that the constituent Particles whereof these new Concretes were to
consist, were variously moved in order to their being connected into
the Bodies they were, by their various Coalitions and Textures, to
compose.
But (continues _Carneades_) presuming that the first Proposition needs
not be longer insisted on, I will pass on to the second, and tell you
that
[Sidenote: Propos. II.]
_Neither is it impossible that of these minute Particles divers of the
smallest and neighbouring ones were here and there associated into
minute Masses or Clusters, and did by their Coalitions constitute
great store of such little primary Concretions or Masses as were not
easily dissipable into such Particles as compos'd them._
To what may be deduc'd, in favour of this Assertion, from the Nature
of the Thing it self, I will add something out of Experience, which
though I have not known it used to such a purpose, seems to me more
fairly to make out that there May be Elementary Bodies, then the more
questionable Experiments of Peripateticks and Chymists prove that
there Are such. I consider then that Gold will mix and be colliquated
not only with Silver, Copper, Tin and Lead, but with Antimony,
_Regulus Martis_ and many other Minerals, with which it will compose
Bodies very differing both from Gold, and the other Ingredients of the
resulting Concretes. And the same Gold will also by common _Aqua
Regis_, and (I speak it knowingly) by divers other _Menstruums_ be
reduc'd into a seeming Liquor, in so much that the Corpuscles of Gold
will, with those of the _Menstruum_, pass through Cap-Paper, and with
them also coagulate into a Crystalline Salt. And I have further try'd,
that with a small quantity of a certain Saline Substance I prepar'd,
I can easily enough sublime Gold into the form of red Crystalls of a
considerable length; and many other wayes may Gold be disguis'd, and
help to constitute Bodies of very differing Natures both from It and
from one another, and neverthelesse be afterward reduc'd to the
self-same Numerical, Yellow, Fixt, Ponderous and Malleable Gold it was
before its commixture. Nor is it only the fixedst of Metals, but the
most fugitive, that I may employ in favour of our Proposition: for
Quicksilver will with divers Metals compose an _Amalgam_, with divers
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