8 CLASSICS OF MODERN SCIENCE 



II. With regard to the second of the seven above-mentioned 

 methods, we must especially observe, that compression and similar 

 violence have a most powerful efifect either in producing locomotion, 

 and other motions of the same nature, as may be observed in engines 

 and projectiles, or in destroying the organic body, and those qualities, 

 which consist entirely in motion (for all life, and every description 

 of flame and ignition are destroyed by compression, which also in- 

 jures and deranges every machine) ; or in destroying those qualities 

 which consist in position and a coarse difference of parts, as in colors ; 

 for the color of a flower when whole, differs from that it presents 

 when bruised, and the same may be observed of whole and powdered 

 amber ; or in tastes, for the taste of a pear before it is ripe, and 

 of the same pear when bruised and softened, is different, since it 

 becomes perceptibly more sweet. But such violence is of little avail 

 in the more noble transformations and changes of homogeneous 

 bodies, for they do not, by such means, acquire any constantly and 

 permanently new state, but one that is transitory, and always strug- 

 gling to return to its former habit and freedom. It would not, how- 

 ever, be useless to make some more diligent experiments with regard 

 to this ; whether, for instance, the condensation of a perfectly 

 homogeneous body (such as air, water, oil, and the like) or their 

 rarefaction, when effected by violence, can become permanent, fixed, 

 and, as it were, so changed, as to become a nature. This might at 

 first be tried by simple perseverance, and then by means of helps 

 and harmonies. It might readily have been attempted (if we had 

 but thought of it), when we condensed water (as was mentioned 

 above), by hammering and compression, until it burst out. For we 

 ought to have left the flattened globe untouched for some days, and 

 then to have drawn off the water, in order to try whether it would 

 have immediately occupied the same dimensions as it did before the 

 condensation. If it had not been done so, either immediately, or 

 soon afterwards, the condensation would have appeared to have been 

 rendered constant; if not, it would have appeared that a restitution 

 took place, and that the condensation had been transitory. Something 

 of the same kind might have been tried with the glass eggs ; the tgg 

 should have been, sealed up suddenly and firmly, after a complete 

 exhaustion of the air, and should have been allowed to remain so 

 for some days, and it might then have been tried whether, on opening 



