APHORISMS—BOOK II ON THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, OR THE REIGN OF MAN
The fourth mode of action is by continuance, the very steward and
almoner, as it were, of nature. We apply the term continuance to the
abandonment of a body to itself for an observable time, guarded and
protected in the meanwhile from all external force. For the internal
motion then commences to betray and exert itself when the external and
adventitious is removed. The effects of time, however, are far more
delicate than those of fire. Wine, for instance, cannot be clarified
by fire as it is by continuance. Nor are the ashes produced by
combustion so fine as the particles dissolved or wasted by the lapse
of ages. The incorporations and mixtures, which are hurried by fire,
are very inferior to those obtained by continuance; and the various
conformations assumed by bodies left to themselves, such as mouldiness,
etc., are put a stop to by fire or a strong heat. It is not, in the
meantime, unimportant to remark that there is a certain degree of
violence in the motion of bodies entirely confined; for the confinement
impedes the proper motion of the body. Continuance in an open vessel,
therefore, is useful for separations, and in one hermetically sealed
for mixtures, that in a vessel partly closed, but admitting the air,
for putrefaction. But instances of
the
operation and effect of
continuance must be collected diligently from every quarter.
The direction of motion (which is the fifth method of action) is of no small use. We adopt this term, when speaking of a body which, meeting with another, either arrests, repels, allows, or directs its original motion. This is the case principally in the figure and position of vessels. An upright cone, for instance, promotes the condensation of vapor in alembics, but when reversed, as