to me to be obnoxious to not a few considerable Exceptions And first if I would now deal rigidly with my Adversary I might here make a great Question of the very way of Probation which he and others employ without the least scruple to evince that the Bodies commonly call'd mixt are made up of Earth Air Water and Fire which they are pleas'd also to call Elements namely that upon the suppos'd Analysis made by the fire of the former sort of Concretes there are wont to emerge Bodies resembling those which they take for the Elements For not to Anticipate here what I foresee I shall have occasion to insist on when I come to discourse with Philoponus concerning the right that fire has to pass for the proper and Universal Instrument of Analysing mixt Bodies not to Anticipate that I say if I were dispos'd to wrangle I might alledge that by Themistius his Experiment it would appear rather that those he calls Elements are made of those he calls mixt Bodies then mix'd Bodies of the Elements For in Themistius's Analyz'd Wood and in other Bodies dissipated and alter'd by the fire it appears and he confesses that which he takes for Elementary Fire and Water are made out of the Concrete but it appears not that the Concrete was made up of Fire and Water Nor has either He or any Man for ought I know of his perswasion yet prov'd that nothing can be obtained from a Body by the fire that was not Pre-existent in it At this unexpected objection not only Themistius but the rest of the company appear'd not a little surpriz'd but after a while Philoponus conceiving his opinion as well as that of Aristotle concern'd in that Objection You cannot sure sayes he to Carneades propose this Difficulty not to call it Cavill otherwise then as an Exercise of wit and not as laying any weight upon it For how can that be separated from a thing that was not existent in it When for instance a Refiner mingles Gold and Lead and exposing this Mixture upon a Cuppell to the violence of the fire thereby separates it into pure and resulgent Gold and Lead which driven off together with the Dross of the Gold is thence call'd Lithargyrium Auri can any man doubt that sees these two so differing substances separated from the Mass that they were existent in it before it was committed to the fire I should replies Carneades allow your Argument to prove something if as Men see the Refiners commonly take before hand both Lead and Gold to make the Mass you speak of so we did see Nature pull down a parcell of the Element of Fire that is fancy'd to be plac'd I know not how many thousand Leagues off contiguous to the Orb of the Moon and to blend it with a quantity of each of the three other Elements to compose every mixt Body upon whose Resolution the Fire presents us with Fire and Earth and the rest And let me add Philoponus that to make your Reasoning cogent it must be first prov'd that the fire do's only take the Elementary Ingredients asunder without otherwise altering them For else 't is obvious that Bodies may afford substances which were not pre-existent in them as Flesh too long kept produces Magots and old Cheese Mites which I suppose you will not affirm to be Ingredients of those Bodies Now that fire do's not alwayes barely separate the Elementary parts but sometimes at least alter also the Ingredients of Bodies if I did not expect ere long a better occasion to prove it I might make probable out of your very Instance wherein there is nothing Elementary separated by the great violence of the Refiners fire the Gold and Lead which are the two Ingredients separated upon the Analysis being confessedly yet perfectly mixt Bodies and the Litharge being Lead indeed but such Lead as is differing in consistence and other Qualities from what it was before To which I must add that I have sometimes seen and so questionlesse have you much oftener some parcells of Glasse adhering to the Test or Cuppel and this Glass though Emergent as well as the Gold or Litharge upon your Analysis you will not I hope allow to have been a third Ingredient of the Mass out of which the fire produc'd it Both Philoponus and Themistius were about to reply when Eleutherius apprehending that the Prosecution of this Dispute would take up time which might be better employ d thought fit to prevent them by saying to Carneades You made at least half a Promise when you first propos'd this Objection that you would not now at least insist on it nor indeed does it seem to be of absolute necessity to your cause that you should For though you should grant that there are Elements it would not follow that there must be precisely four And therefore I hope you will proceed to acquaint us with your other and more considerable Objections against Themistius's Opinion especially since there is so great a Disproportion in Bulke betwixt the Earth Water and Air on the one part and those little parcells of resembling substances that the fire separates from Concretes on the other part that I can scarce think that you are serious when to lose no advantage against your Adversary you seem to deny it to be rational to conclude these great simple Bodies to be the Elements and not the Products of compounded ones What you alledge replies Carneades of the Vastness of the Earth and Water has long since made me willing to allow them to be the greatest and chief Masses of Matter to be met with here below But I think I could shew You if You would give me leave that this will prove only that the Elements as You call them are the chief Bodies that make up the neighbouring part of the World but not that they are such Ingredients as every mixt Body must consist of But since You challenge me of something of a Promise though it be not an entire one Yet I shall willingly perform it And indeed I intended not when I first mention'd this Objection to insist on it at present against Themistius as I plainly intimated in my way of proposing it being only desirous to let you see that though I discern'd my Advantages yet I was willing to forego some of them rather then appear a rigid Adversary of a Cause so weak that it may with safety be favourably dealt with But I must here profess and desire You to take Notice of it that though I pass on to another Argument it is not because I think this first invalid For You will find in the Progress of our Dispute that I had some reason to question the very way of Probation imploy'd both by Peripateticks and Chymists to evince the being and number of the Elements For that there are such and that they are wont to be separated by the Analysis made by Fire is indeed taken for granted by both Parties but has not for ought
because insipid must be Elementary may not groundlesly be doubted For I remember the Candid and Eloquent Petrus Laurembergius in his Notes upon Sala's Aphorismes affirmes that he saw an insipid Menstruum that was a powerfull Dissolvent and if my Memory do not much mis-informe me could dissolve Gold And the water which may be Drawn from Quicksilver without Addition though it be almost Tastless You will I believe think of a differing Nature from simple Water especially if you Digest in it Appropriated Mineralls To which I shall add but this that this Consideration may be further extended For I see no Necessity to conceive that the Water mention'd in the Beginning of Genesis as the Universal Matter was simple and Elementary VVater since though we should Suppose it to have been an Agitated Congeries or Heap consisting of a great Variety of Seminal Principles and Rudiments and of other Corpuscles fit to be subdu'd and Fashion'd by them it might yet be a Body Fluid like VVater in case the Corpuscles it was made up of were by their Creator made small enough and put into such an actuall Motion as might make them Glide along one another And as we now say the Sea consists of VVater notwithstanding the Saline Terrestrial and other Bodies mingl'd with it such a Liquor may well enough be called VVater because that was the greatest of the known Bodies whereunto it was like Though that a Body may be Fluid enough to appear a Liquor and yet contain Corpuscles of a very differing Nature You will easily believe if You but expose a good Quantity of Vitriol in a strong Vessel to a Competent Fire For although it contains both Aqueous Earthy Saline Sulphureous and Metalline Corpuscles yet the whole Mass will at first be Fluid like water and boyle like a seething pot I might easily Continues Carneades enlarge my self on such Considerations if I were Now Oblig'd to give You my Judgment of the Thalesian and Helmontian Hypothesis But Whether or no we conclude that all things were at first Generated of Water I may Deduce from what I have try'd Concerning the Growth of Vegetables nourish'd with water all that I now propos'd to my Self or need at present to prove namely that Salt Spirit Earth and ev'n Oyl though that be thought of all Bodies the most opposite to Water may be produc'd out of Water and consequently that a Chymical Principle as well as a Peripatetick Element may in some cases be Generated anew or obtain'd from such a parcel of Matter as was not endow'd with the form of such aprinciple or Element before And having thus Eleutherius Evinc'd that 't is possible that such Substances as those that Chymists are wont to call their Tria Prima may be Generated anew I must next Endeavour to make it Probable that the Operation of the Fire does Actually sometimes not only divide Compounded Bodies into smal Parts but Compound those Parts after a new Manner whence Consequently for ought we Know there may Emerge as well Saline and Sulphureous Substances as Bodies of other Textures And perhaps it will assist us in our Enquiry after the Effects of the Operations of the Fire upon other Bodies to Consider a little what it does to those Mixtures which being Productions of the Art of Man We best know the Composition of You may then be pleas'd to take Notice that though Sope is made up by the Sope-Boylers of Oyle or Grease and Salt and Water Diligently Incorporated together yet if You expose the Mass they Constitute to a Graduall Fire in a Retort You shall then indeed make a Separation but not of the same Substances that were United into Sope but of others of a Distant and yet not an Elementary Nature and especially of an Oyle very sharp and Faetid and of a very Differing Quality from that which was Employ'd to make the Sope so if you Mingle in a due Proportion Sal Armoniack with Quick-Lime and Distill them by Degrees of Fire You shall not Divide the Sal Armoniack from the Quick-Lime though the one be a Volatile and the other a Fix'd Substance but that which will ascend will be a Spirit much more Fugitive Penetrant and stinking then Sal Armoniack and there will remain with the Quick-Lime all or very near all the Sea Salt that concurr'd to make up the Sal Armoniack concerning which Sea Salt I shall to satisfie You how well it was United to the Lime informe You that I have by making the Fire at length very Vehement caus'd both the Ingredients to melt in the Retort it self into one Mass and such Masses are apt to Relent in the Moist Air. If it be here Objected that these Instances are taken from factitious Concretes which are more Compounded then those which Nature produces I shall reply that besides that I have Mention'd them as much to Illustrate what I propos'd as to prove it it will be Difficult to Evince that Nature her self does not make Decompound Bodies I mean mingle together such mixt Bodies as are already Compounded of Elementary or rather of more simple ones For Vitriol for Instance though I have sometimes taken it out of Minerall Earths where Nature had without any assistance of Art prepar'd it to my Hand is really though Chymists are pleas'd to reckon it among Salts a De-compounded Body Consisting as I shall have occasion to declare anon of a Terrestriall Substance of a Metal and also of at least one Saline Body of a peculiar and not Elementary Nature And we see also in Animals that their blood may be compos'd of Divers very Differing Mixt Bodies since we find it observ'd that divers Sea-Fowle tast rank of the Fish on which they ordinarily feed and Hipocrates himself Observes that a Child may be purg'd by the Milke of the Nurse if she have taken Elaterium which argues that the purging Corpuscles of the Medicament Concurr to make up the Milke of the Nurse and that white Liquor is generally by Physitians suppos'd to be but blanch'd and alter'd Blood And I remember I have observ'd not farr from the Alps that at a certain time of the Year the Butter of that Country was very Offensive to strangers by reason of the rank tast of a certain Herb whereon the Cows were then wont plentifully to feed But proceeds Carneades to give you Instances of another kind to shew that things may be obtain'd by the Fire from a Mixt Body that were not Pre-existent in it let Me Remind You that from many Vegetables there may without any Addition be Obtain'd Glass a Body which I presume You will not say was Pre-existent in it but produc'd by the Fire To which I shall add but this one Example more namely that by a certain Artificial way of handling Quicksilver You may without Addition separate from it at least a 5th or 4th part of a clear Liquor which with an Ordinary Peripatetick would pass for VVater and which a Vulgar Chymist would not scruple to
call Phlegme and which for ought I have yet seen or heard is not reducible into Mercury again and Consequently is more then a Disguise of it Now besides that divers Chymists will not allow Mercury to have any or at least any Considerable Quantity of either of the Ignoble Ingredients Earth and VVater Besides this I say the great Ponderousness of Quicksilver makes it very unlikely that it can have so much Water in it as may be thus obtain'd from it since Mercury weighs 12 or 14 times as much as water of the same Bulk Nay for a further Confirmation of this Argument I will add this Strange Relation that two Friends of mine the one a Physitian and the other a Mathematician and both of them Persons of unsuspected Credit have Solemnly assured me that after many Tryals they made to reduce Mercury into Water in Order to a Philosophicall Work upon Gold which yet by the way I know prov'd Unsuccesfull they did once by divers Cohobations reduce a pound of Quicksilver into almost a pound of Water and this without the Addition of any other Substance but only by pressing the Mercury by a Skillfully Manag'd Fire in purposely contriv'd Vessels But of these Experiments our Friend sayes Carneades pointing at the Register of this Dialogue will perhaps give You a more Particular Account then it is necessary for me to do Since what I have now said may sufficiently evince that the Fire may sometimes as well alter Bodies as divide them and by it we may obtain from a Mixt Body what was not Pre-existent in it And how are we sure that in no other Body what we call Phlegme is barely separated not Produc'd by the Action of the Fire Since so many other Mixt Bodies are of a much less Constant and more alterable Nature then Mercury by many Tricks it is wont to put upon Chymists and by the Experiments I told You of about an hour since Appears to be But because I shall ere long have Occasion to resume into Consideration the Power of the Fire to produce new Concretes I shall no longer insist on this Argument at present only I must mind You that if You will not dis-believe Helmonts Relations You must confess that the Tria Prima are neither ingenerable nor incorruptible Substances since by his Alkabest some of them may be produc'd of Bodies that were before of another Denomination and by the same powerfull Menstruum all of them may be reduc'd into insipid Water Here Carneades was about to pass on to his Third Consideration when Eleutherius being desirous to hear what he could say to clear his second General Consideration from being repugnant to what he seem'd to think the true Theory of Mistion prevented him by telling him I somewhat wonder Carneades that You who are in so many Points unsatisfied with the Peripatetick Opinion touching the Elements and Mixt Bodies should also seem averse to that Notion touching the manner of Mistion wherein the Chymists though perhaps without knowing that they do so agree with most of the Antient Philosophers that preceded Aristotle and that for Reasons so considerable that divers Modern Naturalists and Physitians in other things unfavourable enough to the Spagyrists do in this case side with them against the common Opinion of the Schools If you should ask me continues Eleutherius what Reasons I mean I should partly by the Writings of Sennertus and other learned Men and partly by my own Thoughts be supply'd with more then 't were at present proper for me to Insist largely on And therefore I shall mention only and that briefly three or four Of these I shall take the First from the state of the Controversie it self and the genuine Notion of Mistion which though much intricated by the Schoolmen I take in short to be this Aristotle at least as many of his Interpreters expound him and as indeed he Teaches in some places where he professedly Dissents from the Antients declares Mistion to be such a mutual Penetration and perfect Union of the mingl'd Elements that there is no Portion of the mixt Body how Minute soever which does not contain All and Every of the Four Elements or in which if you please all the Elements are not And I remember that he reprehends the Mistion taught by the Ancients as too sleight or gross for this Reason that Bodies mixt according to their Hypothesis though they appear so to humane Eyes would not appear such to the acute Eyes of a Lynx whose perfecter Sight would discerne the Elements if they were no otherwise mingled than as his Predecessors would have it to be but Blended not United whereas the Antients though they did not all Agree about what kind of Bodies were Mixt yet they did almost unanimously hold that in a compounded Bodie though the Miscibilia whether Elements Principles or whatever they pleas'd to call them were associated in such small Parts and with so much Exactness that there was no sensible Part of the Mass but seem'd to be of the same Nature with the rest and with the whole Yet as to the Atomes or other Insensible Parcels of Matter whereof each of the Miscibilia consisted they retain'd each of them its own Nature being but by Apposition or Juxta-Position united with the rest into one Bodie So that although by virtue of this composition the mixt Body did perhaps obtain Divers new Qualities yet still the Ingredients that Compounded it retaining their own Nature were by the Destruction of the Compositum separable from each other the minute Parts disingag'd from those of a differing Nature and associated with those of their own sort returning to be again Fire Earth or Water as they were before they chanc'd to be Ingredients of that Compositum This may be explain'd Continues Eleutherius by a piece of Cloath made of white and black threds interwoven wherein though the whole piece appear neither white nor black but of a resulting Colour that is gray yet each of the white and black threds that compose it remains what it was before as would appear if the threds were pull'd asunder and sorted each Colour by it self This pursues Eleutherius being as I understand it the State of the Controversie and the Aristotelians after their Master Commonly Defining that Mistion is Miscibilium alteratorum Unio that seems to comport much better with the Opinion of the Chymists then with that of their Adversaries since according to that as the newly mention'd Example declares there is but a Juxta-position of separable Corpuscles retaining each its own Nature whereas according to the Aristotelians when what they are pleas'd to call a mixt Body results from the Concourse of the Elements the Miscibilia cannot so properly be said to be Alter'd as Destroy'd since there is no Part in the mixt Body how small soever that can be call'd either Fir or Air or Water or Earth Nor indeed can I well understand how Bodies can be mingl'd other wayes then as I have
