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.

    92/472 (page 70)
    manner of philofophizing was followed by Epi¬ curus the Athenian, at the beginning of the fourth age, who, from the various modifications of light upon the furfaces of bodies, firffc taught the origin of colours *. Towards the end of the 4th century before Chrift, Plato imagined every thing to depend upon threq principles, Qod, Matter, and Idea. According tQ this hypothefis, Matter was infi¬ nite and eternal, and deprived of all qualities, and bodies were created from it by fome fecret mov¬ ing power. God was a pure fpirit not to be ap¬ prehended but by the mind only; and Idea was the eternal model according to which God had made the world. He conceived matter |o have had in the beginning a triangular form, from which the feveral elements w'ere produced. In the order of creation, he affigns the Hrft place to fire and earth, as without them nothing can nave exiflence; next he places air and water, which he contends may be mutually converted into each other: To theie he attributes particu¬ lar faculties, as heat, drynefs,fcold, andmoiilure. * He defcribes fermentation to be thelmotion and evolution of earthy matter by the air that i$ contained within it f. Ariftotle, the difciple of Plato, although he in fome rneafure foriook the doctrine of his mailer; yet * Lucretius de natura rerum. f In Timseo. /