another, without being confin'd to stick to any one party or Opinion,
which was after some debate accorded him. But I conscious to my own
Disability's told them resolutely that _I_ was as much more willing as
more fit to be a hearer then a speaker, among such knowing Persons,
and on so abstruse a Subject. And that therefore I beseeched them
without necessitating me to proclaim my weaknesses, to allow me to
lessen them by being a silent Auditor of their Discourses: to suffer
me to be at which I could present them no motive, save that their
instructions would make them in me a more intelligent Admirer. I
added, that I desir'd not to be idle whilst they were imploy'd, but
would if they pleas'd, by writing down in short hand what should be
delivered, preserve Discourses that I knew would merit to be lasting.
At first _Carneades_ and his two friends utterly rejected this motion;
and all that my Resoluteness to make use of my ears, not tongue, at
their debates, could do, was to make them acquiesce in the Proposition
of _Eleutherius_, who thinking himself concern'd, because he brought
me thither, to afford me some faint assistance, was content that I
should register their Arguments, that I might be the better able after
the conclusion of their conference to give them my sence upon the
Subject of it, (The number of Elements or Principles:) which he
promis'd I should do at the end of the present Debates, if time would
permit, or else at our next meeting. And this being by him undertaken
in my name, though without my consent, the company would by no means
receive my Protestation against it, but casting, all at once, their
eyes on _Carneades_, they did by that and their unanimous silence,
invite him to begin; which (after a short pause, during which he
turn'd himself to _Eleutherius_ and me) he did in this manner.
Notwithstanding the subtile reasonings I have met with in the books of
the Peripateticks, and the pretty experiments that have been shew'd me
in the Laboratories of Chymists, I am of so diffident, or dull a
Nature, as to think that if neither of them can bring more cogent
arguments to evince the truth of their assertion then are wont to be
brought; a Man may rationally enough retain some doubts concerning the
very number of those materiall Ingredients of mixt bodies, which some
would have us call Elements, and others principles. Indeed when I
considered that the Tenents concerning the Elements are as
considerable amongst the Doctrines of natural Philosophy as the
Elements themselves are among the bodies of the Universe, I expected
to find those Opinions solidly establish'd, upon which so many others
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