Antipathic Motion

36. Antipathic motion

(I speak of sense and appearance, for if you look at the interiors, there is in bodies neither antipathy nor sympathy) is reaction, by whose most subtle varieties most things in the nature of things are performed…[cite: 1]

[40]

Only 2 types of reactions were generally known to the ancients:

1. Deflagration

(to which belongs the battle of fire and water)

2. Fermentation

But our chemists have not only uncovered that very powerful reaction of gold-producing powder, as well as that of sulfur and nitre mentioned before, but have also detected innumerable others, and they acknowledge that reaction is the most powerful instrument of nature.

³⁷ From this now arises that “embrace of the white and the red”** (or of the male and female) of the ancient chemists; hence the “fighters” of Basil Valentine.

Hence the chanted 3 principles of Isaac Hollandus, Brother Basil, and Paracelsus

The Gas, Blas, and Archaeus of Helmont; the Triumviral Humor of Sylvius.

The perfect and imperfect of Glauber; the Acid and Alkali of Tachenius; and the acid and salt of Travagini—all of which certainly fall back to the same thing.[cite: 1]

³⁸ Hence that saying of Basil:

What are two, what are three, are reduced to the same one,[cite: 1] Which if you do not grasp, they are all nothing to you.[cite: 1]

But most of these things are proposed so intricately and ambiguously that it has hardly been possible, or not even hardly, to obtain constant definitions of the terms until now.[cite: 1] The most learned Robert Boyle egregiously attacked this variation in his Sceptical Chymist.[cite: 1]

39. Therefore, in truth, there is only the reaction of two things in our globe: of the Exhausted and the Distended, or, to speak with Democritus, of the void and the full…[cite: 1]

[41]

…full: and this is the unique origin of all fermentation, all deflagration, all explosion, and every battle between fire and water, acid and alkali, sulfur and nitre.[cite: 1]

40. There is no need to seek the cause for long after our previously established hypotheses.[cite: 1] For in sections 26 and 27, the reason was given as to why compressed air restores itself to liberty with such force; and conversely, why a place exhausted of air reabsorbs it with such impetus.[cite: 1] Since, therefore, water is nothing but a collection of innumerable exhausted bubbles, and fire is a substance entirely distended, they will be broken by being mixed and by their very fall, motion, or gravity colliding; and with the greatest impetus, one will be discharged and the other will absorb.[cite: 1] The same must be said of all other reactions, varying only in the magnitude, multitude, position, and figure of the bubbles, and the quantity of exhaustion and compression as the case may be.[cite: 1]

41. For if the bubbles are evanescent, and (so to speak) aqueous or aerial, as in imperfectly mixed things, no sensible mixture results from the reaction, but all are dispersed.[cite: 1] But if the bubbles are earthy or glassy, a certain new flux is excited by the very heat of the reaction, or a fusion inflated by those insensible “bellows”; and from the fragments of the bursting bubbles, others—but dissimilar ones—are recast, whence arises the birth of a new species and a central mutation of things.[cite: 1]

42. These things are now reconciled without difficulty with the principles of the chemists. For it is known that they…[cite: 1]

[42]

…to divide them into nucleus and cortex.

The nucleus consists of those celebrated “Triumvirs”: the cortex of dead earth and phlegm[cite: 1]. The cortex itself is entirely composed of bubbles, as are all sensible bodies, but smaller and more dispersed than those that produce sensible effects[cite: 1]; yet it matures gradually—that is, by certain subtle fusions, whether from the sun or elsewhere—and from many smaller bubbles (which experience teaches also happens in watery things approaching one another) fewer larger ones are made, from which the nucleus arises out of the cortex and is slowly nourished[cite: 1].

**43. The excellent Micrographers, Kircher and Hooke, have observed that most things we sense in larger objects a lynx-eyed observer would detect in proportion in smaller ones.

If these progress to infinity, which is certainly possible since the continuous is divisible to infinity, every atom will be a certain world of infinite species, and there will be given worlds within worlds to infinity[cite: 1]. He who considers these things more deeply cannot help but be carried away by a certain ecstasy of admiration to be transferred to the Author of things[cite: 1].

44. From this now appears the reconciliation of a certain Anaxagorean infinite homoiomery [homogeneity of parts] with our opinion of the few elements of things[cite: 1]: for even if it were true that putrefaction is an insensible vermination [infestation of worms], and growth an insensible sprouting, and that air is…[cite: 1]

[43]**

…insensible water, and cold is congealed subtle air, and fire is subtle sulfur, and water is subtle nitre, and that those putrefying animalcules are resolved again into other smaller ones, and so on, as you please, to infinity[cite: 1]; these things, I say, even if they were true—as perhaps they are in part—would nevertheless not suffice for rendering the causes of things, since an example or analogy is offered rather than a cause[cite: 1]. For everywhere the question will remain without end, nor will it be any less hindered, as to why second or subtle nitre fights with subtle sulfur, than why the first or thick [nitre fights] with the thick [sulfur][cite: 1]. We, however, have rendered reasons that would suffice even for those, if they exist, in replications to infinity[cite: 1].

