And it Appears, That by Convenient Additaments such Substances may be
Separated by the Help of the Fire, as could not be so by the Fire
alone: Witness the Sulphur of Antimony.
And Lastly, I must Represent, That since it appears too that the Fire
is but One of the Instruments that must be Employ'd in the Resolution
of Bodies, We may Reasonably Challenge the Liberty of doing Two
Things. For when ever any _Menstruum_ or other Additament is Employ'd,
together with the Fire to Obtain a Sulphur or a Salt from a Body, We
may well take the Freedom to Examine, whether or no That _Menstruum_
do barely Help to Separate the Principle Obtain'd by It, or whether
there Intervene not a Coalition of the Parts of the Body Wrought upon
with Those of the _Menstruum_, whereby the Produc'd Concrete may be
Judg'd to Result from the Union of Both. And it will be farther
Allowable for Us to Consider, how far any Substance, Separated by the
Help of such Additaments, Ought to pass for one of the _Tria Prima_;
since by One Way of Handling the same Mixt Body it may according to
the Nature of the Additaments, and the Method of Working upon it, be
made to Afford differing Substances from those Obtainable from it by
other Additaments, and another Method, nay and (as may appear by what
I Formerly told You about Tartar) Differing from any of the Substances
into which a Concrete is Divisible by the Fire without Additaments,
though perhaps those Additaments do not, as Ingredients, enter the
Composition of the Obtained Body, but only Diversify the Operation of
the Fire upon the Concrete; and though that Concrete by the Fire
alone may be Divided into a Number of Differing Substances, as Great
as any of the Chymists that I have met with teach us that of the
Elements to be. And having said thus much (sayes _Carneades_) to the
Objection likely to be Propos'd by some Chymists, I am now to Examine
that which I Foresee will be Confidently press'd by Divers
Peripateticks, who, to Prove Fire to be the true Analyzer of Bodies,
will Plead, That it is the very Definition of Heat given by
_Aristotle_, and Generally Received, _Congregare Homogenea, &
Heterogenea Segregare_, to Assemble Things of a Resembling, and
Disjoyn those of a Differing Nature. To this I answer, That this
Effect is far from being so Essential to Heat, as 'tis Generally
Imagin'd; for it rather Seems, that the True and Genuine Property of
Heat is, to set a Moving, and thereby to Dissociate the parts of
Bodies, and Subdivide them into Minute Particles, without regard to
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