things and if God be not comprehended in it thereby it is that he is incomprehensible of us and he is not comprehended in it because himself is it He is existence and by being so he
touching Gravity 6. Gravity and levity do not signifie an intrinsecal inclination to such a motion in the bodies themselvs which are term'd heavy and light 7. The more dense a body is the more swiftly it descends 8. The velocity of bodies descending doth not encrease in proportion to the difference that may be between their several densities 9. More or less gravity produces a swister or a slower descending a heavy body Aristotles argument to disprove motion in 〈◊〉 is made good 10. The reason why at the inferior quarter of a circle a body descends faster by the arch of that quarter then by the chord of it 1. The first objection answered why a hollow body descends flower then a solid one 2 The second objection answer'd and the reasons shown why atoms continually overtake the descending dense body 3. A curious queston left undecided 4. The fourth objection answer'd Why the descent of the same heavy bodies is equal in so great inequality of the atoms which cause it 5. The reason why the shelter of a thick-body doth not hinder the descent of that which is under it 6. The reason why some bodies sink others swims 7. The fifth objection answer'd concerning the descending of heavy bodies in streams 8. The sixth objection answered and that all heavy Elements do weigh in their own Spheres 9 The seventh objection answer'd and the reason why we do not feel the course of the air and atoms that beat continually upon us 10. How in the some body gravity may be greater than density and density than gravity though they be the same thing 11. The opinion of gravities being an intrinsecal inclination of a body to the centre refuted by reason â—2 The same opinion refuted by several experiences 1. The State of the question touching the cause of violent motion 2 That the medium is the only cause which continues violent motion 3. A further explication of the former Doctrine 4. That the air has strength enough to continue violent motion in a moveable Dial. 1. of motion pag. 98. 5. An answer to the first objection that air is not apt to conserve motion And how violent motion comes to cease 6. An answer to the second objection that the air has no power over heavy bodies 7. An answer to the third objection that an arrow should fly faster broadways than long ways 1. That reflection is a kind of violent motion 2. Reflection is made at equal angles 3. The causes and properties of Undulation 4. Refraction at the entrance into the reflectent body is towà rds the perpendicular at the going out is from it when the second superficies is parallel to the first 6. An answer to the arguments brought in favovr of Monsir des Cartes his opinion 7. The true cause of refraction of light both at its entrance and at its going out from the reflecting body 8. A general rule to know the nature of reflections and refractions in all sorts of surfaces 9. A body of greater parts and greater pores makes a greater refraction than one of lesser parts and lesser pores 10. A confirmation of the former doctrine out of the nature of bodies that refract light 1. The connexion of this Chapter with the rest and the Authors intent in it 2. That there is a least size of bodies And that this least size is found in fire 3. The first conjunction of parts is in bodies of least size and it is made by the force of Quantity 4. The second sort of conjunction â—s compactedness in simple Elements and it proceeds from Density 5. The third conjunction is of parts of different Elements and it proceeds from quantity and density together 6. The reason why liquid bodies easily joyn together and dry ones difficultly 7. That no two hard bodies can touch one another immediately 8. How mixed bodies are framed in general 9. The cause of the several degrees of solidity in mixed bodies 10. The rule whereto are reduced all the several combinations of Elements in compounding of mixed bodies 11. Earth and water are the Basis of all permanent mixed bodies 12. What kind of bodies those are where water is the Basis and earth the pedominant element over the other two 13. Of these bodies where water bing the B sis air is the predominant Element 14. What kind of bodies result where water is the Basis and fire the predominant Element 15. Of those bodies where water is in excess it alone being both the Basis and the predominant Element 16. Of those bodies were Earth alone is the Basis and also the predominant in excess over the other three Elements 17. Of those bodies where Earth is the basis and Water the predominant Element over the other two 18. Of those bodies where earth being the basis air is the predominant 19. Of those bodies where earth being the basis fire is the predominant 20. All the Second Qualities of mixed bodies arise from several combinations of the First Qualities and are at last resolv'd into several degrees of rarity and density 21. That in the Planets and Stars there is a like variety of mixed bodies caused by light as here upon Earth 22. In what manner the Elements work upon one another in the position of mixed bodies and in particular fire is the most active 23. A particular declaration touching the generation of Metals 1. Why some bodies are brittle and others tough or apt to