sorts then either three or four or five And if you will grant what will scarce be deny'd that Corpuscles of a compounded Nature may in all the wonted Examples of Chymists pass for Elementary I see not why you should think it impossible that as Aqua Fortis or Aqua Regis will make a Separation of colliquated Silver and Gold though the Fire cannot so there may be some Agent found out so subtile and so powerfull at least in respect of those particular compounded Corpuscles as to be able to resolve them into those more simple ones whereof they consist and consequently encrease the number of the Distinct Substances whereinto the mixt Body has been hitherto thought resoluble And if that be true which I recited to you a while ago out of Helmont concerning the Operations of the Alkahest which divides Bodies into other Distinct Substances both as to number and Nature then the Fire does it will not a little countenance my Conjecture But confining our selves to such wayes of Analyzing mix'd Bodies as are already not unknown to Chymists it may without Absurdity be Question'd whether besides those grosser Elements of Bodies which they call Salt Sulphur and Mercury there may not be Ingredients of a more Subtile Nature which being extreamly little and not being in themselves Visible may escape unheeded at the Junctures of the Destillatory Vessels though never so carefully Luted For let me observe to you one thing which though not taken notice of by Chymists may be a notion of good Use in divers Cases to a Naturalist that we may well suspect that there may be severall Sorts of Bodies which are not Immediate Objects of any one of our senses since we See that not only those little Corpuscles that issue out of the Loadstone and perform the Wonders for which it is justly admired But the Effluviums of Amber Jet and other Electricall Concretes though by their effects upon the particular Bodies dispos'd to receive their Action they seem to fall under the Cognizance of our Sight yet do they not as Electrical immediately Affect any of our senses as do the bodies whether minute or greater that we See Feel Taste c. But continues Carneades because you may expect I should as the Chymists do consider only the sensible Ingredients of Mixt Bodies let us now fee what Experience will even as to these suggest to us It seems then questionable enough whether from Grapes variously order'd there may not be drawn more distinct Substances by the help of the Fire then from most other mixt Bodies For the Grapes themselves being dryed into Raysins and distill'd will besides Alcali Phlegm and Earth yield a considerable quantity of an Empyreumatical Oyle and a Spirit of a very different nature from that of Wine Also the unfermented Juice of Grapes affords other distil'd Liquors then Wine doth The Juice of Grapes after fermentation will yield a Spiritus Ardens which if competently rectifyed will all burn away without leaving any thing remaining The same fermented Juice degenerating into Vinager yields an acid and corroding Spirit The same Juice turn'd up armes it self with Tartar out of which may be separated as out of other Bodies Phlegme Spirit Oyle Salt and Earth not to mention what Substances may be drawn from the Vine it self probably differing from those which are separated from Tartar which is a body by it self that has few resemblers in the World And I will further consider that what force soever you will allow this instance to evince that there are some Bodies that yield more Elements then others it can scarce be deny'd but that the Major part of bodies that are divisible into Elements yield more then three For besides those which the Chymists are pleased to name Hypostatical most bodies contain two others Phlegme and Earth which concurring as well as the rest to the constitution of Mixts and being as generally if not more found in their Analysis I see no sufficient cause why they should be excluded from the number of Elements Nor will it suffice to object as the Paracelsians are wont to do that the Tria prima are the most useful Elements and the Earth and Water but worthlesse and unactive for Elements being call'd so in relation to the constituting of mixt Bodies it should be upon the account of its Ingrediency not of its use that any thing should be affirmed or denyed to be an Element and as for the pretended uselessness of Earth and Water it would be consider'd that usefulnesse or the want of it denotes only a Respect or Relation to us and therefore the presence or absence of it alters not the Intrinsick nature of the thing The hurtful Teeth of Vipers are for ought I know useless to us and yet are not to be deny'd to be parts of their Bodies and it were hard to shew of what greater Use to Us then Phlegme and Earth are those Undiscern'd Stars which our New Telescopes discover to Us in many Blanched places of the Sky and yet we cannot but acknowledge them Constituent and Considerably great parts of the Universe Besides that whether or no the Phlegme and Earth be immediately Useful but necessary to constitute the Body whence they are separated and consequently if the mixt Body be not Useless to us those constituent parts without which it could not have been That mixt Body may be said not to be Unuseful to Us and though the Earth and Water be not so conspicuously Operative after separation as the other three more active Principles yet in this case it will not be amiss to remember the lucky Fable of Menemius Aggrippa of the dangerous Sedition of the Hands and Legs and other more busie parts of the Body against the seemingly unactive Stomack And to this case also we may not unfitly apply that Reasoning of an Apostle to another purpose If the Ear shall say because I am not the Eye I am not of the Body Is it therefore not of the Body If the whole Body were Eye where were the Hearing If the whole were for hearing where the smelling In a word since Earth and water appear as clearly and as generally as the other Principles upon the resolution of Bodies to be the Ingredients whereof they are made up and fince they are useful if not immediately to us or rather to Physitians to the Bodies they constitute and so though in somewhat a remoter way are serviceable to us to exclude them out of the number of Elements is not to imitate Nature But pursues Carneades though I think it Evident that Earth and Phlegme are to be reckon'd among the Elements of most Animal and Vegetable Bodies yet 't is not upon that Account alone that I think divers Bodies resoluble into more Substances then three For there are two Experiments that I have sometimes made to shew that at least some Mixts are divisible into more Distinct Substances then five The one of these Experiments though 't will be more
is a much surer mark the smell and some Operations manifest that there is brought over a Sulphur that makes part of the Liquor One thing more there is Eleutherius sayes Carneades which is so pertinent to my present purpose that though I have touch'd upon it before I cannot but on this occasion take notice of it And it is this That the Qualities or Accidents upon whose account Chymists are wont to call a portion of Matter by the name of Mercury or some other of their Principles are not such but that 't is possible as Great and therefore why not the like may be produc'd by such changes of Texture and other Alterations as the Fire may make in the small Parts of a Body I have already prov'd when I discours'd of the second General Consideration by what happens to plants nourish'd only with fair water and Eggs hatch'd into Chickens that by changing the disposition of the component parts of a Body Nature is able to effect as great Changes in a parcell of Matter reputed similar as those requisite to Denominate one of the Tria Prima And though Helmont do somewhere wittily call the Fire the Destructor and the Artificial Death of Things And although another Eminent Chymist and Physitian be pleas'd to build upon this That Fire can never generate any thing but Fire Yet You will I doubt not be of another mind If You consider how many new sorts of mixt Bodies Chymists themselves have produc'd by means of the Fire And particularly if You consider how that Noble and Permanent Body Glass is not only manifestly produc'd by the violent action of the Fire but has never for ought we know been produc'd any other way And indeed it seems but an inconsiderate Assertion of some Helmontians that every sort of Body of a Peculiar Denomination must be produc'd by some Seminal power as I think I could evince if I thought it so necessary as it is for me to hasten to what I have further to discourse Nor need it much move us that there are some who look upon whatsoever the Fire is employ'd to produce not as upon Natural but Artificial Bodies For there is not alwaies such a difference as many imagine betwixt the one and the other Nor is it so easy as they think clearly to assigne that which Properly Constantly and Sufficiently Discriminates them But not to engage my self in so nice a Disquisition it may now suffice to observe that a thing is commonly termed Artificial when a parcel of matter is by the Artificers hand or Tools or both brought to such a shape or Form as he Design'd before-hand in his Mind Whereas in many of the Chymical Productions the effect would be produc'd whether the Artificer intended it or no and is oftentimes very much other then he Intended or Look't for and the Instruments employ'd are not Tools Artificially fashion'd and shaped like those of Tradesmen for this or that particular Work but for the most part Agents of Nature's own providing and whose chief Powers of Operation they receive from their own Nature or Texture not the Artificer And indeed the Fire is as well a Natural Agent as Seed And the Chymist that imployes it does but apply Natural Agents and Patients who being thus brought together and acting according to their respective Natures performe the worke themselves as Apples Plums or other fruit are natural Productions though the Gardiner bring and fasten together the Sciens of the Stock and both Water and do perhaps divers other wayes Contribute to its bearing fruit But to proceed to what I was going to say You may observe with me Eleutherius that as I told You once before Qualities sleight enough may serve to Denominate a Chymical Principle For when they anatomize a compound Body by the Fire if they get a Substance inflamable and that will not mingle with Water that they presently call Sulphur what is sapid and Dissoluble in Water that must passe for Salt Whatsoever is fix'd and indissoluble in Water that they name Earth And I was going to add that whatsoever Volatile substance they know not what to make of not to say whatsoever they please that they call Mercury But that these Qualities may either be produc'd otherwise then by such as they call Seminal Agents or may belong to bodies of a compounded Nature may be shewn among other Instances in Glass made of ashes where the exceeding strongly-tasted Alcalizate Salt joyning with the Earth becomes insipid and with it constitutes a Body which though also dry fixt and indissoluble in Water is yet manifestly a mixt Body and made so by the Fire it self And I remmember to our present purpose that Helmont amongst other Medicines that he commends has a short processe wherein though the Directions for Practice are but obscurely intimated yet I have some reason not to Dis-believe the Process without affirming or denying any thing about the vertues of the remedy to be made by it Helment pag. 412. Quando sayes he oleum cinnamomi c. suo sali alkali miscetur absque omni aqua trium mensium artificiosa occultaque circulatione totum in salem volatilem commutatum est vere essentiam sui simplicis in nobis exprimit usque in prima nostri constitutivasese ingerit A not unlike Processe he delivers in another place from whence if we suppose him to say true I may argue that since by the Fire there may be produc'd a substance that is as well Saline and volatile as the Salt of Harts-horn blood c. which pass for Elementary and since that this Volatile Salt is really compounded of a Chymical Oyle and a fixt Salt the one made Volatile by the Other and both associated by the fire it may well be suspected that other Substances emerging upon the Dissipation of Bodies by the Fire may be new sorts of Mixts and consist of Substances of differing natures and particularly I have sometimes suspected that since the Volatile Salts of Blood Harts-horn c. are figitive and endow'd with an exceeding strong smell either that Chymists do Erroneously ascribe all odours to sulphurs or that such Salts consist of some oyly parts well incorporated with the Saline ones And the like conjecture I have also made concerning Spirit of Vinager which though the Chymists think one of the Principles of that Body and though being an Acid Spirit it seems to be much less of kin then Volatile Salts to sulphurs yet not to mention its piercing smell which I know not with what congruity the Chymist will deduce from Salt I wonder they have not taken notice of what their own Tyrocinium Chymicum teach us concerning the Destillation of Saccharum Saturni out of which Beguinus assures Us Tyroc Chym. L. 1. C. 4. that he distill'd besides a very fine spirit no lesse then two Oyles the one blood-red and ponderous but the other swimming upon the top of the Spirit and of a yellow colour of which
