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This opinion is defective, to say no worse of it, in many respects. First, in attributing life to lead. Secondly, in supposing that the presence of the celestial heat makes it light, and its absence heavy. Thirdly, because it assigns the same reason for the increased weight of lead by calcination, and of animals by death. There is nothing of the kind. For as to life, how can lead possess it, since it is a homogeneous body, without difference of parts, without organs, and without any vital effect or action? If it move downwards, so does ceruse, which is only its corpse; if it be cooling , so is ceruse. Then how could it preserve this life, under a million of forms, that it may be made to assume and to cast off, yet always continuing to be lead? How, in the furnace , where it may be kept in fusion a day, a month, or a whole year? It must have a very tenacious soul to undergo so much without being dislodged! (en) |
