II. Vulgar physics, distribute the four qualities which are called
first, among the four elements, assigning to each element one of them
that is intense in the highest degree, and another which approaches,
or comes near to the highest. Thus to fire they attribute heat in the
highest degree, and dryness which is nearly approaching to the highest.
To the air, humidity in the highest degree, and heat near to it. To the
water, coldness in the highest degree, and moisture near to it. To the
earth, dryness in the highest degree, and coldness near to it. This
distribution, which if regulated, not by a nice examination of the nature
of things, but only by an imaginary proportion, is exposed to three
serious and weighty objections which are started against it by the modern
philosophers; and it is only to the proposition that fire is hot in the
highest degree, that they have hitherto made no difficulty of assenting;
but that is the point I at present mean to controvert.
III. That elemental fire is not hot in the highest degree, may be
evinced, by shewing there is another heat which is much greater,
and that is the heat of the sun, when its rays are concentrated in
a burning-glass. It is certain, that the most vigorous effects and
operations of elemental fire, does not come up in any degree of
comparison, to those of that most ardent star. This has been proved
evidently, by the experiments made with the burning-glass invented and
fabricated by Mons. Villete, an eminent artist of Lions in France; a
description of which, was printed and published at Liege in 1715, and
was afterwards inserted in the Memoirs of Trevoux of the year 1716.
The instant the focus of this burning-glass was applied to any sort of
wood, be it ever so green or moist, it set it as suddenly in a flame, as
elemental fire would do dry tow. In less than a minute, it melted metals
which were the most difficult of liquefaction, such as copper, iron,
gold, and all minerals in general. The highest operation the chymists
have found elemental fire capable of performing, is that of vitrifaction,
which is so called from its reducing matter to a species of glass;
but the most intense fire, besides its being tardy in this operation,
can perform it only on particular subjects; whereas the burning-glass
vitrifies in a short time, every kind of matter, tiles, bricks, cement,
bones, stones of all sorts, even marble, and porphyry; and what is most
extraordinary, it vitrifies those sort of stones also, with which they
make the bottoms of furnaces for melting iron ore in, which although they
will endure that intense heat for many years together, will begin to
dissolve almost immediately, upon applying the focus of the burning-glass
to them.
IV. Although this is very wonderful, what we are about to relate is still
more so. The analytic resolution of gold, or what is the same thing, the
separation or division of its principal component parts, had till then
been deemed impossible; for the misers are not more tenacious of hoarding
or preserving their gold, than the gold is of preserving its intrinsic
texture; for in spite of all the tortures by fire, which the chymists
could invent to break this texture, they could never make it lose its
original form. Yet notwithstanding the valour of this generous metal,
it submitted obediently to the power of the sun exerted through the
burning-glass; as if that power to whom it is said to owe its existence,
was the only one to which it could bear to be subject.
V. Mons. Homberg, of the Academy Royal of Sciences, was the first who
experienced this rare phenomenon, by resolving into smoak, with the focus
of the burning-glass, at the Palace Royal at Paris, a great portion
of its mass, which this celebrated chymist judged to be the mercurial
part of the gold, and when this was gone, the residue which remained,
appeared to be a terrestrial matter, mixed with somewhat of sulphur, that
afterwards vitrified. So that in the opinion of Mons. Homberg, sulphur,
and mercury, together with a portion of earth, is what gold is composed
of, and although the two first are by their nature volatile, and capable
of being dissipated and divided by the power of fire in all other metals,
and in all other mixtures, they in gold are so intimately united, that
no other force or influence can separate them, but that of the sun; it
follows then, that the heat of the sun is much greater than that of
elemental fire, and that this last cannot be hot in the highest degree,
which is what we undertook to prove.