withstand outward violence the first instrument to dissolve mixed bodies 2. How outward violence work upon the most compacted bodies 3. The several effects of fiâ—e the second and chiefest instrument to dissolve compounded bodies 4. The reason why some bodies are not dissolv'd by fire 5. The reason why fire melts gold but cannot consume it 6. Why Lead is easily consumed and calcined by fire 7. Why and how some bodies are divided by fire into spirits waters oyls salts and earth what those parts are 〈◊〉 How water the third instrument to dissolve bodies dissolves Calx into Salt and so into Terra damnata 9. How water mingled with salt becomes almost powerfull Agent to dissolve other bodies 20. How putrefaction is caused 1. What is the Sphere of Activity in corporeal Agents 2. The reason why no body can work in distance 3. An objection answer'd against the manner of explicating the former Axiome 4 Of reaction and first in pure local motion that each Agent must suffer in acting and act in suffering 5. The former doctrine applyed to other local motions design'd by particular names And that Suisseths argument is of no force against this way of doctrine 6. Why some notions admit of intension and remission and others not 7. That in every part of our habitable world all the four Elements are found pure in smal atoms but not in any great bulk 1. The Authors intent in this and the following chapters Mr. Thomas White 2. That bodies may be rarified both by outward and inward heat and how this is perform'd 3.
Of the great effects of Rarefaction 4. The first manner of condensation by heat 5. The second manner of condensation by cold 3. That Ice is not water rarifiâ—d but condensed 7. How wind snow and hail are made and wind by rain allayed 8. How parts of the same or divers bodies are joyned more strongly together by condensation 9. Vacuities cannot be the reason why water impregnated to the full with one kind of salt will notwithstanding receive more of another 10. The true reason of the former effect 11. The reason why bodies of the same nature jâ—yn more easily together then others 1. What attraction is and from whence it proceeds 1. The true sense of the Maxime that Nature abhors from vacuity 3. The true rea son of attraction 4. Water may be brought by the force of attraction to what height soever 5. The doctrine touching the attraction of water in Syphons 6. That the Syphon doth not prove water to weigh in its own orb 7. Concerning attraction caused by fire 8. Concerning attraction made by virtue of hot bodies amulets c. 9. The natural reason given for divers operations esteemed by some to be magical 1. What is Filtration and how it is effected 2. What causes the water in filtration to ascend 3. Why the filter will not drop unless the label hang lower then the water 4. Of the motion of Râ—stitution and why some bodies stand bent others not 5. Why some bo dies return only in part to their natural figure others entirely 6. Concerning the nature of those bodies which shrink and stretch 7. How great wonderful effects proceed from smal plain and simple principles 8. Concerning Electrical at action and the causes of it 6. Cabeus his opinion reâ—uted concerning the cause of Electrical motions 1. The extreme heat of the Sun under the Zodiack draws a stream of air from each pole into the Torrid Zone * Chap. 18. Sect. 7. 2. The Atoms of these two streams coming together are apt to incorporate with one another 3. By the meeting and mingling together of these streams at the Equator divers rivolets of Atoms of each Pole are continuated from one Pole to the other 4. Of these Atoms incorporated with some fit matter in the bowels of the earth is made a stone 5. This stone works by emanations joyned with agreeing streams that meet them in the air and in fine it is a Loadstone 6 A methode for making experiences on any subject 7. The Loadstones generation by atoms flowing from both Poles is confirmd by experiments observ'd in the stone it self 8. Experiments to prove that the Loadstone works by emanations meeting with agreeing streames 1. The operations of the loadstone are wrought by bodies and not by qualities 2. Objections against the former position answer'd 3. The Loadstone is imbued with his virtue from another body 4 The virtue of the Loadstone is a double and not one simple virtue 5. The virtue of the Loadstone works more strongly in the poles of it then in any other part 6. The loadstone sends forth its emanations spherically Which are of two kindâ— and each kind is strongest in that Hemisphere through whose polary parts they issue out 7. Putting two loadstones within the sphere of one another every part of one loadstone doth not agree wâ—th every part of the other loadstone 8. Concetning the declination and other respects of a needle towards the loadstone it touches 8. The virtue of the Loadstone goes from end to end in lines almost parallel to the Axis 10. The virtue of the Loadstone is not perfectly spherical though the stone be such 11. The intention of nature in all the operations of the loadstone is to make an union betwixt the attractive and attracted bodies 12. The main globe of the earth is not a Loadstone 13. The loadstone is generated in all parts or Climâ—t's of the earth 14. The conformity betwixt the two motions of magnetick things and of heavy things 1. Which is the North and which the