Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 002.djvu/130



is Tract is an Appendix to the Noble Author's Examen of Substantial Forms, published last year, and reprinted this. There hath been already given an Account of the principal Part, as appears by Numb. 11. 'Tis very fit the like should be done now of this considerable Appendix.

First then it clears up and states the Doctrine about Subordinate Forms, as it is maintain'd by divers learned Moderns, especially Sennertus, who teacheth, that beside the Specific Forms (so called by him) there may reside in Animals and Plants, certain other Forms, so subject to the predominant Mistress-Form, that they deserve the Title but of Subordinate Forms, and during the Reign of the Specifick, are subservient to it; yet when that is deposed or abolisht, these Inferiour Forms may come to set up for themselves, viz.

This done, the Author tryes, Whether the Phænomena and Effects of these pretended Subordinate Forms may not be as well as the principal ones, intelligibly explicated by the ''Mechanical Principles, vid. Matter and Motion, and the thence resulting Shape an Texture''. Which that it may be done, is so happily made out in this Tract, that a Rational, Unprejudiced and Attentive Reader cannot but embrace the Author's Doctrine, and, according to it, be satisfied, that the portions of Matter, that are endowed with these pretended Subordinate Forms, cannot the presumed Superintendent Form any other obedience, than some such kind of one, as the parts of a Clock or Engine may be said to yield to one another. So that the whole matter may be well conceived to be nothing but this; That, when divers bodies of differing natures or Schematisms come to be associated so as to compose a Body of one denomination, though each of them be supposed to act according to its own peculiar nature, yet by reason of the coaptation of those parts, and the contrivement of the compounded Body, it will many times happen, that the Action