exotick Compounds, we may recover the very same running Mercury that was the main Ingredient of them, and was so disguis’d in them. Now the Reason (proceeds Carneades) that I have represented these things concerning Gold and Quicksilver, is, That it may not appear absurd to conceive, that such little primary Masses or Clusters, as our Proposition mentions, may remain undissipated, notwithstanding their entring into the composition of various Concretions, since the Corpuscle of Gold and Mercury, though they be not primary Concretions of the most minute Particles or matter, but confessedly mixt Bodies, are able to concurre plentifully to the composition of several very differing Bodies, without losing their own Nature or Texture, or having their cohæsion violated by the divorce of their associated parts or Ingredients.
Give me leave to add (sayes Eleutherius) on this occasion, to what you now observ’d, that as confidently as some Chymists, and other modern Innovators in Philosophy are wont to object against the Peripateticks, That from the mixture of their four Elements there could arise but an inconsiderable variety of compound Bodies; yet if the Aristotelians were but half as well vers’d in the works of Nature as they are in the Writings of their Master, the propos’d Objection would not so calmly triumph, as for want of Experiments they are fain to suffer it to do. For if we assigne to the Corpuscles, whereof each Element consists, a peculiar size and shape, it may easily enough be manifested, That such differingly figur’d Corpuscles may be mingled in such various Proportions, and may be connected so many several wayes, that an almost incredible number of variously qualified Concretes may be compos’d of them. Especially since the Corpuscles of one Element may barely, by being associated among themselves, make up little Masses of differing size and figure from their constituent parts: and since also to the strict union of such minute Bodies there seems oftentimes nothing requisite, besides the bare Contact of a great part of their Surfaces. And how great a variety of Phænomena the same matter, without the addition of any other, and only