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Updated: May 6, 2025
Thirdly, That most of the simple ideas that make up our complex ideas of substances, when truly considered, are only POWERS, however we are apt to take them for positive qualities; v.g. the greatest part of the ideas that make our complex idea of GOLD are yellowness, great weight, ductility, fusibility, and solubility in AQUA REGIA, &c., all united together in an unknown SUBSTRATUM: all which ideas are nothing else but so many relations to other substances; and are not really in the gold, considered barely in itself, though they depend on those real and primary qualities of its internal constitution, whereby it has a fitness differently to operate, and be operated on by several other substances.
To which the name METAL being annexed, there is a genus constituted; the essence whereof being that abstract idea, containing only malleableness and fusibility, with certain degrees of weight and fixedness, wherein some bodies of several kinds agree, leaves out the colour and other qualities peculiar to gold and silver, and the other sorts comprehended under the name metal.
Thus, we have a species of coal in which we shall find but a small degree of fusibility, although it may not be charred in any degree. Such an infusible coal may therefore contain a great deal of aqueous substance, and volatile oily matter; consequently may burn with smoke and flame.
But the sense of the infinite fusibility and change in the objective world is deeper than that revealed in any one type of diffluent imagination. It is a profound characteristic of the poetic mind as such.
Another that hath better observed, adds to shining yellow great weight: and then the sound gold, when he uses it, stands for a complex idea of a shining yellow and a very weighty substance. Another adds to those qualities fusibility: and then the word gold signifies to him a body, bright, yellow, fusible, and very heavy. Another adds malleability.
He therefore knocks, and beats it with flints, to see what was discoverable in the inside: he finds it yield to blows, but not easily separate into pieces: he finds it will bend without breaking. Is not now ductility to be added to his former idea, and made part of the essence of the species that name ZAHAB stands for? Further trials discover fusibility and fixedness.
But this softening power of heat is not uniform in its nature; it is made to act with very different effect, according to the nature of the substance to which it is applied. We are but limited in the art of increasing the heat or the cold of bodies; we find, however, extreme difference in their substances with respect to fusibility.
What I have said here of the nominal essence of gold, supposed to consist of a body of such a determinate colour, weight, and fusibility, will hold true, if malleableness, fixedness, and solubility in aqua regia be added to it.
But yet it is its colour, weight, fusibility, fixedness, &c., which makes it to be gold, or gives it a right to that name, which is therefore its nominal essence. Since nothing can be called gold but what has a conformity of qualities to that abstract complex idea to which that name is annexed.
The word Enamel is derived from various sources. The Greek language has contributed "maltha," to melt; the German "schmeltz," the old French "esmail," and the Italian "smalta," all meaning about the same thing, and suggesting the one quality which is inseparable from enamel of all nations and of all ages, its fusibility. For it is always employed in a fluid state, and always must be.
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