80 Translation of Key's Essays 



forward ; but, if otherwise, will not fail to approve my searcli 

 after the truth, in so difficult a question, and will be stimulated 

 by my example, to treat the matter more skilfully, which 

 I invite them to do ; at all events, I shall have shewn my desire 

 to benefit the public, by suffering this manuscript to appear 

 before it, though it stamp an injurious stigma on my own 

 reputation. 



Essay I. 



All matter under the compass of the Heavens, has weight. 



God, creating the universe, neither made it perfectly like 

 Himself, nor perfectly unlike, for He, being One, has made the 

 world as not one, from the diverse multiplicity of its innumerable 

 parts, ordaining, nevertheless, that they should collect into a 

 certain unity by their exact contiguity. The upper world has 

 no connexion with this subject; the lower, and elementary 

 world, owes this contiguity to the weight divinely impressed 

 on its parts, aided by the subtle fluidity of some of its simple 

 bodies. It is by this quality, with which the matter of the four 

 elements is more or less invested, that they are separated 

 from one another, and each transported to its proper place, 

 as the generation of compounds*, and the beauty of the 

 universe requires. For this matter, every where filling 

 the space closed in by the curvature of heaven, is con- 

 tinually pushed, by its own weight, towards the centre of the 

 world. Earth, it is true, as the heaviest, readily occupies this 

 situation, and forcing its fellow-elements to retire, causes 

 water, the second in weight, to be also second in place ; so 

 that the air, driven from the lowest, as well as the second 

 station, holds the third place, leaving the highest region to be 

 occupied by fire, the lightest of all. 



The chemists furnish us with a pretty representation of this, 

 by taking pulverized black enamel, liquor of tartar, brandy 

 tinged blue with litmus, and spirit of turpentine reddened by 

 alkanet, and shaking the whole together in a phial, till it 



* " Des mixtes." v 



