132 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



the fecond place, I take thofe fads as I find them, and, if the au- 

 thor is credible, I believe them, without fuppofing them to be exag- 

 gerated ; becaufe, if I were to fuppofe them exaggerated, I could 

 not tell how much ; and perhaps they may be diminiflied, and then 

 I muft add to them. In lliort, to go to work in that way with 

 fads, is truly to make them. This is commonly done upon the 

 credit of fome philofophical fyftem the author has formed, to which 

 he wants to adjuft the fads. But I choofe rather to deduce my phi- 

 lofophy from fads, than fads from my philofophy. If, indeed, I 

 were able to form a fyftem of philofophy pcrfedly certain, concern- 

 ing the fize of Men or any other fubjed of natural knowledge, I 

 Ihould be very ready, upon the credit of fii-ch a fyftem, to rejed all 

 fads contrary to it, however attefted, as abfolutely impoftible to be 

 true ; and I fhould be in the cafe of a mathematician, who would 

 give no credit to a traveller or hiftoriaii affirming that he had 

 been in a certain country, where the diagonal of a fquare was 

 commenfurable to the fide. It ihould appear that BufTon had formed, 

 fome fyftem of philofophy upon the fubjed of the ftature of Men, 

 which he thinks as certain, and therefore he has limited the power 

 of God and Nature to five French feet for the ordinary ftature of 

 a Man, with the variation only of a foot below or a foot above. 

 Such, he fays, is the ftature of Man that goes to the race ; and what 

 is either below or above it, is only an accidental variety of the 

 individual, not a variety of the fpecies *. And, upon the credit of 

 this hypothefis, he rejeds, as mere fidions, all the accounts we have 

 of races of men, that are, or have been, of greater fize. But, as I 

 have no philofophy by which I can form fyftems of this kind a pri- 

 ori^ I am reduced to the neceffity of deducing, as I have faid, my 

 philofophy from fads ; and my way of judging of fads is fhortly 

 this : Firft, I inquire whether the author who reports them had ac- 

 cefs to know them, and to be well informed about them : 2dly, Whe- 

 ther 



* Buffon, Nat. Hift. Vol. iii. p. 5or^. 



