The next Argument (continues _Carneades_) that I shall urge against _Themistius's_ Opinion shall be this, That as there are divers Bodies whose _Analysis_ by Fire cannot reduce them into so many Heterogeneous Substances or Ingregredients [Transcriber's Note: Ingredients] as four, so there are others which may be reduc'd into more, as the Blood (and divers other parts) of Men and other Animals, which yield when analyz'd five distinct Substances, Phlegme, Spirit, Oyle, Salt and Earth, as Experience has shewn us in distilling Mans Blood, Harts-Horns, and divers other Bodies that belonging to the Animal-Kingdom abound with not uneasily sequestrable Salt. THE SCEPTICAL CHYMIST: OR CHYMICO-PHYSICAL Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the EXPERIMENTS WHEREBY VULGAR SPAGYRISTS Are wont to Endeavour to Evince their SALT, SULPHUR AND MERCURY, TO BE The True Principles of Things. _Utinam jam tenerentur omnia, & inoperta ac confessa Veritas esset! Nihil ex Decretis mutaremus. Nunc Veritatem cum eis qui docent, quaerimus._ Sen. _LONDON,_ Printed for _J. Crooke_, and are to be sold at the Ship in St. _Pauls_ Church-Yard. 1661. THE SCEPTICAL CHYMIST. _The First Part._ I am (sayes _Carneades_) so unwilling to deny _Eleutherius_ any thing, that though, before the rest of the Company I am resolv'd to make good the part I have undertaken of a Sceptick; yet I shall readily, since you will have it so, lay aside for a while the Person of an Adversary to the Peripateticks and Chymists; and before I acquaint you with my Objections against their Opinions, acknowledge to you what may be (whether truly or not) tollerably enough added, in favour of a certain number of Principles of mixt Bodies, to that grand and known Argument from the _Analysis_ of compound Bodies, which I may possibly hereafter be able to confute. And that you may the more easily Examine, and the better Judge of what I have to say, I shall cast it into a pretty number of distinct Propositions, to which I shall not premise any thing; because I take it for granted, that you need not be advertis'd, that much of what I am to deliver, whether for or against a determinate number of Ingredients of mix'd Bodies, may be indifferently apply'd to the four Peripatetick Elements, and the three Chymical Principles, though divers of my Objections will more peculiarly belong to these last nam'd, because the Chymical _Hypothesis_ seeming to be much more countenanc'd by Experience then the other, it will be expedient to insist chiefly upon the disproving of that; especially since most of the Arguments that are imploy'd against it, may, by a little variation, be made to conclude, at least as strongly against the less plausible, _Aristotelian_ Doctrine. To proceed then to my Propositions, I shall begin with this. That [Sidenote: Propos. I.]