their bare Assertions And that you may not Eleutherius think I deal so rigidly with them because I scruple to Take these Productions of the Fire for such as the Chymists would have them pass for upon the account of their having some affinity with them consider a little with me that in regard an Element or Principle ought to be perfectly Similar and Homogeneous there is no just cause why I should rather give the body propos'd the Name of this or that Element or Principle because it has a resemblance to it in some obvious Quality rather then deny it that name upon the account of divers other Qualities wherein the propos'd Bodies are unlike and if you do but consider what sleight and easily producible qualities they are that suffice as I have already more then once observ'd to Denominate a Chymical Principle or an Element you 'l not I hope think my wariness to be destitute either of Example or else of Reason For we see that the Chymists will not allow the Aristotelians that the Salt in Ashes ought to be called Earth though the Saline and Terrestrial part symbolize in weight in dryness in fixness and fusibility only because the one is sapid and dissoluble in Water and the other not Besides we see that sapidness and volatility are wont to denominate the Chymists Mercury or Spirit and yet how many Bodies think you may agree in those Qualities which may yet be of very differing natures and disagree in qualities either more numerous or more considerable or both For not only Spirit of Nitre Aqua Fortis Spirit of Salt Spirit of Oyle of Vitriol Spirit of Allome Spirit of Vinager and all Saline Liquors Distill'd from Animal Bodies but all the Acetous Spirits of Woods freed from their Vinager All these I say and many others must belong to the Chymists Mercury though it appear not why some of them should more be comprehended under one denomination then the Chymists Sulphur or Oyle should likewise be for their Distill'd Oyles are also Fluid Volatile and Tastable as well as their Mercury Nor is it Necessary that their Sulphur should be Unctuous or Dissoluble in Water since they generally referr Spirit of Wine to Sulphurs although that Spirit be not Unctuous and will freely mingle with Water So that bare Inflamability must constitute the Essence of the Chymists Sulphur as uninflamablenesse joyned with any taste is enough to intitle a Distill'd Liquor to be their Mercury Now since I can further observe to You that Spirit of Nitre and Spirit of Harts-horne being pour'd together will boile and hisse and tosse up one another into the air which the Chymists make signes of great Antipathy in the Natures of Bodies as indeed these Spirits differ much both in Taste Smell and Operations Since I elsewhere tell you of my having made two sorts of Oyle out of the same mans blood that would not mingle with one another And since I might tell You Divers Examples I have met with of the Contrariety of Bodies which according to the Chymists must be huddl'd up together under one Denomination I leave you to Judge whether such a multitude of Substances as may agree in these sleight Qualities and yet Disagree in Others more Considerable are more worthy to be call'd by the Name of a Principle which ought to be pure and homogeneous than to have appellations given them that may make them differ in name too from the bodies from which they so wildly differ in Nature And hence also by the bye you may perceive that 't is not unreasonable to distrust the Chymists way of Argumentation when being unable to shew us that such a Liquor is for Example purely saline they prove that at least salt is much the predominant principle because that the propos'd substance is strongly tasted and all Tast proceeds from salt whereas those Spirits such as spirit of Tartar spirit of Harts-horn and the like which are reckoned to be the Mercuries of the Bodies that afford them have manifestly a strong and piercing tast and so has according to what I formerly noted the spirit of Box c. even after the acid Liquor that concurr'd to compose it has been separated from it And indeed if sapidness belong not to the spirit or Mercurial Principle of Vegitables and Animals I scarce know how it will be discriminated from their phlegm since by the absence of Inflamability it must be distinguish'd from their sulphur which affords me another Example to prove how unacurate the Chymical Doctrine is in our present Case since not only the spirits of Vegitables and Animals but their Oyles are very strongly tasted as he that shall but wet his tongue with Chymical Oyle of Cinnamon or of Cloves or even of Turpentine may quickly find to his smart And not only I never try'd any Chymical Oyles whose tast was not very manifest and strong but a skilful and inquisitive person who made it his business by elaborate operations to depurate Chymical Oyles and reduce them to an Elementary simplicity Informes us that he never was able to make them at all Tastless whence I might inferr that the proof Chymists confidently give us of a bodies being saline is so far from demonstrating the Predominancy that it does not clearly Evince so much as the presence of the saline Principle in it But I will not pursues Carneades remind you that the Volatile salt of Harts-horn Amber Blood c. are exceeding strongly scented notwithstanding that most Chymists deduce Odours from Sulphur and from them argue the Predominancy of that Principle in the Odorous body because I must not so much as add any new Examples of the incompetency of this sort of Chymical arguments since having already detain'd You but too long in those generals that appertain to my fourth consideration 't is time that I proceed to the particulars themselves to which I thought fit they should be previous These Generals continues Carneades being thus premis'd we might the better survey the Unlikeness that an attentive and unprepossess'd observer may take notice of in each sort of Bodies which the Chymists are wont to call the salts or sulphurs or Mercuries of the Concretes that yield Them as if they had all a simplicity and Identity of Nature whereas salts if they were all Elementary would as little differ as do the Drops of pure and simple Water 'T is known that both Chymists and Physitians ascribe to the fixt salts of calcin'd Bodies the vertues of their concretes and consequently very differing Operations So we find the Alkali of Wormwood much commended in distempers of the stomach that of Eyebright for those that have a weak sight and that of Guaiacum of which a great Quantity yields but a very little salt is not only much commended in Venereal Diseases but is believed to have a peculiar purgative vertue which yet I have not had occasion to try And though I confess I have long thought that these Alkalizate salts are for
Principles and the four Elements I shall content my self to inferr from the alledg'd passage that if his doctrine be not consistent with that Part of mine which it is brought to countenance it is very difficult to know what his opinion concerning salt sulphur and mercury was and that consequently we had reason about the beginning of our conferences to decline taking upon us either to examine or oppose it I know not whether I should on this occasion add that those very bodies the Chymists call Phlegme and Earth do yet recede from an Elementary simplicity That common Earth and Water frequently do so notwithstanding the received contrary opinion is not deny'd by the more wary of the moderne Peripateticks themselves and certainly most Earths are much lesse simple bodies then is commonly imagined even by Chymists who do not so consideratly to prescribe and employ Earths Promiscuously in those distillations that require the mixture of some caput mortuum to hinder the flowing together of the matter and to retain its grosser parts For I have found some Earths to yield by distillation a Liquor very far from being inodorous or insipid and 't is a known observation that most kinds of fat Earth kept cover'd from the rain and hindred from spending themselves in the production of vegetables will in time become impregnated with Salt-Petre But I must remember that the Water and Earths I ought here to speak of are such as are separated from mixt Bodies by the fire and therefore to restrain my Discourse to such I shall tell you That we see the Phlegme of Vitriol for instance is a very effectual remedie against burnes and I know a very Famous and experienc'd Physitian whose unsuspected secret himself confess'd to me it is for the discussing of hard and Obstinate Tumours The Phlegme of Vinager though drawn exceeding leasurly in a digesting Furnace I have purposely made tryall of and sometimes found it able to draw though slowly a saccharine sweetness out of Lead and as I remember by long Digestion I dissolv'd Corpals in it The Phlegme of the sugar of Saturne is said to have very peculiar properties Divers Eminent Chymists teach that it will dissolve Pearls which being precipitated by the spirit of the same concrete are thereby as they say rendred volatile which has been confirmed to me upon his own observation by a person of great veracity The Phlegme of Wine and indeed divers other Liquors that are indiscriminately condemnd to be cast away as phlegm are endow'd with qualities that make them differ both from meer water and from each other and whereas the Chymists are pleas'd to call the caput mortuum of what they have distill'd after they have by affusion of water drawn away its salt terra damnata or Earth it may be doubted whether or no those earths are all of them perfectly alike and it is scarce to be doubted but that there are some of them which remain yet unreduc'd to an Elementary nature The ashes of wood depriv'd of all the salt and bone-Ashes or calcin'd Harts-horn which Refiners choose to make Tests of as freest from Salt seem unlike and he that shall compare either of these insipid ashes to Lime and much more to the calx of Talk though by the affusion of water they be exquisitely dulcify'd will perhaps see cause to think them things of a somewhat differing nature And it is evident in Colcothar that the exactest calcination follow'd by an exquisite dulcification does not alwaies reduce the remaining body into elementary earth for after the salt or Vitriol if the Calcination have been too faint is drawn out of the Colcothar the residue is not earth but a mixt body rich in Medical vertues as experience has inform'd me and which Angelus Sala affirmes to be partly reducible into malleable Copper which I judge very probable for though when I was making Experiments upon Colcothar I was destitute of a Furnace capable of giving a heat intense Enough to bring such a Calx to Fusion yet having conjectur'd that if Colcothar abounded with that Metal Aqua Fortis would find it out there I put some dulcifi'd Colcothar into that Menstruum and found the Liquor according to my Expectation presently Colour'd as Highly as if it had been an Ordinary Solution of Copper THE SCEPTICAL CHYMIST The Fifth Part. HEre Carneades making a pause I must not deny sayes his Friend to him that I think You have sufficiently prov'd that these distinct Substances which Chymists are wont to obtain from Mixt Bodies by their Vulgar Destillation are not pure and simple enough to deserve in Rigour of speaking the Name of Elements or Principles But I suppose You have heard that there are some Modern Spagyrists who give out that they can by further and more Skilfull Purifications so reduce the separated Ingredients of Mixt Bodies to an Elementary simplicity That the Oyles for Instance extracted from all Mixts shall as perfectly resemble one another as the Drops of Water do If you remember replies Carneades that at the Beginning of our Conference with Philoponus I declar'd to him before the rest of the Company that I would not engage my self at present to do any more then examine the usual proofs alledg'd by Chymists for the Vulgar doctrine of their three Hypostatical Principles You will easily perceive that I am not oblig'd to make answer to what you newly propos'd and that it rather grants then disproves what I have been contending for Since by pretending to make so great a change in the reputed Principles that Destillation affords the common Spagyrists 't is plainly enough presuppos'd that before such Artificial Depurations be made the Substances to be made more simple were not yet simple enough to be look'd upon as Elementary Wherefore in case the Artists you speak of could perform what they give out they can yet I should not need to be asham'd of having question'd the Vulgar Opinion touching the tria Prima And as to the thing it self I shall freely acknowledge to you that I love not to be forward in determining things to be impossible till I know and have consider'd the means by which they are propos'd to be effected And therefore I shall not peremptorily deny either the possibility of what these Artists promise or my Assent to any just Inference however destructive to my Conjectures that may be drawn from their performances But give me leave to tell you withall that because such promises are wont as Experience has more then once inform'd me to be much more easily made then made good by Chymists I must withhold my Beliefe from their assertions till their Experiments exact it and must not be so easie as to expect before hand an unlikely thing upon no stronger Inducements then are yet given me Besides that I have not yet found by what I have heard of these Artists that though they pretend to bring the several Substances into which the Fire has divided the Concrete to an
the Elements is more applauded by the Moderns as pretending highly to be grounded upon Experience And to deal not only fairly but favourably with them I will allow them to take in Earth and Water to their other Principles Which I consent to the rather that my Discourse may the better reach the Tenents of the Peripateticks who cannot plead for any so probably as for those two Elements that of fire above the Air being Generally by Judicious Men exploded as an Imaginary thing And the Air not concurring to compose Mixt Bodies as one of their Elements but only lodging in their pores or Rather replenishing by reason of its Weight and Fluidity all those Cavities of bodies here below whether compounded or not that are big enough to admit it and are not fill'd up with any grosser substance And to prevent mistakes I must advertize You that I now mean by Elements as those Chymists that speak plainest do by their Principles certain Primitive and Simple or perfectly unmingled bodies which not being made of any other bodies or of one another are the Ingredients of which all those call'd perfectly mixt Bodies are immediately compounded and into which they are ultimately resolved now whether there be any one such body to be constantly met with in all and each of those that are said to be Elemented bodies is the thing I now question By this State of the controversie you will I suppose Guess that I need not be so absur'd as to deny that there are such bodies as Earth and Water and Quicksilver and Sulphur But I look upon Earth and Water as component parts of the Universe or rather of the Terrestrial Globe not of all mixt bodies And though I will not peremptorily deny that there may sometimes either a running Mercury or a Combustible Substance be obtain'd from a Mineral or even a Metal yet I need not Concede either of them to be an Element in the sence above declar'd as I shall have occasion to shew you by and by To give you then a brief account of the grounds I intend to proceed upon I must tell you that in matters of Philosophy this seems to me a sufficient reason to doubt of a known and important proposition that the Truth of it is not yet by any competent proof made to appear And congruously herunto if I shew that the grounds upon which men are perswaded that there are Elements are unable to satisfie a considering man I suppose my doubts will appear rational Now the Considerations that induce men to think that there are Elements may be conveniently enough referr'd to two heads Namely the one that it is necessary that Nature make use of Elements to constitute the bodies that are reputed Mixt. And the other That the Resolution of such bodies manifests that nature had compounded them of Elementary ones In reference to the former of these Considerations there are two or three things that I have to Represent And I will begin with reminding you of the Experiments I not long since related to you concerning the growth of pompions mint and other vegetables out of fair water For by those experiments its seems evident that Water may be Transmuted into all the other Elements from whence it may be inferr'd both That 't is not every Thing Chymists will call Salt Sulphur or Spirit that needs alwayes be a Primordiate and Ingenerable body And that Nature may contex a Plant though that be a perfectly mixt Concrete without having all the Elements previously presented to her to compound it of And if you will allow the relation I mention'd out of Mounsieur De Rochas to be True then may not only plants but Animals and Minerals too be produced out of Water And however there is little doubt to be made but that the plants my tryals afforded me as they were like in so many other respects to the rest of the plants of the same Denomination so they would in case I had reduc'd them to putrefaction have likewise produc'd Wormes or other infects as well as the resembling Vegetables are wont to do so that Water may by Various Seminal Principles be successively Transmuted into both plants and Animals And if we consider that not only Men but even sucking Children are but too often Tormented with Solid Stones but that divers sorts of Beasts themselves whatever Helmont against Experience think to the contrary may be Troubled with great and Heavy stones in their Kidneys and Bladders though they Feed but upon Grass and other Vegetables that are perhaps but Disguised Water it will not seem improbable that even some Concretes of a mineral Nature may Likewise be form'd of Water We may further Take notice that as a Plant may be nourisht and consequently may Consist of Common water so may both plants and Animals perhaps even from their Seminal Rudiments consist of compound Bodies without having any thing meerly Elementary brought them by nature to be compounded by them This is evident in divers men who whilst they were Infants were fed only with Milk afterwards Live altogether upon Flesh Fish wine and other perfectly mixt Bodies It may be seen also in sheep who on some of our English Downs or Plains grow very fat by feeding upon the grasse without scarce drinking at all And yet more manifestly in the magots that breed and grow up to their full bignesse within the pulps of Apples Pears or the like Fruit. We see also that Dungs that abound with a mixt Salt give a much more speedy increment to corn and other Vegetables than Water alone would do And it hath been assur'd me by a man experienc'd in such matters that sometimes when to bring up roots very early the Mould they were planted in was made over-rich the very substance of the Plant has rasted of the Dung. And let us also consider a Graft of one kind of Fruit upon the upper bough of a Tree of another kind As for instance the Ciens of a Pear upon a White-thorne for there the ascending Liquor is already alter'd either by the root or in its ascent by the bark or both wayes and becomes a new mixt body as may appear by the differing qualities to be met with in the saps of several trees as particularly the medicinal vertue of the Birch-Water which I have sometimes drunk upon Helmonts great and not undeserved commendation Now the graft being fasten'd to the stock must necessarily nourish its self and produce its Fruit only out of this compound Juice prepared for it by the Stock being unable to come at any other aliment And if we consider how much of the Vegetable he feeds upon may as we noted above remain in an Animal we may easily suppose That the blood of that Animal who Feeds upon this though it be a Well constituted Liquor and have all the differing Corpuscles that make it up kept in order by one praesiding form may be a strangely Decompounded Body many of its parts being
