produces Magots, and old Cheese Mites, which I suppose you will not
affirm to be Ingredients of those Bodies. Now that fire do's not
alwayes barely separate the Elementary parts, but sometimes at least
alter also the Ingredients of Bodies, if I did not expect ere long a
better occasion to prove it, I might make probable out of your very
Instance, wherein there is nothing Elementary separated by the great
violence of the Refiners fire: the Gold and Lead which are the two
Ingredients separated upon the _Analysis_ being confessedly yet
perfectly mixt Bodies, and the Litharge being Lead indeed; but such
Lead as is differing in consistence and other Qualities from what it
was before. To which I must add that I have sometimes seen, and so
questionlesse have you much oftener, some parcells of Glasse adhering
to the Test or Cuppel, and this Glass though Emergent as well as the
Gold or Litharge upon your Analysis, you will not I hope allow to have
been a third Ingredient of the Mass out of which the fire produc'd it.
Both _Philoponus_ and _Themistius_ were about to reply, when
_Eleutherius_ apprehending that the Prosecution of this Dispute would
take up time, which might be better employ'd, thought fit to prevent
them by saying to _Carneades_: You made at least half a Promise, when
you first propos'd this Objection, that you would not (now at least)
insist on it, nor indeed does it seem to be of absolute necessity to
your cause, that you should. For though you should grant that there
are Elements, it would not follow that there must be precisely four.
And therefore I hope you will proceed to acquaint us with your other
and more considerable Objections against _Themistius's_ Opinion,
especially since there is so great a Disproportion in Bulke betwixt
the Earth, Water and Air, on the one part, and those little parcells
of resembling substances, that the fire separates from _Concretes_ on
the other part, that I can scarce think that you are serious, when to
lose no advantage against your Adversary, you seem to deny it to be
rational, to conclude these great simple Bodies to be the Elements,
and not the Products of compounded ones.
What you alledge (replies _Carneades_) of the Vastness of the Earth
and Water, has long since made me willing to allow them to be the
greatest and chief Masses of Matter to be met with here below: But I
think I could shew You, if You would give me leave, that this will
prove only that the Elements, as You call them, are the chief Bodies
that make up the neighbouring part of the World, but not that they are
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