One would suspect (sayes _Eleutherius_ after his long silence) by what You have been discoursing, that You are not far from _Helmonts_ Opinion about the Origination of Compound Bodies, and perhaps too dislike not the Arguments which he imployes to prove it. What _Helmontian_ Opinion, and what Arguments do you mean (askes _Carneades_.) What You have been Newly Discoursing (replies _Eleutherius_) tells us, that You cannot but know that this bold and Acute Spagyrist scruples not to Assert that all mixt Bodies spring from one Element; and that Vegetables, Animals, Marchasites, Stones, Metalls, &c. are Materially but simple Water disguis'd into these Various Formes, by the plastick or Formative Virtue of their seeds. And as for his Reasons you may find divers of them scatter'd up and down his writings; the considerabl'st of which seem to be these three; The Ultimate Reduction of mixt Bodies into Insipid Water, the Vicissitude of the supposed Elements, and the production of perfectly mixt Bodies out of simple Water. And first he affirmes that the _Sal circulatus Paracelsi_, or his Liquor _Alkahest_, does adequately resolve Plants, Animals, and Mineralls into one Liquor or more, according to their several internall Disparities of Parts (without _Caput Mortuum_, or the Destruction of their seminal Virtues;) and that the _Alkahest_ being abstracted from these Liquors in the same weight and Virtue wherewith it Dissolv'd them, the Liquors may by frequent Cohobations from chalke or some other idoneous matter, be Totally depriv'd of their seminal Endowments, and return at last to their first matter, Insipid Water; some other wayes he proposes here and there, to divest some particular Bodies of their borrow'd shapes, and make them remigrate to their first Simplicity. The second Topick whence _Helmont_ drawes his Arguments, to prove Water to be the Material cause of Mixt Bodies, I told You was this, that the other suppos'd Elements may be transmuted into one another. But the Experiments by him here and there produc'd on this Occasion, are so uneasie to be made and to be judg'd of, that I shall not insist on them; not to mention, that if they were granted to be true, his Inference from them is somewhat disputable; and therefore I shall pass on to tell You, That as, in his First Argument, our Paradoxical Author endeavours to prove Water the Sole Element of Mixt Bodies, by their Ultimate Resolution, when by his _Alkahest_, or some other conquering Agent, the Seeds have been Destroy'd, which Disguis'd them, or when by time those seeds are Weari'd or Exantlated or unable to Act their Parts upon the Stage of the Universe any Longer: So in His Third Argument he Endeavours to evince the same Conclusion, by the constitution of Bodies which he asserts to be nothing but Water Subdu'd by Seminal Virtues. Of this he gives here and there in his Writings several Instances, as to Plants and Animals; but divers of them being Difficult either to be try'd or to be