Argument Let us proceed to consider what can be alledg'd in behalf of the E. lements from the Resolutions of Bodies by the fire which you remember was the second Tophick whence I told you the Arguments of my Adversaries were desum'd And that I may first dispatch what I have to say concerning Minerals I will begin the remaining part of my discourse with considering how the fire divides them And first I have partly noted above that though Chymists pretend from some to draw salt from others running Mercury and from others a Sulphur Yet they have not hitherto taught us by any way in us among them to separate any one principle whether Salt Sulphur or Mercury from all sorts of Minerals without exception And thence I may be allow'd to conclude that there is not any of the Elements that is an Ingredient of all Bodies since there are some of which it is not so In the next place supposing that either Sulphur or Mercury were obtainable from all sorts of Minerals Yet still this Sulphur or Mercury would be but a compounded not an Elementary body as I told you already on another occasion And certainly he that takes notice of the wonderful Operations of Quicksilver whether it be common or drawn from Mineral Bodies can scarce be so inconsiderate as to think it of the very same nature with that immature and fugitive substance which in Vegetables and Animals Chymists have been pleas'd to call their Mercury So that when Mercury is got by the help of the fire out of a metal or other Mineral Body if we will not suppose that it was not pre-existent in it but produc'd by the action of the fire upon the Concrete we may at least suppose this Quicksilver to have been a perfect Body of its own kind though perhaps lesse heterogeneous then more secundary mixts which happen'd to be mingl'd per minima and coagulated with the other substances whereof the Metal or Mineral consisted As may be exemplyfied partly by Native Vermillion wherein the Quicksilver and Sulphur being exquisitely blended both with one another and that other course Mineral stuff what ever it be that harbours them make up a red body differing enough from both and yet from which part of the Quicksilver and of the Sulphur may be easily enough obtain'd Partly by those Mines wherein nature has so curiously incorporated Silver with Lead that 't is extreamly difficult and yet possible to separate the former out of the Latter And partly too by native Vitriol wherein the Metalline Corpuscles are by skill and industry separable from the saline ones though they be so con-coagulated with them that the whole Concrete is reckon'd among Salts And here I further observe that I never could see any Earth or Water properly so call'd separated from either Gold or Silver to name now no other Metalline Bodies and therefore to retort the argument upon my Adversaries I may conclude that since there are some bodies in which for ought appears there is neither Earth nor Water I may be allow'd to conclude that neither of those two is an Universal Ingredient of all those Bodies that are counted perfectly mixt which I desire you would remember against Anon. It may indeed be objected that the reason why from Gold or Silver we cannot separate any moisture is because that when it is melted out of the Oare the vehement Fire requisite to its Fusion forc'd away all the aqueous and fugitive moisture and the like fire may do from the materials of Glass To which I shall Answer that I Remember I read not long since in the Learned Josephus Acosta who relates it upon his own observation that in America Acesta Natural and Moral history of the Indies L. 3. c. 5 P. 212. where he long lived there is a kind of Silver which the Indians call Papas and sometimes sayes he they find pieces very fine and pure like to small round roots the which is rare in that metal but usuall in Gold Concerning which metal he tells us that besides this they find some which they call Gold in grains which he tells us are small morsels of Gold that they find whole without mixture of any other metal which hath no need of melting or Refining in the fire I remember that a very skilful and credible person affirmed to me that being in the Hungarian mines he had the good fortune to see a mineral that was there digg'd up wherein pieces of Gold of the length and also almost of the bigness of a humane Finger grew in the Oar as if they had been parts and Branches of Trees And I have my self seen a Lump of whitish Mineral that was brought as a Rarity to a Great and knowing Prince wherein there grew here and there in the Stone which looked like a kind of sparr divers little Lumps of fine Gold for such I was assured that Tryal had manifested it to be some of them Seeming to be about the Bigness of pease But that is nothing to what our Acosta subjoynes which is indeed very memorable namely that of the morsels of Native and pure Gold which we lately heard him mentioning he had now and then seen some that weighed many pounds to which I shall add that I my self have seen a Lump of Oar not long since digged up See Acosla in the fore-cited Place and the passage of Pliny quoted by him in whose stony part there grew almost like Trees divers parcels though not of Gold yet of what perhaps Mineralists will more wonder at another Metal which seemed to be very pure or unmixt with any Heterogeneous Substances and were some of them as big as my Finger if not bigger But upon Observations of this kind though perhaps I could yet I must not at present dwell any longer To proceed Therefore now sayes Carneades to the Consideration of the Analysis of Vegetables although my Tryals give me no cause to doubt but that out of most of them five differing Substances may be obtain'd by the fire yet I think it will not be so easily Demonstrated that these deserve to be call'd Elements in the Notion above explain'd And before I descend to particulars I shall repeat and premise this General Consideration that these differing substances that are call'd Elements or Principles differ not from each other as Metals Plants and Animals or as such Creatures as are immediately produc'd each by its peculiar Seed and Constitutes a distinct propagable sort of Creatures in the Universe but these are only Various Schemes of matter or Substances that differ from each other but in consistence as Running Mercury and the same Metal congeal'd by the Vapor of Lead and some very few other accidents as Tast or Smel or Inflamability or the want of them So that by a change of Texture not impossible to be wrought by the Fire and other Agents that have the Faculty not only to dissociate the smal parts of Bodies but afterwards to connect them after
I know been so much as plausibly attempted to be proved by either Hoping then that when we come to that part of our Debate wherein Considerations relating to this Matter are to be treated of you will remember what I have now said and that I do rather for a while suppose then absolutely grant the truth of what I have question'd I will proceed to another Objection And hereupon Eleutherius having mis'd him not to be unmindfull when time should serve of what he had declar'd I consider then sayes Carneades in the next place that there are divers Bodies out of which Themistius will not prove in haste that there can be so many Elements as four extracted by the Fire And I should perchance trouble him if I should ask him what Peripatetick can shew us I say not all the four Elements for that would be too rigid a Question but any one of them extracted out of Gold by any degree of Fire whatsoever Nor is Gold the only Bodie in Nature that would puzzle an Aristotelian that is no more to analyze by the Fire into Elementary Bodies since for ought I have yet observ'd both Silver and calcin'd Venetian Talck and some other Concretes not necessary here to be nam'd are so fixt that to reduce any of them into four Heterogeneous Substances has hitherto prov'd a Task much too hard not only for the Disciples of Aristotle but those of Vulcan at least whilst the latter have employ'd only Fire to make the Analysis The next Argument continues Carneades that I shall urge against Themistius's Opinion shall be this That as there are divers Bodies whose Analysts by Fire cannot reduce them into so many Heterogeneous Substances or Ingregredients as four so there are others which may be reduc'd into more as the Blood and divers other parts of Men and other Animals which yield when analyz'd five distinct Substances Phlegme Spirit Oyle Salt and Earth as Experience has shewn us in distilling Mans Blood Harts-Horns and divers other Bodies that belonging to the Animal-Kingdom abound with not uneasily sequestrable Salt THE SCEPTICAL CHYMIST OR CHYMICO-PHYSICAL Doubts Paradoxes Touching the EXPERIMENTS WHEREBY VULGAR SPAGYRISTS Are wont to Endeavour to Evince their SALT SULPHUR AND MERCURY TO BE The True Principles of Things Utinam jam tenerentur omnia inoperta ac confessa Veritas esset Nihil ex Decretis mutaremus Nunc Veritatem cum eis qui docent quaerimus Sen. LONDON Printed for J. Crooke and are to be sold at the Ship in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1661. THE SCEPTICAL CHYMIST The First Part. I Am sayes Carneades so unwilling to deny Eleutherius any thing that though before the rest of the Company I am resolv'd to make good the part I have undertaken of a Sceptick yet I shall readily since you will have it so lay aside for a while the Person of an Adversary to the Peripateticks and Chymists and before I acquaint you with my Objections against their Opinions acknowledge to you what may be whether truly or not tollerably enough added in favour of a certain number of Principles of mixt Bodies to that grand and known Argument from the Analysis of compound Bodies which I may possibly hereafter be able to confute And that you may the more easily Examine and the better Judge of what I have to say I shall cast it into a pretty number of distinct Propositions to which I shall not premise any thing because I take it for granted that you need not be advertis'd that much of what I am to deliver whether for or against a determinate number of Ingredients of mix'd Bodies may be indifferently apply'd to the four Peripatetick Elements and the three Chymical Principles though divers of my Objections will more peculiarly belong to these last nam'd because the Chymical Hypothesis seeming to be much more countenanc'd by Experience then the other it will be expedient to insist chiefly upon the disproving of that especially since most of the Arguments that are imploy'd against it may by a little variation be made to conclude at least as strongly against the less plausible Aristotelian Doctrine To proceed then to my Propositions I shall begin with this That Propos I It seems not absurd to conceive that at the first Production of mixt Bodies the Universal Matter whereof they among other Parts of the Universe consisted was actually divided into little Particles of several sizes and shapes variously mov'd This sayes Carneades I suppose you will easily enough allow For besides that which happens in the Generation Corruption Nutrition and wasting of Bodies that which we discover partly by our Microscopes of the extream littlenesse of even the scarce sensible parts of Concretes and partly by the Chymical Resolutions of mixt Bodies and by divers other Operations of Spagyrical Fires upon them seems sufficiently to manifest their consisting of parts very minute and of differing Figures And that there does also intervene a various local Motion of such small Bodies will scarce be denied whether we chuse to grant the Origine of Concretions assign'd by Epicurus or that related by Moses For the first as you well know supposes not only all mixt Bodies but all others to be produc'd by the various and casual occursions of Atomes moving themselves to and fro by an internal Principle in the Immense or rather Infinite Vacuum And as for the inspir'd Historian He informing us that the great and Wise Author of Things did not immediately create Plants Beasts Birds c. but produc'd them out of those portions of the pre-existent though created Matter that he calls Water and Earth allows us to conceive that the constituent Particles whereof these new Concretes were to consist were variously moved in order to their being connected into the Bodies they were by their various Coalitions and Textures to compose But continues Carneades presuming that the first Proposition needs not be longer insisted on I will pass on to the second and tell you that Propos II Neither is it impossible that of these minute Particles divers of the smallest and neighbouring ones were here and there associated into minute Masses or Clusters and did by their Coalitions constitute great store of such little primary Concretions or Masses as were not easily dissipable into such Particles as compos'd them To what may be deduc'd in favour of this Assertion from the Nature of the Thing it self I will add something out of Experience which though I have not known it used to such a purpose seems to me more fairly to make out that there May be Elementary Bodies then the more questionable Experiments of Peripateticks and Chymists prove that there Are such I consider then that Gold will mix and be colliquated not only with Silver Copper Tin and Lead but with Antimony Regulus Martis and many other Minerals with which it will compose Bodies very differing both from Gold and the other Ingredients of the resulting Concretes And the same Gold will also by common
it need less heat to carry them up than is requisite to divide them into their Principles So that of some Bodies the Fire cannot in close Vessels make any Analysis at all and others will in the open Air fly away in the Forms of Flowers or Liquors before the Heat can prove able to divide them into their Principles And this may hold whether the various similar parts of a Concrete be combin'd by Nature or by Art For in factitious Sal Armoniack we finde the common and the Urinous Salts so well mingled that both in the open Fire and in subliming Vessels they rise together as one Salt which seems in such Vessels irresoluble by Fire alone For I can shew you Sal Armoniack which after the ninth Sublimation does still retain its compounded Nature And indeed I scarce know any one Mineral from which by Fire alone Chymists are wont to sever any Substance simple enough to deserve the name of an Element or Principle For though out of native Cinnaber they distill Quicksilver and though from many of those Stones that the Ancients called Pyrites they sublime Brimstone yet both that Quicksilver and this Sulphur being very often the same with the common Minerals that are sold in the Shops under those names are themselves too much compounded Bodies to pass for the Elements of such And thus much Eleutherius for the Second Argument that belongs to my First Consideration the others I shall the lesse insist on because I have dwelt so long upon this Proceed we then in the next place to consider That there are divers Separations to be made by other means which either cannot at all or else cannot so well be made by the Fire alone When Gold and Silver are melted into one Mass it would lay a great Obligation upon Refiners and Goldsmiths to teach them the Art of separating them by the Fire without the trouble and charge they are fain to be at to sever them Whereas they may be very easily parted by the Affusion of Spirit of Nitte or Aqua fortis which the French therefore call Eau de Depart so likewise the Metalline part of Vitriol will not be so easily and conveniently separated from the Saline part even by a violent Fire as by the Affusion of certain Alkalizate Salts in a liquid Form upon the Solution of Vitriol made in common water For thereby the acid Salt of the Vitriol leaving the Copper it had corroded to joyn with the added Salts the Metalline part will be precipitated to the bottom almost like Mud. And that I may not give Instances only in De-compound Bodies I will add a not useless one of another kinde Not only Chymists have not been able for ought is vulgarly known by Fire alone to separate true Sulphur from Antimony but though you may finde in their Books many plausible Processes of Extracting it yet he that shall make as many fruitlesse Tryals as I have done to obtain it by most of them will I suppose be easily perswaded that the