THE

Mathematical Elemental Lecture,

OR THE

NATURE

O F

Elementary MATTER, and KINDS, Confidered, and proved to be mixed;

Nemo hujufce (LECTURE) utilitatem, nemo veritatem ejusfine Mathefeos ope comprehendet; cuilibet tamen in his vel mediocriter verfato quæ fequuntur, non difficilia erunt aut obfcura.

THE

Mathematical Elemental Lecture,

OR THE

NATURE

O F

Elementary MATTER, and KINDS, Confidered, and proved to be mixed;

Nemo hujufce (LECTURE) utilitatem, nemo veritatem ejusfine Mathefeos ope comprehendet; cuilibet tamen in his vel mediocriter verfato quæ fequuntur, non difficilia erunt aut obscura.

LECTURE I.

T

HESE Lectures being defigned as an attempt to explain fome phænomena of nature, which have hitherto been the occafion of more admiration than knowledge, it may firft be proper to treat fuccinctly of natural philofophy. Because the laws of matter being well established, there is hereby a clear paffage opened into many intricacies of Nature, fome of which, although long deemed above human ability, have been demonftrated to refult from the known affections of matter.

As method has been always neceffary in order to become intelligible, without which truth itself is not unlike falfhood: The vulgar diftinction of matter into four clements, fhall be observed in the following Lectures. I fay the vulgar diftinction; not meaning hereby to eftablith them as really diftinct original principles, prior to which there are none in the course of nature; this inquiry being too nice for the prefent: But fecing that the course of things is discovered, by proceeding from things most obvious to fenfe, to thofe arcana of nature which are leaft fo, it may be prudent to begin with the vulgar distinction of matter into four clements:

For the great and judicious Lord Verulam, having divided the hiftory of nature into five claffes, makes the four elements the fourth clafs, FIRE, AIR, EARTH, and WATER; taking the elements not for primordial matter, but larger maffes of natural bodies. For the nature of things is fo laid out, as to form a very large quantity or mafs, of certain bodies in the universe; where an cafy and loose texture of matter is required to their ftructure, as thefe four clements; whilft there is but a proportionably fmall quantity of certain other bodies in the univerfe; thus fparingly fupplied, by reason of a very diffimilar and fubtle texture of the matter, here made organical • and determined in many particulars, as in the fpecies of natural Bodies, Minerals, Plants, and Animals: whence the former may be called, larger affemblages, and the latter, leffer affemblages of matter: C 2

• But