But to insist any longer on this Occasional Disquisition, Touching their Opinion that would Establish five Elements, were to remember as little as You did before, that the Debate of this matter is no part of my first undertaking; and consequently, that I have already spent time enough in what I look back upon but as a digression, or at best an Excursion.
And thus, Eleutherius, (sayes Carneades) having at length gone through the four Considerations I propos’d to Discourse unto you, I hold it not unfit, for fear my having insisted so long on each of them may have made you forget their Series, briefly to repeat them by telling you, that
Since, in the first place, it may justly be doubted whether or no the Fire be, as Chymists suppose it, the genuine and Universal Resolver of mixt Bodies;
Since we may doubt, in the next place, whether or no all the Distinct Substances that may be obtain’d from a mixt body by the Fire were pre-existent there in the formes in which they were separated from it;
Since also, though we should grant the Substances separable from mixt Bodies by the fire to have been their component Ingredients, yet the Number of such substances does not appear the same in all mixt Bodies; some of them being Resoluble into more differing substances than three, and Others not being Resoluble into so many as three.
And Since, Lastly, those very substances that are thus separated are not for the most part pure and Elementary bodies, but new kinds of mixts;
Since, I say, these things are so, I hope you will allow me to inferr, that the Vulgar Experiments (I might perchance have Added, the Arguments too) wont to be Alledg’d by Chymists to prove, that their three Hypostatical Principles do adequately compose all mixt Bodies, are not so demonstrative as to reduce a wary Person to acquiesce in their Doctrine, which, till they Explain and prove it better, will by its