Productions of such Processes are Antimonial Sulphurs rather in Name than Nature But though Antimony sublim'd by its self is reduc'd but to a volatile Powder or Antimonial Flowers of a compounded Nature like the Mineral that affords them yet I remember that some years ago I sublim'd out of Antimony a Sulphur and that in greater plenty then ever I saw obtain'd from that Mineral by a Method which I shall therefore acquaint you with because Chymists seem not to have taken notice of what Importance such Experiments may be in the Indagation of the Nature and especially of the Number of the Elements Having then purposely for Tryals sake digested eight Ounces of good and well powder'd Antimony with twelve Ounces of Oyl of Vitriol in a well stopt Glas-Vessel for about six or seven Weeks and having caus'd the Mass grown hard and brittle to be distill'd in a Retort plac'd in Sand with a strong Fire we found the Antimony to be so opened or alter'd by the Menstruum wherewith it had been digested That whereas crude Antimony forc'd up by the Fire arises only in Flowers our Antimony thus handled afforded us partly in the Receiver and partly in the Neck and at the Top of the Retort about an Ounce of Sulphur yellow and brittle like common Brimstone and of so Sulphureous a smell that upon the unluting the Vessels it infected the Room with a scarce supportable stink And this Sulphur besides the Colour and Smell had the perfect Inflamability of common Brimstone and would immediately kindle at the Flame of a Candle and burn blew like it And though it seem'd that the long digestion wherein our Antimony and Menstruum were detain'd did conduce to the better unlocking of the Mineral yet if you have not the leasure to make so long a Digestion you may by incorporating with powder'd Antimony a convenient Quantity of Oyl of Vitriol and committing them immediately to Distillation obtain a little Sulphur like unto the common one and more combustible than perhaps you will at first take notice of For I have observ'd that though after its being first kindled the Flame would sometimes go out too soon of its self if the same Lump of Sulphur were held again to the Flame of a Candle it would be rekindled and burn a pretty while not only after the second but after the third or fourth accension You to whom I think I shewed my way of discovering something of Sulphureous in Oyl of Vitriol may perchance suspect Eleutherius either that this Substance was some Venereal Sulphur that lay hid in that Liquor and was by this operation only reduc'd into a manifest Body or else that it was a compound of the unctuous parts of the Antimony Lib. 1. Observat Cap. 6. and the Saline ones of the Vitriol in regard that as Gunther informs us divers learned men would have Sulphur to be nothing but a mixture made in the Bowels of the Earth of Vitriolate Spirits and a certain combustible Substance But the Quantity of Sulphur we obtain'd by Digestion was much too great to have been latent in the Oyl of Vitriol And that Vitriolate Spirits are not necessary to the Constitution of such a Sulphur as ours I could easily manifest if I would acquaint you with the several wayes by which I have obtain'd though not in such plenty a Sulphur of Antimony colour'd and combustible like common Brimstone And though I am not now minded to discover them yet I shall tell you that to satisfie some Ingenious Men that distill'd Vitriolate Spirits are not necessary to the obtaining of such a Sulphur as we have been considering I did by the bare distillation of only Spirit of Nitre from its weight of crude Antimony separate in a short time a yellow and very inflamable Sulphur which for ought I know deserves as much the name of an Element as any thing that Chymists are wont to separate from any Mineral by the Fire I could
perhaps tell you of other Operations upon Antimony whereby That may be extracted from it which cannot be forc'd out of it by the Fire but I shall reserve them for a fitter Opportunity and only annex at present this sleight but not impertinent Experiment That whereas I lately observed to you that the Urinous and common Salts whereof Sal Armoniack consists remain'd unsever'd by the Fire in many successive Sublimations they may be easily separated and partly without any Fire at all by pouring upon the Concrete finely powder'd a Solution of Salt of Tartar or of the Salt of Wood-Ashes for upon your diligently mixing of these you will finde your Nose invaded with a very strong smell of Urine and perhaps too your Eyes forc'd to water by the same subtle and piercing Body that produces the stink both these effects proceeding from hence that by the Alcalizate Salt the Sea Salt that enter'd the composition of the Sal Armoniack is mortify'd and made more fixt and thereby a divorce is made between it and the volatile Urinous Salt which being at once set at liberty and put into motion begins presently to fly away and to offend the Nostrils and Eyes it meets with by the way And if the operation of these Salts be in convenient Glasses promoted by warmth though but by that of a Bath the ascending Steams may easily be caught and reduc'd into a penetrant Spirit abounding with a Salt which I have sometimes found to be separable in a Crystalline Form I might add to these Instances that whereas Sublimate consisting as you know of Salts Quicksilver combin'd and carried up together by Heat may be Sublim'd I know not how often by a like degree of Fire without suffering any divorce of the component Bodies the Mercury may be easily sever'd from the adhering Salts if the Sublimate be distill'd from Salt of Tartar Quick Lime or such Alcalizate Bodies But I will rather observe to you Eleutherius what divers ingenious men have thought somewhat strange that by such an Additament that seems but only to promote the Separation there may be easily obtain'd from a Concrete that by the Fire alone is easily divisible into all the Elements that Vegetables are suppos'd to consist of such a similar Substance as differs in many respects from them all and consequently has by many of the most Intelligent Chymists been denied to be contain'd in the mixt Body For I know a way and have practis'd it whereby common Tartat without the addition of any thing that is not perfectly a Mineral except Salt-petre may by one Distillation in an Earthen Retort be made to afford good store of real Salt readily dissoluble in water which I found to be neither acid nor of the smell of Tartar and to be almost as volatile as Spirit of Wine it self and to be indeed of so differing a Nature from all that is wont to be separated by Fire from Tartar that divers Learned Men with whom I discours'd of it could hardly be brought to beleeve that so fugitive a Salt could be afforded by Tartar till I assur'd it them upon my own Knowledge And if I did not think you apt to suspect me to be rather too backward than too forward to credit or affirm unlikely things I could convince you by what I have yet lying by me of that anomalous Salt The Fourth thing that I shall alledge to countenance my first Consideration is That the Fire even when it divides a Body into Substances of divers Consistences does not most commonly analyze it into Hypostatical Principles but only disposes its parts into new Textures and thereby produces Concretes of a new indeed but yet of a compound Nature This Argument it will be requisite for me to prosecute so fully hereafter that I hope you will then confess that 't is not for want of good Proofs that I desire leave to suspend my Proofs till the Series of my Discourse shall make it more proper and seasonable to propose them It may be further alledg'd on the behalf of my First Consideration That some such distinct Substances may be obtain'd from some Concretes without Fire as deserve no less the name of Elementary than many that Chymists extort by the Violence of the Fire We see that the Inflamable Spirit or as the Chymists esteem it the Sulphur of Wine may not only be separated from it by the gentle heat of a Bath but may be distill'd either by the help of the Sun-Beams or even of a Dunghill being indeed of so Fugitive a Nature that it is not easy to keep it from flying away even without the Application of external heat I have likewise observ'd that a Vessel full of Urine being plac'd in a Dunghill the Putrefaction is wont after some weeks so to open the Body that the parts disbanding the Saline Spirit will within no very long time if the Vessel be not stopt fly away of it self Insomuch that from such Urine I have been able to distill little or nothing else than a nauseous Phlegme instead of the active and piercing Salt and Spirit that it would have afforded when first expos'd to the Fire if the Vessel had been carefully stopt And this leads me to consider in the Fifth place That it will be very hard to prove that there can no other Body or way be given which will as well as the Fire divide Concretes into several homogeneous Substances which may consequently be call'd their Elements or Principles as well as those separated or produc'd by the Fire For since we have lately seen that Nature can successefully employ other Instruments than the Fire to separate distinct Substances from mixt Bodies how know we but that Nature has made or Art may make some such Substance as may be a fit Instrument to Analyze mixt Bodies or that some such Method may be found by Humane Industry or Luck by whose means compound Bodies may be resolv'd into other Substances than such as they are wont to be divided into by the Fire And why the Products of such an Analysis may not as justly be call'd the component Principles of the Bodies that afford them it will not be easy to shew especially since I shall hereafter make it evident that the Substances which Chymists are wont to call the Salts and Sulphurs and Mercuries of Bodies are not so pure and Elementary as they presume and as their Hypothesis requires And this may therefore be the more freely press'd upon the Chymists because neither the Paracelsians nor the Helmontians can reject it without apparent Injury to their respective Masters For Helmont do's more than once Inform his Readers that both Paracelsus and Himself were Possessors of the famous Liquor Alkahest which for its great power in resolving Bodies irresoluble by Vulgar Fires he somewhere seems to call Ignis Gehennae To this Liquor he ascribes and that in great part upon his own Experience such wonders that if we suppose them all true I am so much
seasonable for me to mention it fully anon yet in the mean time I shall tell you thus much of it That out of two Distill'd Liquors which pass for Elements of the Bodies whence they are drawn I can without Addition make a true Yellow and Inflamable Sulphur notwithstanding that the two Liquors remain afterwards Distinct Of the other Experiment which perhaps will not be altogether unworthy your Notice I must now give you this particular Account I had long observ'd that by the Destillation of divers Woods both in Ordinary and some unusuall sorts of Vessels the Copious Spirit that came over had besides a strong tast to be mot with in the Empyreumaticall Spirits of many other Bodies an Acidity almost like that of Vinager Wherefore I suspected that though the sowrish Liquor Distill'd for Instance from Box-Wood be lookt upon by Chymists as barely the Spirit of it and therefore as one single Element or Principle yet it does really consist of two Differing Substances and may be divisible into them and consequently that such Woods and other Mixts as abound with such a Vinager may be said to consist of one Element or Principle more then the Chymists as yet are Aware of Wherefore bethinking my self how the separation of these two Spirits might be made I Quickly found that there were several wayes of Compassing it But that of them which I shall at present mention was this Having Destill'd a Quantity of Box-Wood per se and slowly rectify'd the sowrish Spirit the better to free it both from Oyle and Phlegme I cast into this Rectify'd Liquor a convenient Quantity of Powder'd Coral expecting that the Acid part of the Liquor would Corrode the Coral and being associated with it would be so retain'd by it that the other part of the Liquor which was not of an acid Nature nor fit to fasten upon the Corals would be permitted to ascend alone Nor was I deceiv'd in my Expectation For having gently abstracted the Liquor from the Coralls there came over a Spirit of a Strong smell and of a tast very piercing but without any sourness and which was in diverse qualities manifestly different not only from a Spirit of Vinager but from some Spirit of the same Wood that I purposely kept by me without depriving it of its acid Ingredient And to satisfy you that these two Substances were of a very differing Nature I might informe you of several Tryals that I made but must not name some of them because I cannot do so without making some unseasonable discoveries Yet this I shall tell you at present that the sowre Spirit of Box not only would as I just now related dissolve Corals which the other would not fasten on but being pour'd upon Salt of Tartar would immediately boile and hiss whereas the other would lye quietly upon it The acid Spirit pour'd upon Minium made a Sugar of Lead which I did not find the other to do some drops of this penetrant spirit being mingl'd with some drops of the blew Syrup of Violets seem'd rather to dilute then otherwise alter the colour whereas the Acid Spirit turn'd the surup of a reddish colour and would probably have made it of as pure a red as Acid Salts are wont to do had not its operation been hindered by the mixture of the other Spirit A few drops of the compound Spirit being Shaken into a pretty quantity of the infusion of Lignum Nephriticum presently destroyed all the blewish colour whereas the other Spirit would not take it away To all which it might be added that having for tryals sake pour'd fair water upon the Corals that remained in the bottom of the glass wherein I had rectifyed the double spirit if I may so call it that was first drawn from the Box I found according to my expectation that the Acid Spirit had really dissolved the Corals and had coagulated with them For by the affusion of fair Water I Obtain'd a Solution which to note that singularity upon the bye was red whence the Water being evaporated there remained a soluble Substance much like the Ordinary Salt of Coral as Chymists are pleas'd to call that Magistery of Corals which they make by dissolving them in common spirit of Vinager and abstracting the Menstruum ad Siccitatem I know not whether I should subjoine on this occasion that the simple spirit of Box if Chymists will have it therefore Saline because it has a strong tast will furnish us with a new kind of Saline Bodies differing from those hitherto taken notice of For whereas of the three chief sorts of Salts the Acid the Alcalizate and the Sulphureous there is none that seems to be friends with both the other two as I may e're it be long have occasion to shew I did not find but that the simple spirit of Box did agree very well at least as farr as I had occasion to try it both with the Acid and the other Salts For though it would lye very quiet with salt of Tartar Spirit of Urine or other bodies whose Salts were either of an Alcalizate or fugitive Nature yet did not the mingling of Oyle of Vitriol it self produce any hissing or Effervescence which you know is wont to ensue upon the Affusion of that highly Acid Liquor upon eit her of the Bodies newly mentioned I think my self sayes Eleutherius beholden to you for this Experiment not only because I forsee you will make it helpful to you in the Enquiry you are now upon but because it teaches us a Method whereby we may prepare a numerous sort of new spirits which though more simple then any that are thought Elementary are manifestly endow'd with peculiar and powerfull qualities some of which may probably be of considerable use in Physick as well alone as associated with other things as one may hopefully guess by the redness of that Solution your sour Spirit made of Corals and by some other circumstances of your Narrative And suppose pursues Eleutherius that you are not so confin'd for the separation of the Acid parts of these compound Spirits from the other to employ Corals but that you may as well make use of any Alcalizate Salt or of Pearls or Crabs eyes or any other Body upon which common Spirit of Vinager will easily work and to speak in an Helmontian Phrase Exantlate it self I have not yet tryed sayes Carneades of what use the mention'd liquors may be in Physick either as Medicines or as Menstruums But I could mention now and may another time divers of the tryals that I made to satisfy my self of the difserence of these two Liquors But that as I allow you thinking what you newly told me about Corals I presume you will allow me from what I have said already to deduce this Corollary That there are divers compound bodies which may be resolv'd into four such differing Substances as may as well merit the name of Principles as those to which the Chymists freely give it For since they
