Subject of it, (The number of Elements or Principles:) which he promis'd I should do at the end of the present Debates, if time would permit, or else at our next meeting. And this being by him undertaken in my name, though without my consent, the company would by no means receive my Protestation against it, but casting, all at once, their eyes on _Carneades_, they did by that and their unanimous silence, invite him to begin; which (after a short pause, during which he turn'd himself to _Eleutherius_ and me) he did in this manner. Notwithstanding the subtile reasonings I have met with in the books of the Peripateticks, and the pretty experiments that have been shew'd me in the Laboratories of Chymists, I am of so diffident, or dull a Nature, as to think that if neither of them can bring more cogent arguments to evince the truth of their assertion then are wont to be brought; a Man may rationally enough retain some doubts concerning the very number of those materiall Ingredients of mixt bodies, which some would have us call Elements, and others principles. Indeed when I considered that the Tenents concerning the Elements are as considerable amongst the Doctrines of natural Philosophy as the Elements themselves are among the bodies of the Universe, I expected to find those Opinions solidly establish'd, upon which so many others are superstructed. But when I took the pains impartially to examine the bodies themselves that are said to result from the blended Elements, and to torture them into a confession of their constituent Principles, I was quickly induc'd to think that the number of the Elements has been contended about by Philosophers with more earnestness then success. This unsatisfiedness of mine has been much wonder'd at, by these two Gentlemen (at which words he pointed at _Themistius_ and _Philoponus_) who though they differ almost as much betwixt themselves about the question we are to consider, as I do from either of them, yet they both agree very well in this, that there is a determinate number of such ingredients as I was just now speaking of, and that what that number is, I say not, may be, (for what may not such as they perswade?) but is wont to be clearly enough demonstrated both by Reason and Experience. This has occasion'd our present Conference. For our Discourse this afternoon, having fallen from one subject to another, and at length setl'd on this, they proffer'd to demonstrate to me, each of them the truth of his opinion, out of both the Topicks that I have freshly nam'd. But on the former (that of Reason strictly so taken) we declin'd insisting at the present, lest we should not have time enough before supper to go thorough the Reasons and Experiments too. The latter of which we unanimously thought the most requisite to be seriously examin'd. I must desire you then to take notice Gentlemen (continued _Carneades_) that my present business doth not oblige me so to declare my own opinion on the