The Opinion You now propose (answers Carneades) being another then that I was engag’d to examine, it is not requisite for me to Debate it at present; nor should I have leisure to do it thorowly. Wherefore I shall only tell you in General, that though I think this Opinion in some respects more defensible then that of the Vulgar Chymists; yet you may easily enough learn from the past Discourse what may be thought of it: Since many of the Objections made against the Vulgar Doctrine of the Chymists seem, without much alteration, employable against this Hypothesis also. For, besides that this Doctrine does as well as the other take it for granted, (what is not easie to be prov’d) that the Fire is the true and Adequate Analyzer of Bodies, and that all the Distinct substances obtainable from a mixt Body by the Fire, were so pre-existent in it, that they were but extricated from each other by the Analysis; Besides that this Opinion, too, ascribe to the Productions of the Fire an Elementary simplicity, which I have shewn not to belong to them; and besides that this Doctrine is lyable to some of the other Difficulties, wherewith That of the Tria Prima is incumber’d; Besides all this, I say, this quinary number of Elements, (if you pardon the Expression) ought at least to have been restrain’d to the Generality of Animal and Vegetable Bodies, since not only among these there are some Bodies (as I formerly argu’d) which, for ought has yet been made to appear, do consist, either of fewer or more similar substances then precisely Five. But in the Mineral Kingdom, there is scarce one Concrete that has been evinc’d to be adequatly divisible into such five Principles or Elements, and neither more nor less, as this Opinion would have every mixt Body to consist of.
And this very thing (continues Carneades) may serve to take away or lessen your Wonder, that just so many Bodies as five should be found upon the Resolution of Concretes. For since we find not that the fire can make any such Analysis (into five Elements) of Metals and other Mineral Bodies, whose Texture is more strong and permanent, it remains that the Five Substances under consideration be Obtain’d from Vegetable and Animal Bodies, which (probably by reason of their looser Contexture) are