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means whereof, as by boats or little ships of intelligence, a nearer commerce may be opened and carried on with the celestial bodies. For by the help of these glasses, 1. the milky way appears to be a knot or cluster of little stars, perfectly separate and distinct, of which the ancients had but a bare suspicion. 2. And again, by their means it should seem, that the planetary regions contain more stars besides the direct planets*, and that the heavens may begin to be spangled with stars at a great distance below the sphere of the fixed stars, though with such only as are invisible, without the help of telescopes. And again, 3. by their assistance we may behold the motion of those small stars, or satellites, about the planet Jupiter; from whence it may be conjectured, that the revolutions of the stars have regard to several centrest. 4. Again, by their means, the luminous and opaque inequalities are more distinctly perceived and ascertained in the moon, from whence a geographical description might be made thereof*. 5. And lastly, by means of these glasses, spots in the sun, and other things of that kind, appear to the sight, all which are, doubtless, noble discoveries, so

Viz. The S Satellites of Jupiter, &c.

As in Sir Isaac Newton's System they are found to have. M stromeik

As is done by Hevelius, in his Selenographia.

far as they may be safely depended upon for real. But, indeed, I the rather incline to suspect them, because experience seems wholly to rest in these few particulars, without discovering, by the same means, numerous others, equally worthy of search and enquiry*.

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(3.) Of the third kind, are those staffs, astrolabes, and the like instruments, for measuring distances, which not only enlarge and improve the sight, but also rectify and direct it†. And as for the instances that assist both this and the other senses, in their immediate and individual actions, without affording any information beyond that assistance, we here omit them, as making nothing to the present purpose. And hence we do not mention the contrivances for correcting any particular defect of the sight, because these afford no farther information.

40. In the seventeenth place, among prerogative instances come those we call summoning or citing instances, borrowing the term from the

* See the Author's Essay towards a Philosophical History of the Heavens. And Sir Isaac Newton's Planetary System, in the Third Book of his Principia,

The instruments of this kind are numerous, and their descriptions frequent in the writings upon Instruments, Levelling, Practical Mathematics, Navigation, &c. See these writers enumerated at the end of the second Tome of Wolfius's Elementa Matheseos Universæ.

bar, where persons are summoned, or cited to appear, who did not appear before; and, accordingly, these instances bring down insensible things to such as are sensible.

Things escape the senses, either, 1. through the distance of the object, as to place; 2. through the interception of interposing bodies; 3. because the object is unfit to make an impression upon the sense; 4. because the object is not sufficient, in quantity, to strike the sense; 5. because the time is not proportionate, so as to actuate the sense; 6. because the percussion of the object is not endured by the sense; 7. and lastly, because an object before detained, and possessed the sense, so as to leave no room for a new motion.

And these several ways chiefly regard vision in the first place, and touch in the second; for these two senses give information at large, and of common objects, but the three others give little information, besides what is immediate, and relates to their corresponding objects.

In the first way there is no reducing the object to sense, except, when things cannot be perceived by reason of the distance, others are used, or substituted for them, which may excite and strike the senses at a great distance, as in giving signals by the lighting up of fires, the ringing of

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In the second way, a reduction is made, when such things as lie concealed within, by reason of the interposition of bodies that cannot be commodiously opened, are brought to the senses, by means of those things which are upon the surface, or flow from within; as the state of the human body is known by the pulse, or urine; and the like.

But the reduction in the third and fourth ways regard numerous particulars, and ought on all sides to be collected in enquiries. Thus, for example, it appears that the air, the spirit, and things of that kind, which in their whole substance prove light and subtile, can neither be perceived nor touched, whence in the enquiry after such bodies, we must necessarily use reductions.

Suppose, therefore, the subject of enquiry were the action and motion of the spirit included in tangible bodies; for every tangible body, with us, contains an invisible and untangible spirit, over which the body is drawn like a garment. And hence arise those three powerful springs, and that wonderful process, of the spirit in tangible bodies, For, 1. the spirit being discharg ed out of a tangible body, the body contracts and dries; 2. whilst detained, it makes the body tender, supple, and soft; and, 3. being neither, totally discharged, nor totally held in, it ins

forms, fashions, assimilates, ejects, organizes, &c. And all these are rendered sensible by visible effects *.

For in every tangible, inanimate body, the included spirit first multiplies itself, and, as it were, feeds upon those tangible parts which are most disposed and prepared for that purpose; and thus digests, works, and converts them into spirit, till at last they fly off together.

And this business of making and multiplying the spirit, is brought down to the sense, by the diminution of the weight of the body; for in all drying, part of the quantity goes off, which is not only the spirit that pre-existed in the body, but a part of the body itself, that was before tangible, and is now newly converted into spirit, for the pure spirit has no gravity +.

The emission, or exit, of this spirit is rendered sensible by the rusting of metals, and other corruptions and putrefactions of that kind, which stop before they come to the rudiments of life;

*This requires to be well understood, and is explained in what follows; but for farther information, see the Sylva Syl varum, and History of Life and Death.

In the air at least, as being specifically lighter than air. But whether any thing farther be here meant by spirit hav ing no gravity, will best appear from the Author's History of Life and Death, the History of Condensation and Rarifaction, &c.

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