Page:Theophrastus - History of Stones - Hill (1774).djvu/25

  have reduced us to a Neceity of owning only two, viible, obvious, and the Objects of our Senes: and even thee two may perhaps hereafter be proved to be more nearly allied to each other than we at preent imagine: thee are Water and Earth; the very Principles, and the only ones acknowledged by this excellent Author, on whoe Works I am offering my Remarks; and who, to his immortal Honour be it recorded, dicovered that by Reaon and Philoophy alone, of which we owe the Knowledge to a thouand tedious Experiments.

His Sytem, though founded on this excellent Bais, I do not, as I before oberved, attempt to jutify: Obervations, which it was impoible for him to make, have given us the Tetimony of our Senes, that Metals do contain more or les of an abolute, genuine, and vitrifiable Earth; and Stones, it is as certain, are never wholly diveted of that Water which once erved to bring their contituent Parts together.

But to return to the Principles of mixed Bodies: Reaon informs us, that thee two, Water and Earth, alone can never have made all the Differences, and Virtues of them; we are compelled therefore to acknowledge a third, as obvious to our Reaon as the others to our Senes; an active Something, to give that to the Mas, which Water and Earth alone could not: This unknown Principle is what ome Chemits have called Acid, and the Metaphyicians Fire; Words which in their general and common Acceptation convey Ideas very different from thoe we mean to expres by them on this Occaion, but in the Ue of which we mut be indulged, till a more perfect Knowledge of the Thing we mean to expres has taught us to give it a more determinate Name. IV. All thee we are (plainly peaking) to judge formed by the Concretion of Matter pure and equal in its contituent Parts; which has been brought together in that State by mere Affiux; or by means of ome Kind of Percolation; or eparated, as before oberved, from the impurer Matter it was once among, in ome other