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 their Accession should as well correct the Form as augment the Matter of our Annotations. And as for the two Tracts, that are inserted among these Essays about Qualities; I mean the Discourse of the Imperfection of the Chymical Doctrine of them, and the Reflections on the Hypothesis of Acidum and Alcali, the occasion of their being made parts of this Book is so far express'd in the Tracts themselves, that I need not here trouble the Reader with a particular Account of it.

V. I do not undertake, that all the following Accounts of Particular Qualities would prove to be the very true ones, nor every Explication the best that can be devis'd. For besides that the difficulty of the Subject, and Incompleatness of the History we yet have of Qualities, may well deterre a man, less diffident of his own abilities than I justly am, from assuming so much to himself, it is not absolutely necessary to my present Design. For, Mechanical Explications of natural Phænomena do give so much more satisfaction to ingenious minds, than those that must employ Substantial Forms, Sympathy, Antipathy, &c. that the more judicious of the vulgar Philosophers themselves prefer them before all others, when they can be had; (as is elsewhere shewn