The greatest difficulty that I find against this _Hypothesis_, is, that
there seem to be more distinct colours then two, that is, then Yellow and
Blue. This Objection is grounded on this reason, that there are several
Reds, which _diluted_, make not a Saffron or pale Yellow, and therefore
Red, or Scarlet seems to be a third colour distinct from a deep degree of
Yellow.
To which I answer, that Saffron affords us a deep Scarlet tincture, which
may be _diluted_ into as pale a Yellow as any, either by making a weak
solution of the Saffron, by infusing a small parcel of it into a great
quantity of liquor, as in spirit of Wine, or else by looking through a very
thin quantity of the tincture, and which may be heightn'd into the
loveliest Scarlet, by looking through a very thick body of this tincture,
or through a thinner parcel of it, which is highly _impregnated_ with the
tinging body, by having had a greater quantity of the Saffron dissolv'd in
a smaller parcel of the liquor.
Now, though there may be some particles of other tinging bodies that give a
lovely Scarlet also, which though _diluted_ never so much with liquor, or
looked on through never so thin a parcel of ting'd liquor, will not yet
afford a pale Yellow, but onely a kind of faint Red; yet this is no
argument but that those ting'd particles may have in them the faintest
degree of Yellow, though we may be unable to make them exhibit it; For that
power of being _diluted_ depending upon the divisibility of the ting'd
body, if I am unable to make the tinging particles so thin as to exhibit
that colour, it does not therefore follow, that the thing is impossible to
be done; now, the tinging particles of some bodies are of such a nature,
that unless there be found some way of comminuting them into less bulks
then the liquor does dissolve them into, all the Rays that pass through
them must necessarily receive a tincture so deep, as their appropriate
refractions and bulks compar'd with the proprieties of the dissolving
liquor must necessarily dispose them to empress, which may perhaps be a
pretty deep Yellow, or pale Red.
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