45. But from the Anaxagoreans (for so, by their leave, we may call those most learned Micrographers) we must return to our chemists[cite: 1]. And indeed we have spoken of the cortex, which to the sense is neither empty nor full of air and aether, but almost indifferent and therefore inert (even if something of forces always lies hidden in it also), earth, and of which water mostly consists[cite: 1]; but the Nucleus demonstrates its impregnation by sensible effects[cite: 1]. Where it can easily be settled with those who are content with two principles, as almost all ancient chemists were with Sulfur and Mercury (or male and female), or as Tachenius and others call them, Acid and Alkali[cite: 1]. For a bubble exhausted of air (and conversely distended by aether) is alkali, the female, and (in the sense of the ancient chemists)…[cite: 1]

[44]**

…mercury; [whereas] a bubble distended with air (and conversely exhausted of aether) is acid, sulfur, male. For that which is full only of aether is empty to the senses: I believe Glauber, Tachenius, and others would easily agree with me that vacuum is to be ascribed to alkali rather than to acid. Since those things which they themselves call alkalis are mostly transparent, thin, light, fluid, and helpful to vitrification, like nitre, like salt of tartar, like bones; [whereas] acids are opaque, or rather saturated with color, dense, and heavy, like oil of sulfur or vitriol, like wine, like blood.

But these things nevertheless vary by a certain admirable implication of things within themselves, so that consequently, when a certain instance is found to the contrary, a reconciliation should be sought rather than thinking of the overthrow of the entire Hypothesis. Whence also the same thing, in comparison to different things, can be now acid, now alkali; acid to the more evacuated [things], alkali to the fuller ones: and the interiors of things tend mostly to be contrary to the exteriors, and through fermentation the interiors are turned outward.

46. Lest the reader, moved by some slight species of repugnant experiment, should immediately disturb the whole harmony, since experiments mostly (as I showed in the case of motion) differ greatly at first sight from the innermost principles of things, and are not reconciled except by much artifice of universal economy involving the admirable wisdom of the Creator’s wisdom in the origin of things; our hypothesis must be shown briefly a priori…

[45]**

…to be a bit more than just a hypothesis. For first, the most subtle corpuscles cannot be coerced [contained] except by bubbles and vessels. It is necessary, therefore, that there be two highest genera of bodies: the containing and the contained, or the contentful (for I would not deny that some things fly outside of bubbles, even if they themselves perhaps consist of smaller bubbles; see below section 60). [These are] solids & liquids, bubbles & masses.

47. The motion of masses is conformable to the universal motion of the earth, water, air, and Aether (for I find no necessity for establishing another certain grand mass): bubbles serve for what is proper to themselves and place the foundations for species. Moreover, bubbles are natural or violent, or ordinary or extraordinary. Ordinary and natural ones are those in which there is only as much of other masses—earth, water, air—likewise as much aether, as the place carries in which the bubble is situated. But if a bubble has too much aether, [it is] aerial water, earth, more evacuated than is just; or conversely [if it has] too much air, [it is] less aetherial than is just, then extraordinary & violent bubbles are constituted.

48. Of the ordinary ones, there is no action out of the ordinary, and they rest, unless insofar as they are carried away by the motion of the universal masses. For if anything is excited by a certain extraordinary motion, it will soon immediately lose it, since it must perpetually conflict with the universal torrent of the whole mass. But bubbles, however they are carried away by an extraordinary universal motion, as long as they do not…

[46]**

…are broken, however, they carry with them the force of exerting some extraordinary motion, and of rupture: exactly like vessels exhausted of or distended with air, which, being carried about here and there, whenever they are opened, either discharge aether and absorb air, or discharge air and absorb aether; see above section 27.

49. Each genus of bubbles, whether ordinary and extraordinary, or exhausted and distended, is divided into:

• thick and thin, or
• aqueous and earthy or glassy.

Although from the observations of the Micrographers some bubbles are continuously found smaller than others, the same proportion will always remain: since aqueous bubbles compared to aerial ones are as earthy ones [to something else], and aerial ones have the same proportion to aetherial ones;

Nothing prohibits there being another aether—of which it is not even permitted to us to suspect—superior to that aether which we collect by reason and experiments by as much as water is to earth, or air to water.

But these things cannot come into our calculation because the Phenomena are not varied by them. From this it now appears that bubbles in general—ordinary, exhausted, distended—are discerned again not only into weak and firm, but also, if you like, medium; and into large and small, and again, if you like, medium (for there is a multiple latitude here between extremes). The varieties of figures and multitude are innumerable, and they contribute nothing to the sum of things.