South Pole of a Loadstone 2. Whether any bodies besides magnetick ones be attractive 3. Whether an iron placed perpendicularly towards the earth gets a magnetical virtue of pointing towards the north or towards the south in that end that lies downwards 4. Why loadstones affect iron better than one another 5. Gilberts reason refuted touching a cap'd Loadstone that takes up more iron then one not cap'd and an iron impregnated that in some case draws more strongly then the stone it self Galileus his opinion touching the former effects refuted 7. The Authors solution to the former questions 8. The reason why in the former case a lesser Loadstones draws the interjacent iron from the greater 9. Why the variation of a touched needle from the North is greater the nearer you go to the Pole 10. Whether in the same part of the world a touched needle may it one time vary more fâ—om the North and at another time less 11. The whâ—le doctrine of the loâ—dstone sum'd up in short 1. The connexion of the following Chapters with the precedent ones 2. Concerning several compositions of mixed bodies 3. Two sorts of Living Creatures 4. An engine to express the first sort of living creatures 5. Another Engine by which may be expressed the second sort of living creatures 4. The two former engines and some other comparisons applied to express the two several sorts of living creatures 7. How plants are framed 8. How Sensitive Creatures are formed 1. The opinion that the seed contains formally every part of the parent 2. The former opinion rejected 3. The Authours opinion of this question 4. Their opinion refuted who hold that every thing contains formally all things 5. The Authors opinion concerning the generation of Animals declared and confirm'd That one substance is changed into another 7. Concerning the hatching of Chickens and the generation of the other Animals 8. From whence it happens that the deficiences or excresences of the parents body are often seen in their children 9. The difference between the Authors opinion anâ—â—he former 〈◊〉 10 That the heart is imbued with the general specifike vertues of the whole body wherby is confirm'd the doctrine of the two former Paragraphes 11 That the heart is the first part generated in a living creatures 1. That the figure of an Animal is produced by ordinary second causes as well as any other corporeal effect 2. That the several figures of bodies proceed from a defect in one of three dimensions caused by the circumference of accidental causes 3. The former doctrine is confirmd by several instances 4. The same doctrine applyed to plants 4. The same doctrine declared in leaves of trees 16. The same applied to the bodies of Animals 7. In what sense the Author admits of vis formatrix 1. From whence proceeds the primary motion growth in Plants 2. Mr. des Cartes his opinion touching the motion of the heart 3. The former opinion rejected 4. The Authors opinion
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
they are moved be greater then the distance of the greater weight from the same point For 't is plain that the weight which is more distant must be moved a greater space then the nearer weight in the proportion of the two distances Wherfore the force moving it must carry it in a velocity of the said proportion to the velocity of the other And consequently the Agent or mover must be in that proportion more powerfull then the contrary mover And out of this practise of Geometricians in Mechanicks which is confirmd by experience 't is made evident that if other conditions be equal the excess of so much Gravity will make so much Velocity and so much velocity in proportion will recompence so much gravity Out of the precedent Conclusions another follows which is that nothing receds from quiet or rest and attains a great degree of Celerity but it must pass through all the degrees of Celerity that are below the obtain'd degree And the like is in passing from any lesser degree of velocity to a greater because it must pass through all the intermediate degrees of velocity For by the declaration of velocity which we have even now made we see that there is as much resistance in the Medium to be overcome with speed as there is for it to be overcome in regard of the quantity or line of extent of it because as we have said the force of the Agent in counterpoises ought to be encreas'd as much as the line of extent of the Medium which is to be overcome by the Agent in equal time exceeds the line of extent of the other Medium along which the resistant body is to be moved Wherfore it being proved that no line of extent can be overcome in an instant it follows that no defect of velocity which requires as great a superproportion in the cause can be overcome likewise in an instant And by the same reason by which we prove that a moveable cannot be drawn in an instant from a lower degree of velocity to a higher 't is with no less evidence concluded that no degree of velocity can be attain'd in an instant For divide that degree of velocity into two halfs and if the Agent had overcome the one half he could not overcome the other half in an instant much less therfore is he able to overcome the whole that is to reduce the moveable from quiet to the said degree of velocity in an instant Another reason may be because the movers themselvs such movers as we treat of here are Bodies likewise