11 



PREFACE. 



fuch readers know that they will be dlfappolnted, If they expe^l to 

 find here what they call Jine language. From the authors I have 

 (ludied, I have not learned to cut philofbphy into fliort, fmart, fenten- 

 ces, after the manner of Seneca : And I fhould think my fubjedl dif- 

 graced, if I were to treat it in the ftyle of Tacitus, and his modern 

 imitators among the French and BritiQi. The reader, therefore, is to 

 expert nothing here but a plain and fimple ftyle, neither poetical nor 

 oratorial, nor mixed (abfurdly as I think) of both thefe ; unadorned, 

 therefore, with epithets, antithefes, and poetical defcriptions, and with- 

 out any amhlt'wus ornaments of any kind. This ftyle the reader, if 

 he has formed his tafte upon fome of the faftiionable w^riters of this 

 age, vYill, I know, think very infipid* 



I had once refolved never to publiih any thing in this age, upon the 

 fubje£t of philofophy, for the fame reafon which Varro gave for not 

 publiihing on that fubjedt in his age, namely, that the unlearned 

 would not underftand him, and the learned would not read him ; 

 ' for,' fays he, * thofe who are learned in the Greek learning will 



* chufe rather to read what the Greeks have written upon philofophy, 



* than any thing 1 could write : And, if they have not Greek learn- 



* ing, they will not care to read what, without that learning, is not to 



* be underftood *.' For the fake of my memory, however, I took 

 large notes of what I had read in the antient writers upon philofophy, 

 to which I joined fome obfervations and explanations of my own. 

 And in this manner I had written a great deal before I refolved to pu- 

 blifti : But, finding that thefe notes could be of little ufe, even to my- 

 felf, unlefs they were put in foiiie order, and fair copies made of them, 

 1 thought the beft amanuenfis I could employ for that purpofe was a 

 printer ; and, as they may be of fome ufe to thofe who are difpofed to 

 philofophize in a better manner than is ufual at prefent, and to employ 



their 



* Cicero. Academ. Quaeft. lib. i. cap. 2. 



