These things (subjoynes Eleu.) I propose, without despairing to see them granted by you; not only because I know that you so much preferr the Reputation of Candor before that of subtility, that your having once suppos’d a truth would not hinder you from imbracing it when clearly made out to you; but because, upon the present occasion, it will be no disparagement to you to recede from some of your Paradoxes, since the nature and occasion of your past Discourse did not oblige you to declare your own opinions, but only to personate an Antagonist of the Chymists. So that (concludes he, with a smile) you may now by granting what I propose, add the Reputation of Loving the truth sincerely to that of having been able to oppose it subtilly.
Carneades’s haste forbidding him to answer this crafty piece of flattery; Till I shal (sayes he) have an opportunity to acquaint you with my own Opinions about the controversies I have been discoursing of, you will not, I hope, expect I should declare my own sence of the Arguments I have employ’d. Wherefore I shall only tell you thus much at present; that though not only an acute Naturalist, but even I my self could take plausible Exceptions at some of them; yet divers of them too are such as will not perhaps be readily answer’d, and will Reduce my Adversaries, at least, to alter and Reform their Hypothesis. I perceive I need not minde you that the Objections 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.
FINIS.
THe Authors constant Absence from the Presse, whilst the former Treatise was Printing, and the Nature of the Subject it self, wherewith ordinary Composers are not wont to be at all acquainted, will, ’tis hop’d, procure the Readers Excuse, till the next Edition, if the Errata be somewhat numerous, and if among them there want not some grosser mistakes, which yet are not the only Blemishes these lines must take notice of and acknowledg; For the Author now perceives that through the fault of those to whom he had committed the former Treatise in loose Sheets, some Papers that belonged to it, have altogether miscarryed. And though it have luckily enough happen’d, for the most part, that the Omission of them does not marr the Cohærence of the rest; yet till the next design’d Edition afford an opportunity of inserting them, it is thought fit that the Printer give notice of one Omission at the End of the first Dialogue; and that to these Errata there be annex’d the ensuing sheet of Paper, that was casually lost, or forgotten by him that should have put it into the Presse; where it ought to have been inserted, in the [187.] printed Page, at the break, betwixt the words, [Nature] in the 13th. line, and [But] in the next line after. Though it is to be noted here, that by the mistake of the Printer, in some Books, the number of 187 is placed at the top of two somewhat distant pages; and in such copies the following addition ought to be inserted in the latter of the two, as followeth.
And on this occasion I cannot but take notice, that whereas the great Argument which the Chymists are wont to employ to vilify Earth and Water, and make them be look’d upon as useless and unworthy to be reckon’d among the Principles of Mixt Bodies, is, that they are not endow’d with Specifick Properties, but only with Elementary qualities; of which they use to speak very sleightingly, as of qualities contemptible and unactive: I see no sufficient Reason for this Practice of the Chymists: For ’tis confess’d that Heat is an Elementary Quality, and yet that an almost innumerable company of considerable Things are perform’d by Heat, is manifest to them that duly consider the various Phænomena wherein it intervenes as a principall Actor; and none ought less to ignore or distrust this Truth then a Chymist. Since almost all the operations and Productions of his Art are performed chiefly by the means of Heat. And as for Cold it self, upon whose account they so despise the Earth and Water, if they please to read in the Voyages of our English and Dutch Navigators in Nova Zembla and other Northern Regions what stupendious Things may be effected by Cold, they would not perhaps think it so despicable. And not to repeat what I lately recited to You out of Paracelsus himself, who by the help of an intense Cold teaches to separate the Quintessence of Wine; I will only now observe to You, that the Conservation of the Texture of many Bodies both animate and inanimate do’s so much depend upon the convenient motion both of their own Fluid and Looser Parts, and of the ambient Bodies, whether Air, Water, &c. that not only in humane Bodies we see that the immoderate or unseasonable coldness of the Air (especially when it finds such Bodies overheated) do’s very frequently discompose the Oeconomie of them, and occasion variety of Diseases; but in the solid and durable Body of Iron it self, in which one would not expect that suddain Cold should produce any notable change, it may have so great an operation, that if you take a Wire, or other slender piece of steel, and having brought it in the fire to a white heat, You suffer it afterwards to cool leasurely in the Air, it will when it is cold be much of the same hardnesse it was of before: Whereas if as soon as You remove it from the fire, you plunge it into cold water, it will upon the sudden Refrigeration acquire a very much greater hardness then it had before; Nay, and will become manifestly brittle. And that you may not impute this to any peculiar Quality in the Water, or other Liquor, or Unctuous matter, wherein such heated steel is wont to be quenched that it may be temper’d; I know a very skillful Tradesman, that divers times hardens steel by suddenly cooling it in a Body that is neither a liquor, nor so much as moist. A tryal of that Nature I remember I have seen made. And however by the operation that Water has upon steel quenched in it, whether upon the Account of its coldness and moisture, or upon that of any other of its qualities, it appears, that water is not alwaies so inefficacious and contemptible a Body, as our Chymists would have it passe for. And what I have said of the Efficacy of Cold and Heat, might perhaps be easily enough carried further by other considerations and experiments; were it not that having been mention’d only upon the Bye, I must not insist on it, but proceed to another Subject.