necessary to their permanent cohesion. Hence the stony particles which are slowly precipitated from petrifying waters, are formed into concretes which are as hard as stone itself, and, if the parts are pure enough, will.compose a solid which takes a polish like the finest marble.. Many appearances are produced in bodies, to which this slow uninterrupted motion is absolutely necessary. Melted glass cools into a transparent uniform solid, when removed in its fluid state from the fire into the open air: but if left at rest to cool gradually as the fire goes out, it is formed into figured crystals; of which there is a curious account by Mr. Keir, in N° 34. Vol. LXVI. of the Philosophical Transactions. I inquired concerning this fact of Mr. Tassie, an artist who has had much experience of all the chemical preparations of glass and enamel. He assured me he had frequently observed this, when the glass and the fire were permitted to grow cold together. Visibility the Consequence of Formation. The visibility of matter seems not to be a necessary consequence of its creation, but only only of its formation. The smallest particles or atoms of matter, in a state of solution, are invisible. A mineral water, strongly impregnated with iron, is clear and transpa rent as any other water; though the particles of the metal are copiously distributed through the whole body of the fluid. As soon as they begin to concrete into masses, by the addition of an astringent, they shew them selves: the water which before was clear becomes turbid, and by degrees turns nearly as black as ink. By the reverse of this opera tion, ink itself, with the addition of a strong acid, will be turned into a colourless water. The sky, though retaining a very large quantity of water in it, preserves its clearness so long as the moisture is in a state of solution: but as soon as the atoms of water are assembled together in masses, by means of some pre-. vious change in the temperature or density of the air, the sky is overcast, and becomes dark and cloudy. The visibility of matter therefore commences, when it concretes and assumes a form: so long as it is formless, it is also invisible. The chaos, in its primæval state, is said to have been without form; for which sense the Greek version uses the word aoga invisible: and the scripture, referring elsewhere elsewhere to this condition of the world, tells us, that things which are now seen, were not made of things that do appear; the meaning of which is, that visible forms were composed of invisible atoms. Mythological Doctrines concerning Matter. Though matter is no object of our knowledge but in its formed state, we are nevertheless obliged to understand a kind of first matter, out of which all the visible forms are raised, and into which they return at their dissolution. The ancient philosophers of the heathen world carried this speculation very far, supposing the first matter to be homogeneous, and accommodated to the formation of all sorts of bodies indifferently; and they had various ways of expressing it in their mythology, a science in which their religion and philosophy were represented together, in a sort of mystical expression common to both subjects, because their God was no other than Nature. Their Saturn signified this hidden and secret state of matter, out of which all visible forms are generated, and into which they sink again; whence this deity is reported to have devoured his own children. VOL. IX. H children. This decay of the forms being the work of time, Saturn had also the names of Xgov or Kgov. He is fabled to have been married to Ops, because matter, when united to form, becomes visible; and Ops is called the mother of the gods, because their gods were the elements in a formed state, and were no objects of worship to them till they were visible. The Saxon idol, Seater, had the like meaning, and was represented with symbols expressive of his physiological character. Proteus, another of the heathen deities, was also a name for first matter; which being capable of all forms, Proteus is therefore invested with the faculty of transforming himself into all shapes, and assuming the appearance of all the elements*: The Satyrs, or Sylvan deities, had much the same signification with Saturn, to whom they were nearly allied in name: and hence they are said to have hid themselves in λ, an equivocal word, which means either matter or a wood. The Pythagoreans were full of this philo sophy, ille suæ contra non immemor artis, Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum, Ignemque, horribilemque feram, fluviumque liquentem. Virg. Georg. iv. 440. sophy, which they borrowed from the Egyptians, who seem to have been the first proprietors. They held, that the general stock of matter in the world is indifferent to every form, and that all the elements are transmutable into one another reciprocally*: that an eternal round of generation and corruption is kept up; so that nothing perishes, but only changes its appearance: that as fast as one form vanishes, another rises out of the same mass. Thus, when a carcase putrifies, animal life arises from it in another form; and on the same principle of equivocal generation, a swarm of bees may be generated from the entrails of an ox, when you have not so much as a single bee to begin with. How far this philosophy is false, and how This philosophy is delivered in the 15th Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the sum of which is expressed in the following lines: Inde retro redeunt, idemque retexitur ordo. rerumque novatrix Ex aliis alias reparat natura figuras; Nec perit in tanto quidquam (mihi credite) mundo. |