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CHAPTER III. 



On the Law by which Caloric produces the oppo- 

 site Forces of Attraction and Repulsion, Con- 

 traction and Expansion. 



" That alone is true philosophy which repeats the words of the 

 universe with fidelity, and is written, as it were, by dictation of 

 the universe." BACON. 



THE doctrine that every thing in nature is com- 

 posed of two descriptions of matter, the one essen- 

 tially active and aethereal, the other passive and 

 motionless, was recognized by the most acute 

 and profound sages of antiquity in every quarter 

 of the civilized world. But notwithstanding they 

 all regarded elementary caloric as the prime 

 mover, they seem to have overlooked the law by 

 which it repels its own particles, and tends to 

 combine with those of ponderable matter, with 

 forces that vary inversely as the squares of the 

 distance, so as to produce all the centrifugal and 

 centripetal forces of nature. The same obser- 

 vation applies equally to Bacon, Descartes, New- 

 ton, and other modern philosophers, who, although 

 they referred all the operations of nature to what 

 they called a spirit or pneumatical body, a materia 

 subtilis, a subtile &ther, &c. they never identified 

 it with any known principle, nor explained how 

 it causes both attraction and repulsion, union and 

 separation. 



