be refer'd to this purpose, this Notable Example, from my Own
experience; That Lead may without any additament, and only by various
applications of the Fire, lose its colour, and acquire sometimes a
gray, sometimes a yellowish, sometimes a red, sometimes an
_amethihstine_ [Transcriber's Note: amethistine] colour; and after
having past through these, and perhaps divers others, again recover
its leaden colour, and be made a bright body. That also this Lead,
which is so flexible a metal, may be made as brittle as Glasse, and
presently be brought to be again flexible and Malleable as before. And
besides, that the same lead, which I find by _Microscopes_ to be one
of the most opacous bodies in the World, may be reduced to a fine
transparent glasse; whence yet it may returne to an opacous Nature
again; and all this, as I said, without the addition of any extraneous
body, and meerly by the manner and Method of exposing it to the Fire.
But (sayes _Carneades_) after having already put you to so prolix a
trouble, it is time for me to relieve you with a promise of putting
speedily a period to it; And to make good that promise, I shall from
all that I have hitherto discoursed with you, deduce but this one
proposition by way of Corollary. [_That it may as yet be doubted,
whether or no there be any determinate Number of Elements; Or, if you
please, whether or no all compound bodies, do consist of the same
number of Elementary ingredients or material Principles._]
This being but an inference from the foregoing Discourse, it will not
be requisite to insist at large on the proofs of it; But only to point
at the chief of Them, and Referr You for Particulars to what has been
already Delivered.
In the First place then, from what has been so largely discours'd, it
may appear, that the Experiments wont to be brought, whether by the
common Peripateticks, or by the vulgar Chymists, to demonstrate that
all mixt bodies are made up precisely either of the four Elements, or
the three Hypostatical Principles, do not evince what they are
alledg'd to prove. And as for the other common arguments, pretended to
be drawn from Reason in favour of _Aristotelian Hypothesis_ (for the
Chymists are wont to rely almost altogether upon Experiments) they are
Commonly grounded upon such unreasonable or precarious Suppositions,
that 'tis altogether as easie and as just for any man to reject them,
as for those that take them for granted to assert them, being indeed
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