436 THOUGHTS ON THE 



The same thing is distinctly visible in the case of quick 

 silver, the whole of which is volatilized and then con 

 densed again without the substraction of the smallest 

 particle. In the oil of lamps too, and in the tallow of can 

 dles, the whole of the fat is sublimated, and there is no 

 incineration, for the fuliginous matter is formed not before 

 but after the ignition, and is, so to speak, the corpse of the 

 flame, not a deposition of the oil or tallow. 



And this lays open one way to overturn the theory of 

 Democritus, with respect to the diversity of seminal par 

 ticles or atoms ; a way, I say, in the process of investigating 

 nature herself: in opinion indeed there is another way to 

 overturn it, much more smooth and easy, as the received 

 philosophy assumes its phantasmal matter, to be common 

 to the forms of nature, and equally susceptible of them all. 



Of the Remissness of the Ancients in investigating Motion, 

 and moving Principles. 



in. 



To place the investigation of nature chiefly in the con 

 sideration and examination of motion, is the characteristic 

 of him who has an eye to practical effect as his object. 

 And to indulge in meditation and reverie, respecting the 

 principles of nature viewed as quiescent, belongs to such as 

 desire to spin out dissertations, or supply matter of argu 

 mentative subtlety. Now those principles I call quiescent, 

 which inform us of what elements things are compounded, 

 and consist ; but not by what energy or in what way they 

 effect these coalitions. For it is not enough, with a view 

 to action and the enlargement of the power and operation 

 of man, nor does it in fact bear materially on these ends at 

 all, to know what are the constituent parts of things, if you 

 are ignorant of the modes and processes of their transforma 

 tions and metamorphoses. For to take an example from 

 the mechanical adepts (in whose heated imagination 

 those famous speculations regarding the first principles of 

 nature appear to have had their origin), is the man who 

 knows the simples that enter into the composition of an 

 alexipharmic (or antidote), necessarily able in consequence, 

 to prepare an alexipharmic ? Or is ne who has got a cor 

 rect analysis of the ingredients of sugar, glass, or canvass, 

 to be therefore supposed a master of the art of their pre 

 paration and manufacture? Yet it is in speculating and 

 inquiring with respect to this description of dead princi 

 ples, that the meditations of men have been hitherto priu- 



