the Person least interessed in the dispute.
If you have taken sufficient notice of the late Confession which was
made by _Carneades_, and which (though his Civility dressed it up in
complementall Expressions) was exacted of him by his Justice, I
suppose You will be easily made sensible, that I engage in this
Controversie with great and peculiar Disadvantages, besides those
which his Parts and my Personal Disabilities would bring to any other
cause to be maintained by me against him. For he justly apprehending
the force of truth, though speaking by no better a tongue then mine,
has made it the chief condition of our Duell, that I should lay aside
the best Weapons I have, and those I can best handle; Whereas if I
were allowed the freedom, in pleading for the four Elements, to employ
the Arguments suggested to me by Reason to demonstrate them, I should
almost as little doubt of making You a Proselyte to those unsever'd
Teachers, Truth and _Aristotle_, as I do of your Candour and your
Judgment. And I hope you will however consider, that that great
Favorite and Interpreter of Nature, _Aristotle_, who was (as his
_Organum_ witnesses) the greatest Master of Logick that ever liv'd,
disclaim'd the course taken by other petty Philosophers (Antient and
Modern) who not attending the Coherence and Consequences of their
Opinions, are more sollicitous to make each particular Opinion
plausible independently upon the the [Transcriber's Note: extra "the"
in original] rest, then to frame them all so, as not only to be
consistent together, but to support each other. For that great Man in
his vast and comprehensive Intellect, so fram'd each of his Notions,
that being curiously adapted into one Systeme, they need not each of
them any other defence then that which their mutuall Coherence gives
them: As 'tis in an Arch, where each single stone, which if sever'd
from the rest would be perhaps defenceless, is sufficiently secur'd by
the solidity and entireness of the whole Fabrick of which it is a
part. How justly this may be apply'd to the present case, I could
easily shew You, if I were permitted to declare to You, how harmonious
_Aristotles_ Doctrine of the Elements is with his other Principles of
Philosophy; and how rationally he has deduc'd their number from that
of the combinations of the four first Qualities from the kinds of
simple Motion belonging to simple bodies, and from I know not how many
other Principles and _Phaenomena_ of Nature, which so conspire with his
Doctrine of the Elements, that they mutually strengthen and support
each other. But since 'tis forbidden me to insist on Reflections of
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