The Sceptical Chymist

TOUCHING THE EXPERIMENTS WONT TO BE EMPLOYED TO EVINCE EITHER THE FOUR PERIPATETICK ELEMENTS, OR THE THREE CHYMICAL PRINCIPLES OF MIXT BODIES

PART OF THE FIRST DIALOGUE

I PERCEIVE that divers of my friends have thought it very strange to hear me speak so irresolvedly, as I have been wont to do, concerning those things which some take to be the elements, and others to be the principles of all mixt bodies. But I blush not to acknowledge that I much less scruple to confess that I doubt when I do so, than to profess that I know what I do not: and I should have much stronger expectations than I dare yet entertain, to see philosophy solidly established, if men would more carefully distinguish those things that they know from those that they ignore or do but think, and then explicate clearly the things they conceive they understand, acknowledge ingenuously what it is they ignore, and profess so candidly their doubts, that the industry of intelligent persons might be set on work to make further enquiries, and the easiness of less discerning men might not be imposed on. But because a more particular accompt will probably be expected of my unsatisfiedness not only with the peripatetic, but with the chymical doctrine of the primitive ingredients of bodies: it may possibly serve to satisfy others of the excusableness of my dissatisfaction to peruse the ensuing relation of what passed a while since at a meeting of persons of several opinions, in a place that need not here be named; where the subject, whereof we have been speaking, was amply and variously discoursed of,