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The production of coal from vegetable bodies, in which that phlogistic substance is originally produced, or from animal bodies which have it from that source, is made by heat, and by no other means, so far as we know.
The upholder of the phlogistic theory could not think of burning as possible unless there was a suitable receptacle for the phlogiston of the burning substance: when burning occurred in the air, the part played by the air, according to the phlogistic chemist, was to receive the expelled phlogiston; in this sense the air acted as the pabulum, or nourishment, of the burning substance.
"Chemistry," he began, "has shown us that man's breathing is a real process of combustion, and the intensity of its action varies according to the abundance or scarcity of the phlogistic element stored up by the organism of each individual.
In your case, the phlogistic, or inflammatory element is abundant; if you will permit me to put it so, you generate superfluous oxygen, possessing as you do the inflammatory temperament of a man destined to experience strong emotions. While you breath the keen, pure air that stimulates life in men of lymphatic constitution, you are accelerating an expenditure of vitality already too rapid.
There are to be found, among the various strata of the globe, bodies formed of two different kinds of substances, siliceous bodies, and those which may be termed sulphureous or phlogistic.
The phlogistic theory savoured of alchemy; it postulated an undefined, undefinable, intangible Principle; it said that all combustible substances are formed by the union of this Principle with another, which is sometimes of an earthy character, sometimes of a fatty nature, sometimes highly volatile in habit.
James Bowyer, the 'Hercules furens' of the phlogistic sect, but else an incomparable teacher, used to translate, 'Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu', first reciting the Latin words, and observing that they were the fundamental article of the Peripatetic school, "You must flog a boy, before you can make him understand;" or, "You must lay it in at the tail before you can get it into the head."
I know not what species of substance this has been, whether saline or phlogistic, but it must have had the power of either volatilising or changing the ferruginous or red tinging substance so as to make it lose its colour.
In the oxygenating operation of inflammable and combustible bodies when burning, those ingenious chemists overlooked the operation of phlogistic matter, which has no weight, and which escapes on that occasion, as I have had occasion to show in a dissertation upon phlogiston, and in the Philosophy of Light, Heat, and Fire.
Now, if the phlogistic hypothesis be true, it would follow that a metal should be the heavier, its oxide the lighter body, for the former contains something phlogiston that has been added to the latter. But, on weighing a portion of any metal, and also the oxide producible from it, the latter proves to be the heavier, and here the phlogistic hypothesis fails.
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