Page:The Sceptical Chymist.djvu/44

Assertors of the four Elements value Reason so highly, and are furnish’d with Arguments enough drawn from thence, to be satisfi’d that there must be four Elements, though no Man had ever yet made any sensible tryal to discover their Number, yet they are not destitute of Experience to satisfie others that are wont to be more sway’d by their senses then their Reason. And I shall proceed to consider the testimony of Experience, when I shall have first advertis’d You, that if Men were as perfectly rational as ’tis to be wish’d they were, this sensible way of Probation would be as needless as ’tis wont to be imperfect. For it is much more high and Philosophical to discover things a priore, then a posteriore. And therefore the Peripateticks have not been very sollicitous to gather Experiments to prove their Doctrine, contenting themselves with a few only, to satisfie those that are not capable of a Nobler Conviction. And indeed they employ Experiments rather to illustrate then to demonstrate their Doctrines, as Astronomers use Sphæres of pastboard, to descend to the capaci-