I made against the Quaternary of Elements and Ternary of Principles needed not to be oppos’d so much against the Doctrines Themselves (either of which, especially the latter, may be much more probably maintain’d than hitherto it seems to have been, by those Writers for it I have met with) as against the unaccurateness and the unconcludingness of the Analytical Experiments vulgarly Relyed On to Demonstrate them.
And therefore, if either of the two examin’d Opinions, or any other Theory of Elements, shall upon rational and Experimental grounds be clearly made out to me; ’Tis Obliging, but not irrational, in you to Expect, that I shall not be so farr in Love with my Disquieting Doubts, as not to be content to change them for undoubted truths. And (concludes Carneades smiling) it were no great disparagement for a Sceptick to confesse to you, that as unsatisfy’d as the past discourse may have made you think me with the Doctrines of the Peripateticks, and the Chymists, about the Elements and Principles, I can yet so little discover what to acquiesce in, that perchance the Enquiries of others have scarce been more unsatisfactory to me, than my own have been to my self.