see; but we having perceived that the sun might serve to light us, and that our eyes might serve to see with, we made use both of the sun and our eyes to that purpose.

Aristotle, and all his partizans, believed the world was composed of a first matter, which, they say, had no form, but is capable of all forms; out of which the four elements issued, composing all bodies, and into which they are all resolved, or return in their last analysis.

There is, indeed, some difference between this first matter and the atoms; but Epicurus and Aristotle agree in this, that they admit, at setting out, a first fund of indeterminate matter, capable of entering into all sorts of conditions and compositions.

Gassendi resumes these atoms and this vacuum of Epicurus for the construction of his world, with this difference, that he put them all into the hands of God, to give them motion according to the wise designs of his Providence. This philosophy has never injured any one with regard to religion, on which it throws no blemish. But here observe again, the same foundation of an extravagant matter, which in the first place has nothing regular or determinate, and which may afterwards be indifferently changed into one body or another, as it is handled, composed, divided, and made up again into other masses.

Descartes rejects the vacuum, and will have every thing in his world full; though we can hardly reconcile the liberty of motion with a thorough exactness of plenitude. 'Tis thus that he conceives the creation of the world. God*, in the first place, formed an immense mass of homogeneous matter; all the different parts of which were cubical, or at least angular. He afterwards impressed on these particles a double motion. He makes the greater part of them turn on their center, and several clusters among them round their common center, which he names vortices. This being done, according to him, all is done; and by the friction of the angles of these parcels, from thence was formed a very fine dust, which he calls the first element or subtle matter; next a globulous matter, which he calls the second element or light; and lastly, a massive dust striped and branched, which he names the third element, from which he formed all sorts of massive bodies. This chaos coming out of the hand of God, disposed itself in order, according to Descartes, by virtue of the two

♦ Vide Treatise of Light and Principia.

motions impressed upon it by God, and of itself became a world like ours; " in the which, though that God placed no order or proportion," these are his own terms," one may see all things, as well general as particular, which appear in the real world."

The alchymists, to be in a condition to make gold, and to prepare a restorative which immortalizes, or at least greatly prolongs life, have been obliged to search to the profound of nature, and they imagine, have found that salt, sulphur, and mercury, with some other ingredients, which they have not as yet agreed upon among themselves, were certainly the immediate elements of metals, and all bodies; but yet there was really a first matter susceptible of all sorts of forms, as all the sages of Egypt aud Greece, and all the philosophers of all ages averred; wherefore they had nothing to do but to work upon this first matter, to mould it different ways, and to give it a certain turn, to be possessed of gold, jewels, and the vivifying elixir.

We see here a perfect agreement among all the sects of philosophers upon the principal point. They all, though under different terms, go back to a chaos of the first matter, and numberless particles which are neither gold, silver, salt, bud, fruit, or any thing determinate; but which will serve for a composition of all things, by their mixtures; and into which all things may at last be resolved. The only difference we find between them in this point is, that the alchymists have more wit than the others, and make a better use of wisdom. The Aristotelians and the Corpusculists are always ready to enter into the lists about a plenum and vacuum, matter and form, the principles of bodies, and the last term of their disso lutions, and all this to no purpose. They are all battling among themselves about the best method of disposing of matter, as if the world was now to be made or governed. It is already made, and goes on its course without them. All their knowledge tends then only to fill the schools with disputes, from which nothing results. The alchymist go much nearer to the point; they labour more to the purpose. According to Aristotle, Epicurus, Gassendi, and Descartes, gold and sand are originally the same matter. Descartes, by breaking his cubes, saw sun, gold, and light itself, arise. Let us put the sand into motion by force of fire and friction, break its angles, deprive it of that accidental form which makes it sand, and

* Vide the World, or Treatise of Light.

by a proper manuduction transmute it into gold. What riches! what felicity and assistance to human society! should we once ar rive to this point.

If the systematical philosophers think rightly on the article of a first matter, in which they all agree, the alchymists think still better in reducing these speculations to practice, and attempting to change this matter so, as to produce gold and immortality.

-Unluckily for the honour of philosophers, alchymists die; and not only so, but they sooner than others. The greater number of them are parched among their furnaces and pestiferous exhalations; but this is certain, they all ruin themselves. Their fruitless attempts prove the falsity of the principle which they had from the philoso phers, and dispense with our entering into a tedious examination of this imaginary philosophy.

