Salt, Water, and Earth.
The Opinion You now propose (answers _Carneades_) being another then
that I was engag'd to examine, it is not requisite for me to Debate it
at present; nor should I have leisure to do it thorowly. Wherefore I
shall only tell you in General, that though I think this Opinion in
some respects more defensible then that of the Vulgar Chymists; yet
you may easily enough learn from the past Discourse what may be
thought of it: Since many of the Objections made against the Vulgar
Doctrine of the Chymists seem, without much alteration, employable
against this _Hypothesis_ also. For, besides that this Doctrine does
as well as the other take it for granted, (what is not easie to be
prov'd) that the Fire is the true and Adequate Analyzer of Bodies,
and that all the Distinct substances obtainable from a mixt Body by
the Fire, were so pre-existent in it, that they were but extricated
from each other by the _Analysis_; Besides that this Opinion, too,
ascribe [Errata: ascribes] to the Productions of the Fire an
Elementary simplicity, which I have shewn not to belong to them; and
besides that this Doctrine is lyable to some of the other
Difficulties, wherewith That of the _Tria Prima_ is incumber'd;
Besides all this, I say, this quinary number of Elements, (if you
pardon the Expression) ought at least to have been restrain'd to the
Generality of Animal and Vegetable Bodies, since not only among these
there are some Bodies (as I formerly argu'd) which, for ought has yet
been made to appear, do consist, either of fewer or more similar
substances then precisely Five. But in the Mineral Kingdom, there is
scarce one Concrete that has been evinc'd to be adequatly divisible
into such five Principles or Elements, and neither more nor less, as
this Opinion would have every mixt Body to consist of.
And this very thing (continues _Carneades_) may serve to take away or
lessen your Wonder, that just so many Bodies as five should be found
upon the Resolution of Concretes. For since we find not that the fire
can make any such _Analysis_ (into five Elements) of Metals and other
Mineral Bodies, whose Texture is more strong and permanent, it remains
that the Five Substances under consideration be Obtain'd from
Vegetable and Animal Bodies, which (probably by reason of their looser
Contexture) are capable of being Distill'd. And as to such Bodies,
'tis natural enough, that, whether we suppose that there are, or are
not, precisely five Elements, there should ordinarily occurr in the
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