he sayes that he kept then some by him to verify what he delivers And though I remember not that I have had two distinct Oyles from Sugar of Lead yet that it will though distill'd without addition yield some Oyle disagrees not with my Experience I know the Chymists will be apt to pretend that these Oyls are but the volatiliz'd sulphur of the lead and will perhaps argue it from what Beguinus relates that when the Distillation is ended you 'l find a Caput Mortuum extreamly black and as he speaks nullius momenti as if the Body or at least the chief part of the Metal it self were by the distillation carried over the Helme But since you know as well as I that Saccharum Saturni is a kind of Magistery made only by calcining of Lead per se dissolving it in distill'd Vinager and crystalizing the solution if I had leasure to tell You how Differing a thing I did upon examination find the Caput Mortuum so sleighted by Beguinus to be from what he represents it I believe you would think the conjecture propos'd less probable then one or other of these three either that this Oyle did formerly concur to constitute the Spirit of Vinager and so that what passes for a Chymical Principle may yet be further resoluble into distinct substances or that some parts of the Spirit together with some parts of the Lead may constitute a Chymical Oyle which therefore though it pass for Homogeneous may be a very compounded Body or at least that by the action of the Distill'd Vinager and the Saturnine Calx one upon another part of the Liquor may be so alter'd as to be transmuted from an Acid Spirit into an Oyle And though the truth of either of the two former conjectures would make the example I have reflected on more pertinent to my present argument yet you 'l easily discern the Third and last Conjecture cannot be unserviceable to confirm some other passages of my discourse To return then to what I was saying just before I mention'd Helmont's Experiment I shall subjoyne That Chymists must confess also that in the perfectly Dephlegm'd spirit of Wine or other Fermented Liquors that which they call the Sulphur of the Concrete loses by the Fermentation the Property of Oyle which the Chymists likewise take to be the true Sulphur of the Mixt of being unminglable with the Water Ostendi alias quomodo lib. una aquae vitae combibita in sale Tartari siccato vix fiat semuncia salis caeterum totum corpus fiat aqua Elementalis Helmont in Aura vitali And if You will credit Helmont all of the purest Spirit of Wine may barely by the help of pure Salt of Tartar which is but the fixed Salt of Wine be resolv'd or Transmuted into scarce half an ounce of Salt and as much Elementary Water as amounts to the remaining part of the mention'd weight And it may as I think I formerly also noted be doubted whether that Fixt and Alcalizate Salt which is so unanimously agreed on to be the Saline Principle of incinerated Bodies be not as 't is Alcalizate a Production of the Fire For though the tast of Tartar for Example seem to argue that it contains a Salt before it be burn'd yet that Salt being very Acid is of a quite Differing Tast from the Lixiviate Salt of Calcin'd Tartar And though it be not truly Objected against the Chymists that they obtain all Salts they make by reducing the Body they work on into Ashes with Violent Fires since Hartshorn Amber Blood and divers other Mixts yield a copious Salt before they be burn'd to Ashes yet this Volatile Salt Differs much as we shall see anon from the Fixt Alcalizate Salt I speak of which for ought I remember is not producible by any known Way without Incineration 'T is not unknown to Chymists that Quicksilver may be Precipitated without Addition into a dry Powder that remains so in Water And some eminent Spagyrists and even Raimund Lully himself teach that meerly by the Fire Quicksilver may in convenient Vessels be reduc'd at least in great part into a thin Liquor like Water and minglable with it So that by the bare Action of the Fire 't is possible that the parts of a mixt Body should be so dispos'd after new and differing manners that it may be sometimes of one consistence sometimes of another And may in one State be dispos'd to be mingl'd with Water and in another not I could also shew you that Bodies from which apart Chymists cannot obtain any thing that is Combustible may by being associated together and by the help of the Fire afford an inflamable Substance And that on the other side 't is possible for a Body to be inflamable from which it would very much puzzle any ordinary Chymist and perhaps any other to separate an inflamable Principle or Ingredient Wherefore since the Principles of Chymists may receive their Denominations from Qualities which it often exceeds not the power of Art nor alwayes that of the Fire to produce And since such Qualities may be found in Bodies that differ so much in other Qualities from one another that they need not be allow'd to agree in that pure and simple Nature which Principles to be so indeed must have it may justly be suspected that many Productions of the Fire that are shew'd us by Chymists as the Principles of the Concrete that afforded them may be but a new kind of Mixts And to annex on this Occasion to these arguments taken from the Nature of the thing one of those which Logicians call ad Hominem I shall desire You to take Notice that though Paracelsus Himself and some that are so mistaken as to think he could not be so have ventur'd to teach that not only the bodies here below but the Elements themselves and all the other Parts of the Universe are compos'd of Salt Sulphur and Mercury yet the learned Sennertus and all the more wary Chymists have rejected that conceit and do many of them confess that the Tria Prima are each of them made up of the four Elements and others of them make Earth and Water concur with Salt Sulphur and Mercury to the Constitution of Mixt bodies So that one sort of these Spagyrists notwithstanding the specious Titles they give to the productions of the Fire do in effect grant what I contend for And of the other sort I may well demand to what Kind of Bodies the Phlegme and dead Earth to be met with in Chymical Resolutions are to be referr'd For either they must say with Paracelsus but against their own Concessions as well as against Experience that these are also compos'd of the Tria Prima whereof they cannot separate any one from either of them or else they must confess that two of the vastest Bodies here below Earth and Water are neither of them compos'd of the Tria Prima and that consequently those three are not the Universal and Adequate
enough so call'd as Compounded of the Volatile salt of Urine and the fixt of the same Liquor which as I noted is not unlike sea-salt but that it self argues a manifest Difference betwixt the salts since such a Volatile salt is not wont to Unite thus with an ordinary Alcali but to fly away from it in the Heat And on this occasion I remember that to give some of my Friends an Ocular proof of the difference betwixt the fixt and Volatile salt of the same Concrete Wood I devis'd the following Experiment I took common Venetian sublimate and dissolv'd as much of it as I well could in fair Water then I took Wood Ashes and pouring on them Warme Water Dissolv'd their salt and filtrating the Water as soon as I found the Lixivium sufficiently sharp upon the tongue I reserv'd it for use Then on part of the former solution of sublimate dropping a little of this Dissolv'd Fixt salt of Wood the Liquors presently turn'd of an Orange Colour but upon the other part of the clear solution of sublimate putting some of the Volatile salt of Wood which abounds in the spirit of soot the Liquor immediately turn'd white almost like Milke and after a while let fall a white sediment as the other Liquor did a Yellow one To all this that I have said concerning the Difference of salts Aliquando oleum Cinnamomi c. suo sali Alcali miscetur absque omni aqua trium mensium Artificiosa occultaque circulatione totum in salem volatilem commutatum est Helmont Tria Prima Chymicorum c. pag. 412. I might add what I Formerly told you concerning the simple spirit of Box and such like Woods which differ much from the other salts hitherto mention'd and yet would belong to the saline Principle if Chymists did truly teach that all Tasts proceed from it And I might also annex what I noted to you out of Helmont concerning Bodies which though they consist in great part of Chymical Oyles do yet appear but Volatile salts But to insist on these things were to repeat and therefore I shall proceed This Disparity is also highly eminent in the separated sulphurs or Chymical Oyles of things For they contain so much of the scent and tast and vertues of the Bodies whence they were drawn that they seem to be but the Material Crasis if I may so speak of their Concretes Thus the Oyles of Cinnamon Cloves Nutmegs and other spices seem to be but the United Aromatick parts that did ennoble those Bodies And 't is a known thing that Oyl of Cinnamon and oyle of Cloves which I have likewise observ'd in the Oyles of several Woods will sink to the Bottom of Water whereas those of Nutmegs and divers other Vegetables will swim upon it The Oyle abusively call'd spirit of Roses swims at the Top of the Water in the forme of a white butter which I remember not to have observ'd in any other Oyle drawn in any Limbeck yet there is a way not here to be declar'd by which I have seen it come over in the forme of other Aromatick Oyles to the Delight and Wonder of those that beheld it In Oyle of Anniseeds which I drew both with and without Fermentation I observ'd the whole Body of the Oyle in a coole place to thicken into the Consistence and Appearance of white Butter which with the least heat resum'd its Former Liquidness In the Oyl of Olive drawn over in a Retort I have likewise more then once seen a spontaneous Coagulation in the Receiver And I have of it by me thus Congeal'd which is of such a strangely Penetrating scent as if 't would Perforate the Noses that approach it The like pungent Odour I also observ'd in the Distill'd Liquor of common sope which forc'd over from Minium lately afforded an oyle of a most admirable Penetrancy And he must be a great stranger both to the Writings and preparations of Chymists that sees not in the Oyles they distill from Vegetables and Animals a considerable and obvious Difference Nay I shall venture to add Eleutherius what perhaps you will think of kin to a Paradox that divers times out of the same Animal or Vegetable there may be extracted Oyles of Natures obviously differing To which purpose I shall not insist on the swimming and sinking Oyles which I have sometimes observ'd to float on and subside under the spirit of Guajacum and that of divers other Vegetables Distill'd with a strong and lasting Fire Nor shall I insist on the observation elsewhere mention'd of the divers and unminglable oyles afforded us by Humane Blood long fermented and Digested with spirit of Wine because these kind of oyles may seem chiefly to differ in Consistence and Weight being all of them high colour'd and adust But the Experiment which I devis'd to make out this Difference of the oyles of the same Vegetable ad Oculum as they speak was this that followes I took a pound of Annis-seeds and having grosly beaten them caused them to be put into a very large glass Retort almost filled with fair Water and placing this Retort in a sand Furnace I caus'd a very Gentle heat to be administer'd during the first day and a great part of the second till the VVater was for the most part drawn off and had brought over with it at least most of the Volatile and Aromatick Oyle of the seeds And then encreasing the Fire and changing the Receiver I obtain'd besides an Empyreumatical Spirit a quantity of adust oyle whereof a little floated upon the Spirit and the rest was more heavy and not easily separable from it And whereas these oyles were very dark and smell'd as Chymists speak so strongly of the Fire that their Odour did not betray from what Vegetables they had been forc'd the other Aromatick Oyle was enrich'd with the genuine smell and tast of the Concrete and spontaneously coagulating it self into white butter did manifest self to be the true Oyle of Annisseeds which Concrete I therefore chose to employ about this Experiment that the Difference of these Oyles might be more conspicuous then it would have been had I instead of it destill'd another Vegetable I had almost forgot to take notice that there is another sort of Bodies which though not obtain'd from Concretes by Distillation many Chymists are wont to call their Sulphur not only because such substances are for the most part high colour'd whence they are also and that more properly called Tinctures as dissolv'd Sulphurs are wont to be but especially because they are for the most part abstracted and separated from the rest of the Masse by Spirit of Wine which Liquor those men supposing to be Sulphureous they conclude that what it works upon and abstracts must be a Sulphur also And upon this account they presume that they can sequester the sulphur even of Minerals and Metalls from which 't is known that they cannot by Fire alone separate it To all This I shall answer
exquisite simplicity They pretend also to be able by the Fire to divide all Concretes Minerals and others into the same number of Distinct Substances And in the mean time I must think it improbable that they can either truly separate as many differing Bodies from Gold for Instance or Osteocolla as we can do from Wine or Vitriol or that the Mercury for Example of Gold or Saturn would be perfectly of the same Nature with that of Harts-horn and that the sulphur of Antimony would be but Numerically different from the Distill'd butter or oyle of Roses But suppose sayes Eleutherius that you should meet with Chymists who would allow you to take in Earth and Water into the number of the principles of Mixt Bodies and being also content to change the Ambiguous Name of Mercury for that more intelligible one of spirit should consequently make the principles of Compound Bodies to be Five would you not think it something hard to reject so plausible an Opinion only because the Five substances into which the Fire divides mixt Bodies are not exactly pure and Homogeneous For my part Continues Carneades I cannot but think it somewhat strange in case this Opinion be not true that it should fall out so luckily that so great a Variety of Bodies should be Analyz'd by the Fire into just five Distinct substances which so little differing from the Bodies that bear those names may so Plausibly be call'd Oyle Spirit Salt Water and Earth The Opinion You now propose answers Carneades being another then that I was engag'd to examine it is not requisite for me to Debate it at present nor should I have leisure to do it thorowly Wherefore I shall only tell you in General that though I think this Opinion in some respects more defensible then that of the Vulgar Chymists yet you may easily enough learn from the past Discourse what may be thought of it Since many of the Objections made against the Vulgar Doctrine of the Chymists seem without much alteration employable against this Hypothesis also For besides that this Doctrine does as well as the other take it for granted what is not easie to be prov'd that the Fire is the true and Adequate Analyzer of Bodies and that all the Distinct substances obtainable from a mixt Body by the Fire were so pre-existent in it that they were but extricated from each other by the Analysis Besides that this Opinion too ascribe to the Productions of the Fire an Elementary simplicity which I have shewn not to belong to them and besides that this Doctrine is lyable to some of the other Difficulties wherewith That of the Tria Prima is incumber'd Besides all this I say this quinary number of Elements if you pardon the Expression ought at least to have been restrain'd to the Generality of Animal and Vegetable Bodies since not only among these there are some Bodies as I formerly argu'd which for ought has yet been made to appear do consist either of fewer or more similar substances then precisely Five But in the Mineral Kingdom there is scarce one Concrete that has been evinc'd to be adequatly divisible into such five Principles or Elements and neither more nor less as this Opinion would have every mixt Body to consist of And this very thing continues Carneades may serve to take away or lessen your Wonder that just so many Bodies as five should be found upon the Resolution of Concretes For since we find not that the fire can make any such Analysis into five Elements of Metals and other Mineral Bodies whose Texture is more strong and permanent it remains that the Five Substances under consideration be Obtain'd from Vegetable and Animal Bodies which probably by reason of their looser Contexture are capable of being Distill'd And as to such Bodies 't is natural enough that whether we suppose that there are or are not precisely five Elements there should ordinarily occurr in the Dissipated parts a five Fold Diversity of Scheme if I may so speak For if the Parts do not remain all fix'd as in Gold Calcin'd Talck c. nor all ascend as in the Sublimation of Brimstone Camphire c. but after their Dissipation do associate themselves into new Schemes of Matter it is very likely that they will by the Fire be divided into fix'd and Volatile I mean in Reference to that degree of heat by which they are destill'd and those Volatile parts will for the most part ascend either in a dry forme which Chymists are pleas'd to call if they be Tastless Flowers if Sapid Volatile Salt or in a Liquid Forme And this Liquor must be either inflamable and so pass for oyl or not inflamable and yet subtile and pungent which may be call'd Spirit or else strengthless or insipid which may be nam'd Phlegme or Water And as for the fixt part or Caput Mortuum it will most commonly consist of Corpuscles partly Soluble in Water or Sapid especially if the Saline parts were not so Volatile as to fly away before which make up its fixt salt and partly insoluble and insipid which therefore seems to challenge the name of Earth But although upon this ground one might easily enough have foretold that the differing substances obtain'd from a perfectly mixt Body by the Fire would for the most part be reducible to the five newly mentioned States of Matter yet it will not presently follow that these five Distinct substances were simple and primogeneal bodies so pre-existent in the Concrete that the fire does but take them asunder Besides that it does not appear that all Mixt Bodies witness Gold Silver Mercury c. Nay nor perhaps all Vegetables which may appear by what we said above of Camphire Benzoin c. are resoluble by Fire into just such differing Schemes of Matter Nor will the Experiments formerly alledg'd permit us to look upon these separated Substances as Elementary or uncompounded Neither will it be a sufficient Argument of their being Bodies that deserve the Names which Chymists are pleas'd to give them that they have an Analogy in point of Consistence or either Volatility or Fixtness or else some other obvious Quality with the suppos'd Principles whose names are ascrib'd to them For as I told you above notwithstanding this Resemblance in some one Quality there may be such a Disparity in others as may be more fit to give them Differing Appellations then the Resemblance is to give them one and the same And indeed it seems but somewhat a gross Way of judging of the Nature of Bodies to conclude without Scruple that those must be of the same Nature that agree in some such General Quality as Fluidity Dryness Volatility and the like since each of those Qualities or States of Matter may Comprehend a great Variety of Bodies otherwise of a very differing Nature as we may see in the Calxes of Gold of Vitriol and of Venetian Talck compar'd with common Ashes which yet are very dry and fix'd by the vehemence
