by what slights they are imposed on. And therefore I think you have
done very wisely to make it your businesse to consider the _Phaenomena_
relating to the present Question, which have been afforded by
experiments, especially since it might seem injurious to our senses,
by whose mediation we acquire so much of the knowledge we have of
things corporal, to have recourse to far-fetched and abstracted
Ratiocination [Errata: Ratiocinations], to know what are the sensible
ingredients of those sensible things that we daily see and handle, and
are supposed to have the liberty to untwist (if I may so speak) into
the primitive bodies they consist of. He annexed that he wished
therefore they would no longer delay his expected satisfaction, if
they had not, as he feared they had, forgotten something preparatory
to their debate; and that was to lay down what should be all along
understood by the word Principle or Element. _Carneades_ thank'd him
for his admonition, but told him that they had not been unmindful of
so requisite a thing. But that being Gentlemen and very far from the
litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions
as empty; they had before his coming in, readily agreed promiscuously
to use when they pleased, Elements and Principles as terms equivalent:
and to understand both by the one and the other, those primitive and
simple Bodies of which the mixt ones are said to be composed, and into
which they are ultimately resolved. And upon the same account (he
added) we agreed to discourse of the opinions to be debated, as we
have found them maintained by the Generality of the assertors of the
four Elements of the one party, and of those that receive the three
Principles on the other, without tying our selves to enquire
scrupulously what notion either _Aristotle_ or _Paracelsus_, or this
or that Interpreter, or follower of either of those great persons,
framed of Elements or Principles; our design being to examine, not
what these or those writers thought or taught, but what we find to be
the obvious and most general opinion of those, who are willing to be
accounted Favourers of the Peripatetick or Chymical Doctrine,
concerning this subject.
I see not (saies _Eleutherius_) why you might not immediately begin to
argue, if you were but agreed which of your two friendly Adversaries
shall be first heard. And it being quickly resolv'd on that
_Themistius_ should first propose the Proofs for his Opinion, because
it was the antienter, and the more general, he made not the company
expect long before he thus addressed himself to _Eleutherius_, as to
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