moved and consist of parts wherof not every one part but a competent number of them makes the moving body a fit Agent able to move the proposed body in a proposed degree of celerity Now this Agent meeting with resistance in the moveable and not being in the utmost extremity of density but condensable yet further because it is a body and every resistance be it never so small works something upon the mover though never so hard to condense it the parts of the mover that are to overcome this resistance in the moveable must to work that effect be condens'd and brought together as close as is needful by this resistance of the moveable to the mover and so the remote parts of the mover become nearer to the moveable which cannot be done but successively because it enclud's local motion And this application being likewise divisible and not all the parts flocking together in an instant to the place where they are to exercise their power it follows that whiles there are fewer moving parts knit together they must needs move less and more weakly then when more or all of them are assembled and appled to that work So that the motive virtue encreasing thus in proportion to the multiplying of the parts applied to cause the motion of necessity the effect which is obedience to be moved and quickness of motion in them oveable must do so too that is it must from nothing or from rest passe through al the degrees of celerityun till it arrive to that which all the parts together are able to cause As for example when with my hand I strike a ball till my hand touches it 't is in quiet but then it begins to move yet with such resistance that although it obey in some measure the stroke of my hand nevetiheless it presses the yeelding flesh of my palm backwards towards the upper and bony part of it That part then overtaking the other by the continu'd motion of my hand and both of them joyning together to force the ball away the impulse becomes stronger then at the first touching of it And the longer it presses upon it the more the parts of my hand condense and unite themselvs to excercise their force and the ball therfore must yeeld the more and consequent the motion of it 〈◊〉 quicker and quicker till my hand parts from it Which condensation of the parts of my hand encreasing successively by the parts joyning closer to one another the velocity of the balls motion which is an effect of it must also encrease proportionably therto And in like manner the motion of my hand and arm must grow quicker and quicker and pass all the degrees of velocity between rest and the utmost degree it attains unto For seeing they are the Spirits swelling the Nervs that cause the arms motion as we shall hereafter shew upon its resistance they flock from other parts of the body to evercome that resistance And since their journey thither requires time to perform it in and the nearest come first it must needs follow that as they grow more and more in number they must more powerfully overcome the resistance and consequently encrease the velocity of the motion in the same proportion as they flock thither till it attain that degree of velocity which is the utmost period that the power which the Agent hath to overcome the resistance of the medium can bring it self to Between which and rest or any other inferiour degree of velocity there may be design'd infinite intermediate degrees proportionable to the infinite divisibility of time and space in which the mover moves Which degrees arise out of the reciprocal yeilding of the medium And that is likewise divisible in the same infinite proportion Since then the power of all natural Agents is limited the mover be it never so powerful must be confined to observe these proportions and cannot pass over all these infinite designable degrees in an instant but must allot some time which hath a like infinity of designable parts to ballance this infinity of degrees of velocity and so consequently it requires time to attain to any determinate degree And therfore cannot recede immediately from rest to any degree of celerity but must necessarily pass through all the intermediate ones Thus 't is evident that all motion which hath a beginning must of necessity increase for some time And since the works of nature are
in proportion to their causes it follows that this encrease is in a determinate proportion Which Galileus to whom we owe the greatest part of what is known concerning motion teaches us how to find out and to discover what degree of celerity any movable that is moved by nature has in any determinate part of the space it moves in Having settled these conditions of motion we shall do well in the next place to enquire after the causes of it as well in the body moved as also in the mover that occasions the motion And because we have already shewed that local motion is nothing in substance but division we may determine that those causes which cōtribute to division or resist it are the causes which make or resist local motion It has also been said that Density has in it a power of dividing and that Rarity is the cause of being divided likewise we have said that fire by reason of its smal parts intow ch it may be cut which makes them sharp has also an eminence in dividing So that we have two qualities density and tenuity or sharpness which concur actively to division We have told you also how Galileus