You to take notice with me that when our Authour though a Learned Man and one that pretends skill enough in Chymistry to reforme the whole Art comes to make good his confident Undertaking to give us an occular Demonstration of the immediate Presence of the four Elements in the resolution of Green Wood He is fain to say things that agree very little with one another For about the beginning of that passage of His lately recited to you he makes the sweat as he calls it of the green Wood to be Water the smoke Aire the shining Matter Fire and the Ashes Earth whereas a few lines after he will in each of these nay as I just now noted in one Distinct Part of the Ashes shew the four Elements So that either the former Analysis must be incompetent to prove that Number of Elements since by it the burnt Concrete is not reduc'd into Elementary Bodies but into such as are yet each of them compounded of the four Elements or else these Qualities from which he endeavours to deduce the presence of all the Elements in the fixt salt and each of the other separated substances will be but a precarious way of probation especially if you consider that the extracted Alcali of Wood being for ought appears at least as similar a Body as any that the Peripateticks can shew us if its differing Qualities must argue the presence of Distinct Elements it will scarce be possible for them by any way they know of employing the fire upon a Body to shew that any Body is a Portion of a true Element And this recals to my mind that I am now but in an occasional Excussion which aiming only to shew that the Peripateticks as well as the Chymists take in our present Controversie something for granted which they ought to prove I shall returne to my exceptions where I ended the first of them and further tell you that neither is that the only precarious thing that I take notice of in Sennertus his Argumentation for when he inferrs that because the Qualities he Mentions as Colours Smels and the like belong not to the Elements they therefore must to the Chymical Principles he takes that for granted which will not in haste be prov'd as I might here manifest but that I may be and by have a fitter opportunity to take notice of it And thus much at present may suffice to have Discours'd against the Supposition that almost every Quality must have some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they speak some Native receptacle wherein as in its proper Subject of in hesion it peculiarly resides and on whose account that quality belongs to the other Bodies Wherein it is to be met with Now this Fundamental supposition being once Destroy'd whatsoever is built upon it must fall to ruine of it self But I consider further that Chymists are for ought I have found far from being able to explicate by any of the Tria Prima those qualities which they pretend to belong primarily unto it and in mixt Bodies to Deduce from it T is true indeed that such qualities are not explicable by the four Elements but it will not therefore follow that they are so by the three hermetical Principles and this is it that seems to have deceiv'd the Chymists and is indeed a very common mistake amongst most Disputants who argue as if there could be but two Opinions concerning the Difficulty about which they contend and consequently they inferr that if their Adversaries Opinion be Erroneous Their's must needs be the Truth whereas many questions and especially in matters Physiological may admit of so many Differing Hypotheses that 't will be very inconsiderate and fallacious to conclude except where the Opinions are precisely Contradictory the Truth of one from the falsity of another And in our particular case 't is no way necessary that the Properties of mixt Bodies must be explicable either by the Hermetical or the Aristotelian Hypothesis there being divers other and more plausible wayes of explaining them and especially that which deduces qualities from the motion figure and contrivance of the small parts of Bodies as I think might be shewn if the attempt were as seasonable as I fear it would be Tedious I will allow then that the Chymists do not causelessly accuse the Doctrine of the four elements of incompetency to explain the Properties of Compound bodies And for this Rejection of a Vulgar Error they ought not to be deny'd what praise men may deserve for exploding a Doctrine whose Imperfections are so conspicuous that men needed but not to shut their Eyes to discover them But I am mistaken if our Hermetical Philosophers Themselves need not as well as the Peripateticks have Recourse to more Fruitfull and Comprehensive Principles then the trial Prima to make out the Properties of the Bodies they converse with Not to accumulate Examples to this purpose because I hope for a fitter opportunity to prosecute this Subject let us at present only point at Colour that you may guess by what they say of so obvious and familiar a Quality how little Instruction we are to expect from the Tria Prima in those more abstruse ones which they with the Aristotelians stile Occult. For about Colours neither do they at all agree among themselves nor have I met with any one of which of the three Perswasions soever that does intelligibly explicate Them The Vulgar Chymists are wont to ascribe Colours to Mercury De Cons. dissen cap. 11. pag. 186. Paracelsus in divers places attributes them to Salt and Sennertus having recited their differing Opinions Dissents from both and referrs Colours rather unto Sulphur But how Colours do nay how they may arise from either of these Principles I think you will scarce say that any has yet intelligibly explicated And if Mr. Boyle will allow me to shew you the Experiments which he has collected about Colours you will I doubt not confess that bodies exhibite colours not upon the Account of the Predominancy of this or that Principle in them but upon that of their Texture and especially the Disposition of their superficial parts whereby the Light rebounding thence to the Eye is so modifi'd as by differing Impressions variously to affect the Organs of Sight I might here take notice of the pleasing variety of Colours exhibited by the Triangular glass as 't is wont to be call'd and demand what addition or decrement of either Salt Sulphur or Mercury befalls the Body of the Glass by being Prismatically figur'd and yet 't is known that without that shape it would not affor'd those colours as it does But because it may be objected that these are not real but apparent Colours that I may not lose time in examing the Distinction I will alledge against the Chymists a couple of examples of Real and Permanent Colours Drawn from Metalline Bodies and represent that without the addition of any extraneous body Quicksilver may by the Fire alone and that in glass
partly also or rather chiefly to intimate to you the grounds upon which I likewise differ from Helmont in this that whereas he ascribes almost all things and even diseases themselves to their determinate Seeds I am of opinion that besides the peculiar Fabricks of the Bodies of Plants and Animals and perhaps also of some Metals and Minerals which I take to be the Effects of seminal principles there are many other bodies in nature which have and deserve distinct and Proper names but yet do but result from such contextures of the matter they are made of as may without determinate seeds be effected by heat cold artificial mixtures and compositions and divers other causes which sometimes nature imployes of her own accord and oftentimes man by his power and skill makes use of to fashion the matter according to his Intentions This may be exemplified both in the productions of Nature and in those of Art of the first sort I might name multitudes but to shew how sleight a variation of Textures without addition of new ingredients may procure a parcel of matter divers names and make it be Lookt upon as Different Things I shall invite you to observe with me That Clouds Rain Hail Snow Froth and Ice may be but water having its parts varyed as to their size and distance in respect of each other and as to motion and rest And among Artificial Productions we may take notice to skip the Crystals of Tartar of Glass Regulus Martis-Stellatus and particularly of the Sugar of Lead which though made of that insipid Metal and sour salt of Vinager has in it a sweetnesse surpassing that of common Sugar and divers other qualities which being not to be found in either of its two ingredients must be confess'd to belong to the Concrete it self upon the account of its Texture This Consideration premis'd it will be I hope the more easie to perswade you that the Fire may as well produce some new textures in a parcel of matter as destroy the old Wherefore hoping that you have not forgot the Arguments formerly imploy'd against the Doctrine of the Tria prima namely that the Salt Sulphur and Mercury into which the Fire seems to resolve Vegetable and Animal Bodies are yet compounded not simple and Elementary Substances And that as appeared by the Experiment of Pompions the Tria prima may be made out of Water hoping I say that you remember These and the other Things that I formerly represented to the same purpose I shall now add only that if we doubt not the Truth of some of Helmonts Relation We may well doubt whether any of these Heterogeneities be I say not pre-existent so as to convene together when a plant or Animal is to be constituted but so much as in-existent in the Concrete whence they are obtain'd when the Chymists first goes about to resolve it For not to insist upon the un-inflamable Spirit of such Concretes because that may be pretended to be but a mixture of Phlegme and Salt the Oyle or Sulphur of Vegetables or Animals is according to him reducible by the help of Lixiviate Salts into Sope as that Sope is by the help of repeated Distillations from a Caput Mortuum of Chalk into insipid Water And as for the saline substance that seems separable from mixt bodies Omne autem Alcali additae pinguedine in aqueum liquorem qui tandem mera simplex aqua fit reducitur ut videre est in Sapone Lazurio lapide c. quoties per adjuncta fixa semen Pinguedinis deponit Helmont the same Helmonts tryals give us cause to think That it may be a production of the Fire which by transporting and otherwise altering the particles of the matter does bring it to a Saline nature For I know sayes he in the place formerly alledg'd to another purpose a way to reduce all stones into a meer Salt of equal weight with the stone whence it was produc'd and that without any of the least either Sulphur or Mercury which asseveration of my Author would perhaps seem less incredible to You if I durst acquaint You with all I could say upon that subject And hence by the way you may also conclude that the Sulphur and Mercury as they call them that Chymists are wont to obtain from compound Bodies by the Fire may possibly in many Cases be the productions of it since if the same bodies had been wrought upon by the Agents employ'd by Helmont they would have yielded neither Sulphur nor Mercury and those portions of them which the Fire would have presented Us in the forme of Sulphureous and Mercurial Bodies would have by Helmonts method been exhibited to us in the form of Salt But though sayes Eleutherius You have alledg'd very plausible Arguments against the tria Prima yet I see not how it will be possible for you to avoid acknowledging that Earth and Water are Elementary Ingredients though not of Mineral Concretes yet of all Animal and Vegetable Bodies Since if any of these of what sort soever be committed to Distillation there is regularly and constantly separated from it a phlegme or aqueous part and a Caput Mortuum or Earth I readily acknowledged answers Carneades it is not so easy to reject Water and Earth and especially the former as 't is to reject the Tria Prima from being the Elements of mixt Bodies but 't is not every difficult thing that is impossible I consider then as to Water that the chief Qualities which make men give that name to any visible Substance are that it is Fluid or Liquid and that it is insipid and inodorous Now as for the tast of these qualities I think you have never seen any of those separated substances that the Chymists call Phlegme which was perfectly devoyd both of Tast and Smell and if you object that yet it may be reasonably suppos'd that since the whole Body is Liquid the mass is nothing but Elementary Water faintly imbu'd with some of the Saline or Sulphureous parts of the same Concrete which it retain'd with it upon its Separation from the Other Ingredients To this I answer That this Objection would not appear so stong as it is plausible if Chymists understood the Nature of Fluidity and Compactnesse and that as I formerly observ'd to a Bodies being Fluid there is nothing necessary but that it be divided into parts small enough and that these parts be put into such a motion among themselves as to glide some this way and some that way along each others Surfaces So that although a Concrete were never so dry and had not any Water or other Liquor inexistent in it yet such a Comminution of its parts may be made by the fire or other Agents as to turn a great portion of them into Liquor Of this Truth I will give an instance employ'd by our friend here present as one of the most conducive of his experiments to Illustrate the nature of Salts If you Take then sea salt
