it self to be Sulphur, not only by a very strong Sulphureous smell, and by the colour of Brimstone; but also by this, That being put upon a coal, it was immediately kindl’d, and burn’d like common Sulphur. And of this Substance I have yet by me some little Parcells, which You may command and examine when you please. So that from this Experiment I may deduce either one, or both of these Propositions, That a real Sulphur may be made by the Conjunction of two such Substances as Chymists take for Elementary, And which did not either of them apart appear to have any such body in it; or that Oyle of Vitrioll though a Distill’d Liquor, and taken for part of the Saline Principle of the Concrete that yields it, may yet be so Compounded a body as to contain, besides its Saline part, a Sulphur like common brimstone, which would hardly be it self a simple or un-compounded body.
I might (pursues Carneades) remind You, that I formerly represented it, as possible, That as there may be more Elements then five, or six; so the Elements of one body may be Different from those of another; whence it would follow, that from the Resolution of De-compound body, there may result Mixts of an altogether new kind, by the Coalition of Elements that never perhaps conven’d before. I might, I say, mind You of this, and add divers things to this second Consideration; but for fear of wanting time I willingly pretermit them, to pass on to the third, which is this, That the Fire does not alwayes barely resolve or take asunder, but may also after a new manner mingle and compound together the parts (whether Elementary or not) of the Body Dissipated by it.
This is so evident, sayes Carneades, in some obvious Examples, that I cannot but wonder at their Supiness that have not taken notice of it. For when Wood being burnt in a Chimney is dissipated by the Fire into Smoke and Ashes, that smoke composes soot, which is so far from being any one of the principles of the Wood, that (as I noted above) you may by a further Analysis separate five or six distinct substances from it. And as