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
[Sidenote: 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,
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