Page:Experimentsnotes00boyl.pdf/38

 Peripateticks, are attempted to be explicated; I suppose it will be very proper to begin with Instances of them to shew, that Qualities may be Mechanically produced or destroyed. A not useless Paraphrase of which expression may be this, That a portion of matter may come to be endowed with a Quality, which it had not before, or to be deprived of one that it had, or (sometimes) to acquire or lose a degree of that Quality; though on the part of the Matter (or, as some would speak, of the Patient) there do not appear to intervene any more than a change of Texture, or some other Mechanical Alteration; and though the Agents (on their part) do not appear to act upon it otherwise, than after a Mechanical manner, that is, by their bigness, shape, motion, and those other Attributes by vertue whereof Mechanical Powers and Engines perform their operations; and this without having recourse to the Peripatetic Substantial Forms and Ele-