a convenient disposition of the minute parts of a portion of matter
may contrive bodies durable enough, and of this, or that, or the other
Consistence, without being oblig'd to make use of all, much less of
any Determinate quantity of each of the five Elements, or of the three
Principles to compound such bodies of. And I have (pursues
_Carneades_) something wonder'd, Chymists should not consider, that
there is scarce any body in Nature so permanent and indissoluble as
Glass; which yet themselves teach us may be made of bare Ashes,
brought to fusion by the meer Violence of the Fire; so that, since
Ashes are granted to consist but of pure Salt and simple Earth,
sequestred from all the other Principles or Elements, they must
acknowledge, That even Art it self can of two Elements only, or, if
you please, one Principle and one Element, compound a Body more
durable then almost any in the World. Which being undeniable, how will
they prove that Nature cannot compound Mixt Bodies, and even durable
Ones, under all the five Elements or material Principles.
But to insist any longer on this Occasional Disquisition, Touching
their Opinion that would Establish five Elements, were to remember as
little as You did before, that the Debate of this matter is no part of
my first undertaking; and consequently, that I have already spent time
enough in what I look back upon but as a digression, or at best an
Excursion.
And thus, _Eleutherius_, (sayes _Carneades_) having at length gone
through the four Considerations I propos'd to Discourse unto you, I
hold it not unfit, for fear my having insisted so long on each of them
may have made you forget their _Series_, briefly to repeat them by
telling you, that
Since, in the first place, it may justly be doubted whether or no the
Fire be, as Chymists suppose it, the genuine and Universal Resolver of
mixt Bodies;
Since we may doubt, in the next place, whether or no all the Distinct
Substances that may be obtain'd from a mixt body by the Fire were
pre-existent there in the formes in which they were separated from it;
Since also, though we should grant the Substances separable from mixt
Bodies by the fire to have been their component Ingredients, yet the
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