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,
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