It is no wonder, your _Author_ has so many odd and strange opinions in Philosophy, since they do not onely proceed from strange Visions, Apparitions, and Dreams, but are built upon so strange grounds and principles as _Ideas, Archeus, Gas, Blas, Ferment,_ and the like, the names of which sound so harsh and terrifying, as they might put any body easily into a fright, like so many Hobgoblins or Immaterial spirits; but the best is, they can do no great harm, except it be to trouble the brains of them, that love to maintain those opinions; for though they are thought to be powerful beings, yet being not corporeal substances, I cannot imagine wherein their power should consist; for Nothing can do nothing. But to mention each apart; first his _Archeus_ he calls[1] _the Spirit of Life; a vital gas or Light; the Balsam preferring from Corruption; the_ Vulcan _or Smith of Generation; the stirrer up, and inward director of generation; an Air; a skiey or airy Spirit; cloathing himself presently with a bodily cloathing, in things soulified, walking through all the dens and retiring places of the seed, and transforming the matter according to the perfect act of its own Image, remaining the president and overseer or inward ruler of his bounds even till death; the Principle of Life: the Inn of Life, the onely immediate Witness, Executor, and Instrument of Life; the Prince and Center of Life; the Ruler of the Stern; the Keeper of Life, and promoter of Transmutations; the Porter of the Soul; a Fountainous being; a Flint._[2] These, and many more names your _Author_ attributes to his _Archeus_, but what properly it is, and what its Nature and its peculiar office, I am not able to conceive. In the next place, _Gas_ and _Blas_ are to your _Author_ also true Principles of Natural things; for[3] _Gas is the Vapour into which Water is dissolved by Cold, but yet it is a far more fine and subtil thing then Vapour_; which he demonstrates by the Art of Chymistry. This _Gas_ in another place he calls[4] a _Wild Spirit, or Breath, unknown hitherto; which can neither be constrained by Vessels, nor reduced into a visible body; in some things it is nothing but Water, as for example in Salt, in Fruits, and the like._ But[5] _Blas proceeds from the local and alterative motion of the Stars, and is the general beginning of motion, producing heat and cold, and that especially with the changing of the Winds._ There is also[6] _Blas in all sublunary things_; witness Amulets or preserving Pomanders, whereby they do constrain objects to obey them; _Which Incorporeal Blas of Government acts without a Corporeal Efflux, even as the Moon makes the Sea to swell; but the fleshly generation_[7] _hath a Blas of its own, and it is twofold, one which existeth by a natural Motion, the other voluntary, which existeth as a mover to it self by an Internal Willing._ There is also a _Blas of the Heart_, which is _the fuel of the Vital Spirit, and consequently of its heat._