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OF THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 



XII. SENTENCES. 



Of the condition of Man. 



1. MAN, the servant and interpreter of nature, does and 

 understands as much, as he shall really or mentally observe 

 of the order of nature, himself meanwhile inclosed around 

 by the laws of nature. 



2. The limit, therefore, of human power and knowledge, 

 is in the faculties with which man is endowed by nature 

 for moving and perceiving, as well as in the state of pre 

 sent things. For beyond these bases, those instruments 

 avail not. 



3. These faculties, though of themselves weak and inept, 

 are yet capable, when properly and regularly managed, of 

 setting before the judgment and use things most remote 

 from sense and action, and of overcoming greater difficulty 

 of works and obscurity of knowledge, than any one hath 

 yet learned to wish. 



4. Truth is one, interpretation one ; but sense is oblique, 

 the mind alien, the matter urgent; yet the work itself of 

 interpretation is devious rather than difficult. 



Of the Impediments of Interpretation. 



5. Whoever, unable to doubt, and eager to affirm, shall 

 establish principles proved (as he believes), conceded, and 

 manifest, and, according to the unmoved truth of these, 

 shall reject or receive others as repugnant or favourable ; 

 he shall exchange things for words, reason for insanity, the 

 world for a fable, and shall be incapable of interpreting. 



6. He who hath not mixed, confounded, and reduced into 

 a mass, all distinction of things, which appears in the com 

 monly established species, and the names imposed, shall not 

 see the unity of nature, nor the legitimate lines of things, 

 and shall not be able to interpret. 



7. He who- hath not first, and before all, intimately ex 

 plored the movements of the human mind, and therein most 



