One would suspect (sayes _Eleutherius_ after his long silence) by what
You have been discoursing, that You are not far from _Helmonts_
Opinion about the Origination of Compound Bodies, and perhaps too
dislike not the Arguments which he imployes to prove it.
What _Helmontian_ Opinion, and what Arguments do you mean (askes
_Carneades_.)
What You have been Newly Discoursing (replies _Eleutherius_) tells us,
that You cannot but know that this bold and Acute Spagyrist scruples
not to Assert that all mixt Bodies spring from one Element; and that
Vegetables, Animals, Marchasites, Stones, Metalls, &c. are Materially
but simple Water disguis'd into these Various Formes, by the plastick
or Formative Virtue of their seeds. And as for his Reasons you may
find divers of them scatter'd up and down his writings; the
considerabl'st of which seem to be these three; The Ultimate Reduction
of mixt Bodies into Insipid Water, the Vicissitude of the supposed
Elements, and the production of perfectly mixt Bodies out of simple
Water. And first he affirmes that the _Sal circulatus Paracelsi_, or
his Liquor _Alkahest_, does adequately resolve Plants, Animals, and
Mineralls into one Liquor or more, according to their several
internall Disparities of Parts (without _Caput Mortuum_, or the
Destruction of their seminal Virtues;) and that the _Alkahest_ being
abstracted from these Liquors in the same weight and Virtue wherewith
it Dissolv'd them, the Liquors may by frequent Cohobations from chalke
or some other idoneous matter, be Totally depriv'd of their seminal
Endowments, and return at last to their first matter, Insipid Water;
some other wayes he proposes here and there, to divest some particular
Bodies of their borrow'd shapes, and make them remigrate to their
first Simplicity. The second Topick whence _Helmont_ drawes his
Arguments, to prove Water to be the Material cause of Mixt Bodies, I
told You was this, that the other suppos'd Elements may be transmuted
into one another. But the Experiments by him here and there produc'd
on this Occasion, are so uneasie to be made and to be judg'd of, that
I shall not insist on them; not to mention, that if they were granted
to be true, his Inference from them is somewhat disputable; and
therefore I shall pass on to tell You, That as, in his First Argument,
our Paradoxical Author endeavours to prove Water the Sole Element of
Mixt Bodies, by their Ultimate Resolution, when by his _Alkahest_, or
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