CONSIDERATIONS
Touching
_The experiments wont to be employed to evince either the IV
Peripatetick Elements, or the III Chymical Principles of Mixt Bodies._
Part of the First Dialogue.
I Perceive that divers of my Friends have thought it very strange to
hear me speak so irresolvedly, as I have been wont to do, concerning
those things which some take to be the Elements, and others to be the
Principles of all mixt Bodies. But I blush not to acknowledge that I
much lesse scruple to confess that I Doubt, when I do so, then to
profess that I Know what I do not: And I should have much stronger
Expectations then I dare yet entertain, to see Philosophy solidly
establish't, if men would more carefully distinguish those things that
they know, from those that they ignore or do but think, and then
explicate clearly the things they conceive they understand,
acknowledge ingenuously what it is they ignore, and profess so
candidly their Doubts, that the industry of intelligent persons might
be set on work to make further enquiries, and the easiness of less
discerning Men might not be impos'd on. But because a more particular
accompt will probably be expected of my unsatisfyedness not only with
the Peripatetick, but with the Chymical Doctrine of the Primitive
Ingredients of Bodies: It may possibly serve to satisfy others of the
excusableness of my disatisfaction to peruse the ensuing Relation of
what passed a while since at a meeting of persons of several opinions,
in a place that need not here be named; where the subject whereof we
have been speaking, was amply and variously discours'd of.
It was on one of the fairest dayes of this Summer that the inquisitive
_Eleutherius_ came to invite me to make a visit with him to his friend
_Carneades_. I readily consented to this motion, telling him that if
he would but permit me to go first and make an excuse at a place not
far off, where I had at that hour appointed to meet, but not about a
business either of moment, or that could not well admit of a delay, I
would presently wait on him, because of my knowing _Carneades_ to be
so conversant with nature and with Furnaces, and so unconfin'd to
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