has demonstrated that a greater quantity of the same figure and density has a priviledge of descending faster than a lesser And that priviledge consists in this that the proportion of the superficies to the body it limits which proportion the greater it is the more it retards is less in a greater bulk than in a smaller We have therfore three conditions concurring to make the motion more efficacious namely the density the sharpness and the bulk of the movable and more then these three we cannot expect to find in a moved body For quantity hath but three determinations one by density rarity of which density is one of the three conditions another by its parts as by a foot a span c. and in this way we have found that the greater excells the lesser the third and last is by its figure and in this we find that subtile or edged quantities do prevail over blunt ones Seeing therfore that these three determinations be all that are in quantity there can be no more conditions in the body moved which of necessity is a finite quantity but the three named And as for the medium which is to be divided there is only rarity and density the one to help the other to hinder that require consideration on its side For neither figure nor littleness and greatness do make any variation in it And as for the Agent it is not as yet time before we have look'd further into the nature of motion to determine his qualities Now then let us reflect how these three conditions do all agree in this circumstance that they help nothing to division unless the body in which they are to be moved and press'd against the body that is to be divided so that we see no principle to perswade us that any body can move it self towards any determinate part or place of the universe of its own intrinsecal inclination For besides that the learned Author of the Dialogues de Mundo in his third Dialogue and the second Knot hath demonstrated that a body cannot move unless it be moved by some extrinsecal Agent we may easily frame to our selves a conceit how absurd it is to think that a body by a quality in it can work upon it self as if we should say that rarity which is but more quantity could work upon quantity or that figure which is but that the body reaches no further could work upon the body and in general that the manner of any thing can work upon that thing whose manner it is For Aristotle and St. Thomas and their Intelligent Commentators declaring the notion of Quality tell us that to be a Quality is nothing else but to be the determination or modification of the thing whose quality it is Besides the natural manner of operation is to work according to the capacity of the subject but when a body is in the midst of an uniform medium or space the subject is equally prepar'd on all sides to receive the action of that body Wherfore though we should allow it a force to move if it be a natural Agent and have no understanding it must work indifferently on all sides and by consequence cannot move on any side For if you say that the Agent in this case where the medium is uniform works rather upon one side than upon another it must be because this determination is within the Agent it self and not out of the circumstant dispositions which is the manner of working of those substances that work for an end of their own that is of understanding creatures and not of natural hodies Now he that would exactly determine what motion a body has or is apt to have determining by supposition the force of the Agent must calculate the proportions of all these three conditions of the movable and the quality of the medium which is a proceeding too particular for the intention of our discourse But to speak in common it will not be amiss to examine in what proportion motion doth increase since we have concluded that all motion proceeds from quiet by a continual encrease Galileus that miracle of our age and whose wit was able to discover whatever he had a mind to employ it about hath told us that natural motion encreases in the proportion of the odd numbers Which to express by example is thus suppose that in the going of the first yard it has one degree of velocity then in the going of the second yard it will have three degrees and in going of the third it will have five and so onwards still adding two to the degrees of the velocity for every one to the space Or to express it more plainly if in the first minute of time it goes one yard of space then in the next minute it will go three yards in the third it will go five in the fourth seaven and so forth But we must enlarge this proposition to all motions as we have done the former of the encrease it self in velocity because the reason of it is common to all motions Which is that all motion as may appear out of what we have formerly said proceeds from two causes namely the Agent or the force that moves and the disposition of the body moved as it is composed of the three qualities we lately explicated In which is to be noted that the Agent doth not move simply by its own virtue but applyes also the virtue of the body moved which it hath to divide the medium when it is put on As when we cut with a knife the effect proceeds from the knife press'd on by the hand or from the hand as applying and putting in action the edge and cutting power of the knife Now this in Physicks and Nature is clearly parallel to what in Geometry