That If (replies Carneades) was not needlessly annex’d: for thorowly to examine such an Hypothesis and such Arguments would require so many Considerations, and Consequently so much time, that I should not now have the Liesure to perfect such a Digression, and much less to finish my Principle Discourse.
Yet thus much I shall tell You at present, that you need not fear my rejecting this Opinion for its Novelty; since, however the Helmontians may in complement to their Master pretend it to be a new Discovery, Yet though the Arguments be for the most part his, the Opinion it self is very Antient:
- For Diogenes Laertius and divers other Authors speak of Thales, as the first among the Græcians that made disquisitions upon nature.
- And of this Thales, I Remember, TullyDe Natura Deorum. informes us, that he taught all things were at first made of Water.
- And it seems by Plutarch and Justin Martyr, that the Opinion was Ancienter then he: For they tell us that he us’d to defend his Tenet by the Testimony of Homer.
- And a Greek Author, (the Scholiast of Apollonius) upon these Words
Ex Ilio eblasthese chthon aute, Argonaut. 4.
La Tierra de Cieno fue hecha,
Afirma (a partir de Zenón) que el Caos, del cual fueron hechas todas las cosas, era, según Hesíodo, Agua; la cual, asentándose primero, se volvió Lodo, y luego se condensó en Tierra sólida. Y la misma opinión sobre la generación del Lodo parece haber sido sostenida por Orfeo, de quien uno de los antiguosAthenagoras. cita este testimonio,