Remarks upon two late ingenious discourses the one, an essay touching the gravitation and non-gravitation of fluid bodies, the other, observations touching the Torricellian experiment, so far forth as they may concern any passages in his Enchiridium Metaphysicum / D. Henry More.

REMARK the Thirty sixth.

He here mentions again, p. 242. l. 12. the heated Tube we have spoke of, Remark 24. of its at∣traction and suspension of the water in it, the water in the

Tube and the Tube weighing as one body; and the like experi∣ment he makes here again of a heated Beer-glass with a more flew mouth, drawing up water, and weighing as one body with the water, he attributing the suspension of the water in both to the attraction of the rarefied Air. But that Hypothesis be∣ing so fully confuted by me, I am more sollicitous in these instan∣ces to give an handsom account of the jointly weighing of the Tube and Mercury, of the Tube and Water, and of the Glass and 〈◊〉〈◊〉, each of them as one joint 〈◊〉〈◊〉, than of confuting what is already confuted. And the case I conceive stands thus: By the Hylostatick laws of the Vni∣verse it is, that heavy bodies will even press upwards, as light up∣on heavy, and jointly both a∣gainst a far lighter, though there be an heavy body betwixt,

which I a little above noted in the resiliency of the Quick-silver against the top of the Tube. Now as there the Air and restag∣nant Quick-silver gravitated a∣gainst the subtil matter in the top of the Tube through the co∣lumn of Quick-silver in the Tube, so the Air and Water gravitate both in the Tube and Drinking-glass, against the rarefied Air therein, it being thinner than the common Air, and ascended in each so far according to Hylo∣statick laws; As I doubt not but that if a whole Tube of such subtil matter as is at the top in the Torricellian experiment could be had and were inverted into re∣stagnant Mercury, the Mercury would be seen to ascend to 29 inches in the Tube as the water is seen to ascend in the Beer-glass and Tube. In all which cases both the Mercury and Water ascend by a Libration which this

Authour calls a Gravitation up∣wards, and are held there by the same Law at such a gage, and not by attraction or suspension. But how then, will you say, does the Tube and Mercury, the Tube and Water, the Beer-glass and Water, weigh each of them to∣gether as one joint body? 'Tis a considerable Problem, but I answer, The same Hylostatick Principle that thus librates them, which is the Spirit of Nature, does also, but with a vincible and mutable union, unite them. For both motion and union is from Spirit, as I have showed in my Enchiridium Metaphysicum. And from hence it will be easily un∣derstood, how when with the hand, p. 247. l. 12. you lift up the Beer-glass towards the super∣ficies of the restagnant water, the water included will arise with it much above the superficies of the external water. Which though

it be not by that monstrous Ela∣stick pressure of the Air that some are for, yet it is by a Gra∣vitation of the Air upon the wa∣ter, and of the water upwards, and both of them jointly against the rarefyed Air in the Concave of the Glasse. So little need is there of any Tension, but merely of this Hylostatick Libration.

Notes

• Remark 32.