It is sufficient to be thoroughly sensible of the great mistake of systematical philosophers, to know that they form the world with a matter void of form, which at first was neither water, fire, metal, earth, nor any thing now apparent; and that afterwards, by motion, it became all that we now see. Daily experience shows them all, if they will see, that to bring to light, and to multiply the transient species which maintain the seed of the world for the duration of ages, God has prepared a vast variety of simple natures, which ne ver proceeded from a first matter different from themselves. That these natures have no other immediate cause of their formation than God himself; that they never pass from a first state to a second; that they are unchangeable as he is, who gave them being; that no motion can alter, change, or convert them into other natures, or resolve them into other things than what they are: they can neither be destroyed nor forced; and since the most violent motion can have no such effect on them, they cannot owe their particular nature to any turn, or bias, which has been given them by motion. Let us judge of it by some experiments. Put refined gold into a most intense fire, it will continue in fusion for several months together. A violent fire, which, according to the Cartesians, is only a violent mo tion, ought now, as well as in the beginning of the world, to cause some little novelty in this matter. 'Tis certainly more easy to destroy than to form. Why cannot then this motious, which from the first matter produced gold, by force of graduating and varying, destroy this gold in the crucible, or convert it into some new being, or

at length reduce it into a small portion of the first matter? Do not the philosophers perceive that they take methodical ideas, by which they dispose every thing in the schools, for realities subsisting in na ture, while they have being in their own imagination only? They employ their thoughts on matter in general, afterwards on mat. ter determined in particular. Do they therefore believe that there is, or that there ever was, an universal matter? They are indeed notable in seeking the analysis of gold, and reducing it to its first principles, to carry it back to the first matter. They may as well analyse flowers in the chemist's furnace, in hopes of finding in the last dissolution an universal flower at the bottom of the receiver.

In the same manner put into the fire sand, mud, mercury, or any metal you shall think proper, the sand will become glass by the congruity it acquires in the fire; and after having been years together in a glass-house pot, it will still be glass; the mud will fall into lime or ashes, and will never, after a separation of its parts, be other than cinders, or a caput mortuum. Mercury mixed with sulphur, and all the ingredients that can be thought upon, will always remain in cinnabar, or some other form. It will be lost to sight, but neither destroyed nor changed. It is always entire under new forms, al ways the same, and fire will restore it back in its pristine form. "Tis the same thing with metals. Torture them, give them what motion, what alteration you can devise, by fire, aqua fortis, or other dissolvents, they have not even one moment changed their nature. If we put a piece of iron into aqua fortis, in which was before dissolved a certain quantity of silver, it cannot sustain parcels of two different metals at the same time; it quits the silver, falsely thought to be transmuted into a liquid, which precipitates to the bottom of the vessel.

It was only concealed in floating on the globular parts of the fluid, by a separation of the metallic parts; but these small particles thus separated, are still the same as when united in one mass. The minium, with which we colour wafers, is made with lead; the metal is no longer apparent; one would think it was destroyed, or con verted into another nature. It is more separated, but the particles are not changed; and if you burn this wafer in the flame of a candle, and catch the cinders on a piece of paper, you will see the particles of lead, when in fusion, drawn near to one another, and form, when cold, several shining branches, easy to be distinguished by the naked

eye. Gold and metals extracted out of matters, where nothing me tallic is to be seen, are not there formed; it is true, they are there found, and they are extracted from the places to which the water had carried and dispersed them: hence it comes, that gold is found along the river sides, and in sands likewise; iron in clay; and the particles of iron which adhere to a knife touched with a loadstone, stirring with it the ashes of plants, flesh, or the entrails of animals. The metallic, saline, earthy, sandy, aquatic, ignetic, mercurial, and many other simple particles, go off and return, form masses, appear under very different figures, are concealed, and then again apparent; but gold, iron, earth, water, sand, fire, mercury, and in short all simple matters, are ever exactly the same thing, whether in small or great bodies. The natures of each are to themselves the first matter; and as the most agitated and varied motion cannot resolve them into other than what they are, they do not owe their construction to motion either direct, oblique, or circular. They have all immediately proceeded, as did the whole world, from the hand of God himself. They are not what they become by the combination of motions, but what God willed at first they should be, to serve in the formation of compounded bodies, to which his wisdom had appointed them. Gold, or crystal, is not now made; but only carried, gathered together, dispersed; wherefore motion, which never has been able to produce the least grain, has not been able, a fortiori, to produce either an earth, or its inhabitants, an atmossphere or a sun. Motion maintains the earth, but never could ordain it; as the spring of a watch, and the care of winding it up every day, is the cause of its going regular, but cannot make it. It is then the part of a prudent philosopher to study those motions which maintain nature, as they are real, regular, and lasting; but it is making an abuse of reason, it is despising of experience, and may be secretly reviving the follies of the Epicureans, to attribute to motions impressed on matter the power of forming a world. It is as impossible for motion to form a world, as it is evidently impossible for it to form a grain weight of iron.

As it is but loss of time for us to stir the atoms of Gassendi, or to whirl about the angular bodies of Descartes, we shall possibly find the attractive, centripetal, and centrifugal philosophers of the north turn to better account.

The difference between M. Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton is,