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it is even more easy to found many dogmas upon the phe 

 nomena of philosophy and the plot of this our theatre 

 resembles those of the poetical, where the plots which are 

 invented for the stage are more consistent, elegant, and 

 pleasurable than those taken from real history. 



In general, men take for the groundwork of their phi 

 losophy either too much from a few topics, or too little from 

 many; in either case their philosophy is founded on too nar 

 row a basis of experiment and natural history, and decides 

 on too scanty grounds. For the theoretic philosopher seizes 

 various common circumstances by experiment, without re 

 ducing them to certainty or examining and frequently con 

 sidering them, and relies for the rest upon meditation and 

 the activity of his wit. 



There are other philosophers who have diligently and 

 accurately attended to a few experiments, and have thence 

 presumed to deduce and invent systems of philosophy, form 

 ing everything to conformity with them. 



A third set, from their faith and religious veneration, 

 introduce theology and traditions; the absurdity of some 

 among them having proceeded so far as to seek and derive 

 the sciences from spirits and genii. There are, therefore, 

 three sources of error and three species of false philosophy; 

 the sophistic, empiric, and superstitious. 



LXIII. Aristotle affords the most eminent instance of 

 the first; for he corrupted natural philosophy by logic 

 thus he formed the world of categories, assigned to the 

 human soul, the noblest of substances, a genus determined 

 by words of secondary operation, treated of density and rar 

 ity (by which bodies occupy a greater or lesser space), by 

 the frigid distinctions of action and power, asserted that 

 there was a peculiar and proper motion in all bodies, and 



