Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 002.djvu/131

 action or effect produced, will be of a mixed nature, and differing from that, which several of the parts consider'd as distinct Bodies or Agents, tended to, or would have perform'd; As when in a Ballance, by putting in a weight into one of the Scales, the opposite Scale, though as a heavy body it will naturally tend downwards, yet by vertue of the fabrick of the Instrument is made to mount upwards. So that those Actions, which Scholastical men attribute to the conspiring of subordinate Forms to assist the Specifick, are but the resultant actions of several Bodies, which being associated together, are thereby reduced in many cases to act jointly, and mutually modifie each others actions; and that which they ascribe to the dominion of the Presiding Form, is to be imputed to the structure and connexion of the parts of the compound body.

This the Author confirms and illustrates by many very instructive Examples and Comparisons, taken from manual Arts and Practises, Physicks, Chymistry, &c, And applying his droctrine about these subordinate Forms to inanimate Bodies, he sums up the heads of all, and casts them into 9 distinct Propositions, which are

1. The word Form is of an interminate signification.

2. 'Tis not easie, to decide the Nobleness of Forms.

3. In divers Bodies the Form is attributed upon the account of some eminent Property or Use; which if it be present and continue, though many other things supervene, or chance to be wanting, the matter is nevertheless lookt upon, as retaining its Form, and is wont to be allow'd its usual denomination.

4. By reason of the Conjunction or Connexion of the parts, that make up a whole (or, at least an Aggregate of Bodies, that for their connexion are looked upon as such) it will often happen, that several things will be perform'd by the joint or concurrent Action of these united or coherent parts.

5. We may yet in a sound sense admit, that in some Bodies there may be subordinate Forms.

6. The supervening of a new Form is often but accidental to the Pre-existent Form, and (then) does not at all destroy its nature but modifie its operations.

7. Besides the Specifick actions of a Body, that harbours subordinate Forms, there may be divers others, wherein some of the Rh