Volume 3

Physical and chemical essays / translated from the original Latin of Sir Torbern Bergman ... by Edmund Cullen ... To which are added notes and illustrations by the translator.

  • Bergman, Torbern, 1735-1784.
Date:
1784-1791
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physical and chemical essays / translated from the original Latin of Sir Torbern Bergman ... by Edmund Cullen ... To which are added notes and illustrations by the translator. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    75/472 (page 53)
    S3 the adtive Caufe, the paffive, and dead terreflrial matter *. By divine energy they underftand fire and the fpirit of the world; by the paflive aether, they mean fomething eternal, immaterial, and homogeneousf; and by mortmain malum, the inert matter of the earth. By the intervention of this fpirit, they apprehend an uninterrupted communication is maintained between fuperior and inferior beings J. This fyflem is affigned to Hermes, as he produced every thing by the means of two elements, Fire as adting, and Earth \ as adted upon §. They taught, that, by lome internal feparation, fermentation, or putrefac¬ tion, all bodies fprung from their feeds, were changed, increafed, rendered perfect, and de- flroyed ||. In thefe opinions fome traces of a more intimate acquaintance with nature may be difcovered: From which, it may be inferred, much light would be thrown upon natural phi- lofophy from their doctrine, if we polfefTed it entire, and unclouded with fidtions. The un¬ connected fragments only of it have reached us, and thefe collected by foreign writers; who, ig¬ norant of the relation of the different parts of the fyftem, have fupplied many things from, D 3 conjecture, '* Plutarchus de Ifide ct Ofiride. f Plato. Pythagoras. J Porphyrius in vita Plotin, § Burgravc in Bibl. J| Diodorus, 1. i. c. 13,