should be affirmed or denyed to be an Element: and as for the
pretended uselessness of Earth and Water, it would be consider'd that
usefulnesse, or the want of it, denotes only a Respect or Relation to
us; and therefore the presence, or absence of it, alters not the
Intrinsick nature of the thing. The hurtful Teeth of Vipers are for
ought I know useless to us, and yet are not to be deny'd to be parts
of their Bodies; and it were hard to shew of what greater Use to Us,
then Phlegme and Earth, are those Undiscern'd Stars, which our New
_Telescopes_ discover to Us, in many Blanched places of the Sky; and
yet we cannot but acknowledge them Constituent and Considerably great
parts of the Universe. Besides that whether or no the Phlegme and
Earth be immediately Useful, but necessary to constitute the Body
whence they are separated; and consequently, if the mixt Body be not
Useless to us, those constituent parts, without which it could not
have been That mixt Body, may be said not to be Unuseful to Us: and
though the Earth and Water be not so conspicuously Operative (after
separation) as the other three more active Principles, yet in this
case it will not be amiss to remember the lucky Fable of _Menemius
Aggrippa_, of the dangerous Sedition of the Hands and Legs, and other
more busie parts of the Body, against the seemingly unactive Stomack.
And to this case also we may not unfitly apply that Reasoning of an
Apostle, to another purpose; _If the Ear shall say, because I Am not
the Eye, I am not of the Body; Is it therefore not of the Body? If the
whole Body were Eye, where were the Hearing? If the whole were for
hearing, where the smelling?_ In a word, since Earth and water appear,
as clearly and as generally as the other Principles upon the
resolution of Bodies, to be the Ingredients whereof they are made up;
and since they are useful, if not immediately to us, or rather to
Physitians, to the Bodies they constitute, and so though in somewhat a
remoter way, are serviceable to us; to exclude them out of the number
of Elements, is not to imitate Nature.
[Transcriber's Note: See the printer's note (beginning "The Authors
constant Absence") at the end of the book for material that the
printer inadvertently omitted from this page.]
But, pursues _Carneades_, though I think it Evident, that Earth and
Phlegme are to be reckon'd among the Elements of most Animal and
Vegetable Bodies, yet 'tis not upon that Account alone, that I think
divers Bodies resoluble into more Substances then three. For there are
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