HISTOKT OF THE ATOMIC THEOBY. 121 



sizes and shapes variously moved. • ♦ • • »'pjg ^jg^ 

 possible, that of these minute particles many of the smallest 

 and contiguous ones were associated into minute masses, and 

 by their coalitions constituted such numerous little primary 

 concretions, as were not easily separable into the particles 

 that compose them." * 



t "And indeed if we consider how far the bare change 

 of texture, whether maffe by art or nature, can go, in pro- 

 ducing such new qualities, in the same parcel of matter ; and 

 how many inanimate bodies we know to be denominated 

 and distinguished, not so much by any imaginary substantial 

 form, as by the aggregate of these qualities ; and that the 

 variation of figure, size, motion, situation, or connection 

 of the corpuscles, whereof any of these bodies is coiHt 

 posed may alter the fabric of it; we shall have cause to 

 suspect, that there is no need that nature should always have 

 elements provided, whereof to compose mixed bodies; and 

 that it is not so easy as chymists and others have hitherto 

 imagined, to discern which among the many different sub- 

 stances, without any extraordinary skill, to be obtained from 

 the same portion of matter, ought, exclusive of the rest, to be 

 esteemed its elementary ingredients ; much less to determine 

 what primogeneal and simple bodies conspired together to 

 compose it." ♦ ♦ * • 



" Our experiment affords us a considerable argument in 

 favour of that part of the mechanical hypothesis which teaches 

 inanimate bodies to diflfer from one another, but in the magni- 

 tude, shape, motion, texture, and, in a word, the mechanical 

 properties of the minute parts they consist of." Page 360. 

 At the end of the chemical doctrine of qualities, p. 441, — " In 

 short, these hypotheses greatly hinder the progress of human 

 knowledge, that introduce morals and politics into philosophy, 

 where all things are transacted according to mechanical 

 laws." 



• Vol. III., p. 263. t Pag« 850. 



