be the reason of this Chymical Deficiency, is the same upon whose account I think the Aristotelian and divers other Theories incompetent to explicate the Origen of Qualities. For I am apt to think, that men will never be able to explain the Phænomena of Nature, while they endeavour to deduce them only from the Presence and Proportion of such or such material Ingredients, and consider such ingredients or Elements as Bodies in a state of rest; whereas indeed the greatest part of the affections of matter, and consequently of the Phænomena of nature, seems to depend upon the motion and the continuance of the small parts of Bodies. For ’tis by motion that one part of matter acts upon another; and ’tis, for the most part, the texture of the Body upon which the moving parts strike, that modifies to motion or Impression, and concurrs with it to the production of those Effects which make up the chief part of the Naturalists Theme.
But (sayes Eleutherius) me thinks for all this, you have left some part of what I alledg’d in behalf of the three principles, unanswer’d. For all that you have said will not keep this from being a useful Discovery, that since in the Salt of one Concrete, in the Sulphur of another and the Mercury of a third, the Medicinal vertue of it resides, that Principle ought to be separated from the rest, and there the desired faculty must be sought for.
I never denyed (Replyes Carneades) that the Notion of the Tria Prima may be of