and melt it in the Fire to free it from the aqueous parts and afterward distill it with a vehement Fire from burnt Clay or any other as dry a Caput mortuum as you please you will as Chymists confess by teaching it drive over a good part of the Salt in the form of a Liquor And to satisfy some ingenious men That a great part of this Liquor was still true sea salt brought by the Operation of the Fire into Corpuscles so small and perhaps so advantageously shap'd as to be capable of the forme of a Fluid Body He did in my presence poure to such spititual salts a due proportion of the spirit or salt and Phlegme of Urine whereby having evaporated the superfluous moisture he soon obtain'd such another Concrete both as to tast and smell and easie sublimableness as common Salt Armoniack which you know is made up of grosse and undistill'd sea salt united with the salts of Urine and of Soot which two are very neer of kin to each other And further to manifest that the Corpuscles of sea salt and the Saline ones of Urine retain their several Natures in this Concrete He mixt it with a convenient quantity of Salt of Tartar and committing it to Distillation soon regain'd his spirit of Urine in a liquid form by its self the Sea salt staying behind with the Salt of Tartar Wherefore it is very possible that dry Bodies may by the Fire be reduc'd to Liquors without any separation of Elements but barely by a certain kind of Dissipation and Comminution of the matter whereby its parts are brought into a new state And if it be still objected that the Phlegme of mixt Bodies must be reputed water because so weak a tast needs but a very small proportion of Salt to impart it It may be reply'd that for ought appears common Salt and divers other bodies though they be distill'd never so dry and in never so close Vessels will yield each of them pretty store of a Liquor wherein though as I lately noted Saline Corpuscles abound Yet there is besides a large proportion of Phlegme as may easily be discovered by coagulating the Saline Corpuseles with any convenient Body as I lately told you our Friend coagulated part of the Spirit of Salt with Spirit of Urine and as I have divers times separated a salt from Oyle of Vitriol it self though a very ponderous Liquor and drawn from a saline body by boyling it with a just quantity of Mercury and then washing the newly coagulated salt from the Precipitate with fair Water Now to what can we more probably ascribe this plenty of aqueous Substance afforded us by the Distillation of such bodies than unto this That among the various operations of the Fire upon the matter of a Concrete divers particles of that matter are reduc'd to such a shape and bignesse as is requisite to compose such a Liquor as Chymists are wont to call Phlegme or Water How I conjecture this change may be effected 't is neither necessary for me to tell you nor possible to do so without a much longer discourse then were now seasonable But I desire you would with me reflect upon what I formerly told you conterning the change of Quicksilver into Water For that Water having but a very faint tast if any whit more than divers of those liquors that Chymists referr to Phlegme By that experiment it seems evident that even a metalline body and therefore much more such as are but Vegetable or Animal may by a simple operation of the Fire be turn'd in great part into Water And since those I dispute with are not yet able out of Gold or Silver or divers other Concretes to separate any thing like Water I hope I may be allow'd to conclude against Them that water it self is not an Universal and pre-existent Ingredient of Mixt Bodies But as for those Chymists that Supposing with me the Truth of what Helmont relates of the Alkahest's wonderful Effects have a right to press me with his Authority concerning them and to alledge that he could Transmute all reputedly mixt Bodies into insipid and meer Water To those I shall represent That though his Affirmations conclude strongly against the Vulgar Chymists against whom I have not therefore scrupl'd to Employ Them since they Evince that the Commonly reputed Principles or Ingredients of Things are not Permanent and indestructible since they may be further reduc'd into Insipid Phlegme differing from them all Yet till we can be allow'd to examine this Liquor I think it not unreasonable to doubt whether it be not something else then meer Water For I find not any other reason given by Helmont of his Pronouncing it so then that it is insipid Now Sapour being an Accident or an Affection of matter that relates to our Tongue Palate and other Organs of Tast it may very possibly be that the small Parts of a Body may be of such a Size and Shape as either by their extream Littleness or by their slenderness or by their Figure to be unable to pierce into and make a perceptible Impression upon the Nerves or Membranous parts of the Organs of Tast and what may be fit to work otherwise upon divers other Bodies than meer Water can and consequently to Disclose it self to be of a Nature farr enough from Elementary In Silke dyed Red or of any other Colour whilst many Contiguous Threads makes up a skein the Colour of the Silke is conspicuous but if only a very few of them be lookt upon the Colour will appear much fainter then before But if You take out one simple Thread you shall not easily be able to discern any Colour at all So subtile an Object having not the Force to make upon the Optick Nerve an Impression great enough to be taken Notice of It is also observ'd that the best sort of Oyl-Olive is almost tastless and yet I need not tell you how exceedingly distant in Nature Oyle is from VVater The Liquor into which I told you upon the Relation of Lully and Eye-witness that Mercury might be Transmuted has sometimes but a very Languid if any Tast and yet its Operations even upon some Mineral Bodies are very peculiar Quicksilver it self also though the Corpuscles it consists of be so very small as to get into the Pores of that Closest and compactest of Bodies Gold is yet you know altogether Tastless And our Helmont several times tells us that fair Water wherein a little Quantity f Quicksilver has lain for some time though it acquire no certain Tast or other sensible Quality from the Quicksilver Yet it has a power to destroy wormes in humane Bodies which he does much but not causelessly extoll And I remember a great Lady that had been Eminent for her Beauty in Divers Courts confess'd to me that this insipid Liquor was of all innocent washes for the Face the best that she ever met with And here let me conclude my Discourse concerning such waters
Imaginary Substantial Form as by the aggregate of these Qualities If you consider these Things I say and that the varying of either the figure or the Size or the Motion or the Situation or Connexion of the Corpuscles whereof any of these Bodies is compos'd may alter the Fabrick of it you will possibly be invited to suspect with me that there is no great need that Nature should alwayes have Elements before hand whereof to make such Bodies as we call mixts And that it is not so easie as Chymists and others have hitherto Imagin'd to discern among the many differing Substances that may without any extraordinary skill be obtain'd from the same portion of matter Which ought to be esteemed exclusively to all the rest its in-existent Elementary Ingredients much lesse to determine what Primogeneal and Simple Bodies convened together to compose it To exemplify this I shall add to what I have already on several occasions Represented but this single instance You may remember Eleutherius that I formerly intimated to you that besides Mint and Pompions I produced divers other Vegetables of very differing Natures out of Water Wherefore you will not I presume think it incongruous to suppose that when a slender Vine-slip is set into the ground and takes root there it may likewise receive its Nutriment from the water attracted out of the earth by his roots or impell'd by the warm'th of the sun or pressure of the ambient air into the pores of them And this you will the more easily believe if you ever observ'd what a strange quantity of Water will Drop out of a wound given to the Vine in a convenient place at a seasonable time in the Spring and how little of Tast or Smell this Aqua Vitis as Physitians call it is endow'd with notwithstanding what concoction or alteration it may receive in its passage through the Vine to discriminate it from common Water Supposing then this Liquor at its first entrance into the roots of the Vine to be common Water Let Us a little consider how many various Substances may be obtain'd from it though to do so I must repeat somewhat that I had a former occasion to touch upon And first this Liquor being Digested in the plant and assimilated by the several parts of it is turn'd into the Wood Bark Pith Leaves c. of the Vine The same Liquor may be further dry'd and fashon'd into Vine-buds and these a while after are advanced unto sour Grapes which express'd yield Verjuice a Liquor very differing in several qualities both from Wine and other Liquors obtainable from the Vine These soure Grapes being by the heat of the Sun concocted and ripened turne to well tasted Grapes Those if dry'd in the Sun and Distill'd afford a faetid Oyle and a piercing Empyreumatical Spirit but not a Vinous Spirit These dry'd Grapes or Raisins boyl'd in a convenient proportion of Water make a sweet Liquor which being betimes distill'd afford an Oyle and Spirit much like those of the Raisins themselves If the juice of the Grapes be squeez'd out and put to Ferment it first becomes a sweet and turbid Liquor then grows lesse sweet and more clear and then affords in common Distillations not an Oyle but a Spirit which though inflamable like Oyle differs much from it in that it is not fat and that it will readily mingle with Water I have likewise without Addition obtain'd in processe of time and by an easie way which I am ready to teach you from one of the noblest sorts of Wine pretty store of pure and curiously figured Crystals of Salt together with a great proportion of a Liquor as sweet almost as Hony and these I obtained not from Must but True and sprightly Wine besides the Vinous Liquor the fermented Juice of Grapes is partly turned into liquid Dregs or Leeze and partly into that crust or dry feculancy that is commonly called Tartar and this Tartar may by the Fire be easily divided into five differing substances four of which are not Acid and the other not so manifestly Acid as the Tartar it self The same Vinous Juice after some time especially if it be not carefully kept Degenerates into that very sour Liquor called Vinegar from which you may obtain by the Fire a Spirit and a Crystalline Salt differing enough from the Spirit and Lixiviate Salt of Tartar And if you pour the Dephlegm'd Spirit of the Vinegar upon the Salt of Tartar there will be produc'd such a Conflict or Ebullition as if there were scarce two more contrary Bodies in Nature and oftentimes in this Vinager you may observe part of the matter to be turned into an innumerable company of swimming Animals which our Friend having divers years ago observed hath in one of his Papers taught us how to discover clearly without the help of a Microscope Into all these various Schemes of matter or differingly Qualifyed Bodies besides divers others that I purposely forbear to mention may the Water that is imbib'd by the roots of the Vine be brought partly by the formative power of the plant and partly by supervenient Agents or Causes without the visible concurrence of any extraneous Ingredient but if we be allowed to add to the Productions of this transmuted Water a sew other substances we may much encrease the Variety of such Bodies although in this second sort of Productions the Vinous parts seem scarce to retain any thing of the much more fix'd Bodies wherewith they were mingl'd but only to have by their Mixture with them acquir'd such a Disposition that in their recess occasion'd by the Fire they came to be alter'd as to shape or Bigness or both and associated after a New manner Thus as I formerly told you I did by the Addition of a Caput Mortuum of Antimony and some other Bodies unfit for Distillation obtain from crude Tartar store of a very Volatile and Crystalline Salt differing very much in smell and other Qualities from the usuall salts of Tartar But sayes Eleutherius interrupting him at these Words if you have no restraint upon you I would very gladly before you go any further be more particularly inform'd how you make this Volatile Salt because you know that such Multitudes of Chymists have by a scarce imaginable Variety of wayes attempted in Vain the Volatilization of the Salt of Tartar that divers learned Spagyrists speak as if it were impossible to make any thing out of Tartar that shall be Volatile in a Saline Forme or as some of them express it in forma sicca I am very farr from thinking answers Carneades that the Salt I have mention'd is that which Paracelsus and Helmont mean when they speak of Sal Tartari Volatile and ascribe such great things to it For the Salt I speak of falls extreamly short of those Virtues not seeming in its Tast Smel and other Obvious Qualities to differ very much though something it do differ from Salt of Harts-horn and other Volatile Salts drawn
of inserting them it is thought fit that the Printer give notice of one Omission at the End of the first Dialogue and that to these Errata there be annex'd the ensuing sheet of Paper that was casually lost or forgotten by him that should have put it into the Presse where it ought to have been inserted in the 187. printed Page at the break betwixt the words Nature in the 13th line and But in the next line after Though it is to be noted here that by the mistake of the Printer in some Books the number of 187 is placed at the top of two somewhat distant pages and in such copies the following addition ought to be inserted in the latter of the two as followeth And on this occasion I cannot but take notice that whereas the great Argument which the Chymists are wont to employ to vilify Earth and Water and make them be look'd upon as useless and unworthy to be reckon'd among the Principles of Mixt Bodies is that they are not endow'd with Specifick Properties but only with Elementary qualities of which they use to speak very sleightingly as of qualities contemptible and unactive I see no sufficient Reason for this Practice of the Chymists For 't is confess'd that Heat is an Elementary Quality and yet that an almost innumerable company of confiderable Things are perform'd by Heat is manifest to them that duly consider the various Phaenomena wherein it intervenes as a principall Actor and none ought less to ignore or distrust this Truth then a Chymist Since almost all the operations and Productions of his Art are performed chiefly by the means of Heat And as for Cold it self upon whose account they so despise the Earth and Water if they please to read in the Voyages of our English and Dutch Navigators in Nova Zembla and other Northern Regions what stupendious Things may be effected by Cold they would not perhaps think it so despicable And not to repeat what I lately recited to You out of Paracelsus himself who by the help of an intense Cold teaches to separate the Quintessence of Wine I will only now observe to You that the Conservation of the Texture of many Bodies both animate and inanimate do's so much depend upon the convenient motion both of their own Fluid and Looser Parts and of the ambient Bodies whether Air Water c. that not only in humane Bodies we see that the immoderate or unseasonable coldness of the Air especially when it finds such Bodies everheated do's very frequently discompose the Oeconomie of them and occasion variety of Diseases but in the solid and durable Body of Iron it self in which one would not expect that suddain Cold should produce any notable change it may have so great an operation that if you take a Wire or other slender piece of steel and having brought it in the fire to a white heat You suffer it afterwards to cool leasurely in the Air it will when it is cold be much of the same hardnesse it was of before Whereas if as soon as You remove it from the fire you plunge it into cold water it will upon the sudden Refrigeration acquire a very much greater hardness then it had before Nay and will become manifestly brittle And that you may not impute this to any peculiar Quality in the Water or other Liquor or Unctuous matter wherein such heated steel is wont to be quenched that it may be temper'd I know a very skillful Tradesman that divers times hardens steel by suddenly cooling it in a Body that is neither a liquor nor so much as moist A tryal of that Nature I remember I have seen made And however by the operation that Water has upon steel quenched in it whether upon the Account of its coldness and moisture or upon that of any other of its qualities it appears that water is not alwaies so inefficacious and contemptible a Body as our Chymists would have it passe for And what I have said of the Efficacy of Cold and Heat might perhaps be easily enough carried further by other considerations and experiments were it not that having been mention'd only upon the Bye I must not insist on it but proceed to another Subject ERRATA PAg. 5. line 6. read so qualify'd 15.19 Ratiocinations 25.15 for a 33.17 in a parenth that is no more 51.24 besides another Caput 79.10 employ 86.13 structure 97.13 Sack ibid. 22. Sack 104.29 instead of appear it will leg appear it will 118.20 leasure ibid. principal 126.20 and till it suffer 129. 3 leg in parenth notwithstanding c. 131.15 so 144.15 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 151.5 nor have been resolved 180.25 Magistram 185.15 lately 188.15 tunned 200.1 intolerable ibid. 2. in 209 21. tegularum 210.7 distill'd from 215.25 dele the 220.1 bodies 228.11 fugitive 231.17 instead of all lege a pound 237.6 Chymist 248.18 Ashes off 251. 23 Deopilative 259.6 it self 269.10 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ibid. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 276.25 make a parenth at the words by the and shut it after the words in the 27. line at all 280.11 Corals 288.6 ascribes 294 22. poresity ibid 28. noted 296.1 Bodies 305.8 attended 307.12 dele to 308.12 devisers 312 14. and 313.3 too 314.24 fugitivenesse 333.13 origine ibid. 24. contrivance of 339.1 Nay Barthias 142.3 in I will 350.26 absurd 356.11 Goutieres 358.6 antea 360.1 compertissimum ibid 18. Joachimica ibid. 19. graminis ibid. 23. sua 362 6. Dutch account 363.2 diggers ibid 11. and 12. lin read damp as the Englishmen also call it 366.25 a height 368.19 in use 370.9 latter And ibid. 24. Water J 377.22 Rest ibid. 25. know 378.23 after Aggregate insert or complex ibid 27. dele ibid 28. dele 379.4 before as begin a parenth which ends lin 9. at Gold ibid. instead of Which put This ibid. 12. with the word Texture should be connected the next line Though and this word Though is to have put before it a parenthesis which is to end at the word Fluid in the 16th line 383 3. Regulus Martis Stellatus 382.3 Relations ibid 9. Chymist 386.29 confesse by teaching it 391.8 and yet may 392.1 an ibid. 12. of 393. distinct Tasts 397.13 Talck 398.18 Earth 399.18 parts 404.8 sal-petrae 419.20 after it put in Sal. The Publisher doth advertise the Reader that seeing there are divers Experiments related in this Treatise which the Author is not unwilling to submit to the consideration also of Forraign Philosophers he believes this piece will be very soon translated into Latin END