Page:The Sceptical Chymist.djvu/68

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44
THE SCETICAL

with the four first Qualities, they had endeavoured to do it by the Bulk and Figure of the smallest parts of those supposed Elements. For from these more Catholick and Fruitfull Accidents of the Elementary matter may spring a great variety of Textures, upon whose Account a multitude of compound Bodies may very much differ from one another. And what I now observe touching the four Peripatetick Elements, may be also applyed, mutatis mutandis, (as they speak) to the Chymical Principles. But (to take notice of that by the by) both the one and the other, must, I fear, call in to their assistance something that is not Elementary, to excite or regulate the motion of the parts of the matter, and dispose them after the manner requisite to the Constitution of particular Concretes. For that otherwise they are like to give us but a very imperfect account of the Origine of very many mixt Bodies, It would, I think, be no hard matter to perswade you, if it would not spend time, and were no Digression, to examine, what they are wont to alledge of the Origine of the Textures and Qualities of mixt Bodies,