John Rey Quotes (1583-1645)

“God, creating the universe, neither made it perfectly like Himself, nor perfectly unlike, for He, being One, has made the world as not one, from the diverse multiplicity of its innumerable parts, ordaining, nevertheless, that they should collect into a certain unity by their exact contiguity. The upper world has no connexion with this subject; the lower, and elementary world, owes this contiguity to the weight divinely impressed on its parts, aided by the subtle fluidity of some of its simple bodies. It is by this quality, with which the matter of the four elements is more or less invested, that they are separated from one another, and each transported to its proper place, as the generation of compounds, and the beauty of the universe requires.”

“God, creating the universe, neither made it perfectly like Himself, nor perfectly unlike, for He, being One, has made the world as not one, from the diverse multiplicity of its innumerable parts, ordaining, nevertheless, that they should collect into a certain unity by their exact contiguity. The upper world has no connexion with this subject; the lower, and elementary world, owes this contiguity to the weight divinely impressed on its parts, aided by the subtle fluidity of some of its simple bodies. It is by this quality, with which the matter of the four elements is more or less invested, that they are separated from one another, and each transported to its proper place, as the generation of compounds, and the beauty of the universe requires.”

“Sir, I did not know about the book of John Rey until after I published through your Journal, the second part of my experiments on mercurial lime. So I could not talk about it in the very brief enumeration that I then made of the different opinions on the cause of the increase in gravity of metallic lime. My fault, however involuntary it may have been, must be repaired and, in order to do so, I hasten to do justice to an Author who, by the depth of his speculations, has succeeded in pointing out the real cause of this increase. Might you, Sir, work with me to make known the excellent work of Jean Rey? Your Journal is read throughout France and is recognized in foreign countries. If you wanted to insert the attached leaflet into it, chemists in all countries would know in a short time that it was a Frenchman who, by the force of his genius and his reflections, was the first to guess the cause of the increase in weight which certain metals undergo when, on exposing them to the action of fire, they are converted into lime, and that this cause is precisely the same as that the truth of which has just been demonstrated by the experiments which M. Lavoisier has read at the last public meeting of the Academy of Sciences.”

“It appears from these essays, which are not new productions, but tracts of near a hundred and fifty years standing, that the chemical experiments and discoveries, which have lately made so much noise in England and France, were long since made and exhibited by a provincial physician of Perigord. It is true that the main object of these essays, when first published, was to account for the additional weight of metals by their passing through the fire. The fact was known to Boyle and others, who imputed it to the weight deduced from heat; as Buffon hath done long since, imputing gravity to fire. Dr. Rey, however, so long ago as the year 1630, attributes such additional weight to the condensed, or fixed, air; which attaches itself to the calcined substance, and that in proportion to the division of its parts.—It is farther remarkable, that, in a small tract annexed to these essays, the present Editor gives us an account of a method, used upwards of fifty years ago, to pour fixed air out of one vessel into another; which is the very same made use of by Dr. Priestley, Lavoisier, and other modern experimentalists.—A considerable part of the volume contains the learned correspondence that passed between the author, Dr. Rey, and the celebrated Father Mersenne.”

“One of the Authors who has written the most ancient on this object is an almost forgotten doctor, named John Rey, who lived at the beginning of the 17th century in Bugue en Périgord, and who was in correspondence with the small number of people who cultivated the sciences at that time. Neither Descartes nor Pascal had not yet appeared; we knew neither of Boyle's vacuum nor of this discovery.”

“Ignorance of the history of science is the cause why we frequently look back with a kind of contempt also on the second period of chemistry, namely, the phlogistic period, and regard it as insignificant. Our self-esteem deems it inconceivable that the experiments of John Rey, on the increase of weight in metals during the operation called calcination, remained unregarded; and that, while these experiments existed, the idea of phlogiston could be developed and obtain a footing. But all the efforts of that age were directed to the arrangement of that which was ascertained, and which waited only for arrangement. Rey's observations had no influence whatever on that period, because they were not yet brought into connection with the process of combustion generally; for there were many bodies which, by combustion, became lighter, or disappeared to the senses. The object of the labours of Becker and Stahl and their followers was the discovery of these phenomena which belonged to the same class and were produced by the same cause.”

“In the year 1629, Brun, an apothecary residing in the town of Bergerac, in France, melted two pounds six ounces of tin, and in six hours, the whole was converted into a calx, which weighed seven ounces more than the tin employed. Brun astonished at this circumstance, (for it was not then known that metals experienced an encrease of weight during their calcination,) communicated it to John Rey, a physician of Perigord, who, in 1630, published a tract upon the subject, in which he justly refers the encrease of weight to the absorption of air. "Thus," says Rey, in the fanciful language of the period, "have I succeeded in liberating this surprising truth from the dark dungeons of obscurity; which was vainly, but laboriously, sought after by Cardan, Scaliger, [Augustus Henricus] Faschius [or Augustin Heinrich Fasch], Cœsalpinus, and Libavius. Others may search for it, but in vain, unless they pursue the royal road which I have cleared. The labour has been mine—the profit is the reader's—the glory is from above!"”

“The original edition of Rey's Essays, of which there is a copy in the library of the British Museum, was published at Bazas, a town about thirty miles S.E. of Bourdeaux, in the year 1630. In 1777, it was reprinted with notes, by M. Gobet, at Paris, and published by Ruault, Rue-de-la-Harpe. The copies of this reprint disappeared in a very sudden and remarkable manner, and the work was so little known in this country, that Doctor James Curry, at the sale of whose library, in 1820, I purchased a copy of it, states in a note at the beginning of the work, apparently in his own hand-writing, that he had sought it, in vain, for more than ten years, in every bookseller's catalogue in London, till, at last, the present copy rewarded his trouble, and he adds, that he had seen but one other copy since. The suppression of this edition, almost immediately after its publication, which took place in about three years from the promulgation of Lavoisier's first experiments would naturally lead to the suspicion, that it was effected by that celebrated philosopher or his friends, to avoid the imputation of plagiarism, which might sully the brilliancy of his recent discoveries, and this imputation is, in the opinion of many, but too probable.”