The Third Part.

are divisible into Elements, yield more then three. For, besides those which the Chymists are pleased to name Hypostatical, most bodies contain two others, Phlegme and Earth, which concurring as well as the rest to the constitution of Mixts, and being as generally, if not more, found in their Analysis, I see no sufficient cause why they should be excluded from the number of Elements. Nor will it suffice to object, as the Paracelsians are wont to do, that the Tria prima are the most useful Elements, and the Earth and Water but worthlesse and unactive; for Elements being call’d so in relation to the constituting of mixt Bodies, it should be upon the account of its Ingrediency, not of its use, that any thing 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,