110 INTERPRETATION OF .NATURE. 



we conceive, induce to admit, that we are doing any thing 

 but founding a system or a sect, that our institution differs 

 wholly and generically from all that have hitherto been at 

 tempted in philosophy and the sciences, and that there is 

 the surest promise of a harvest of works, if men will only 

 not forestal the same by hastening to cut the first worthless 

 vegetation of muscus and weeds, and grasping wijth a 

 childish passion and vain precipitation at the first pledges 

 of works. And in handling the points we have enumerated, 

 enough, we think, shall have been done to guard against 

 that species of prejudice which is inspired by false and illi 

 beral notions of the thing propounded ; and therewithal we 

 judge that our second part, which we call the preparatory, 

 is complete; after every adverse gust from religion, from 

 theoretical speculation, and from civil wisdom, with its 

 handmaids, distrust, phlegmatic coldness, and the like, 

 shall have sunk and died away. 



Yet to form a preparation in all respects perfect, it seems 

 still to be wanting, that we remove the stagnation of mind, 

 which is generated by the utter novelty of our plan. This 

 unfriendly torpor is only dispelled by the explanation of 

 its causes ; for it is the knowledge of its causes alone that 

 solves the prodigy, and puts an end to the stupor of asto 

 nishment. Wherefore we shall here note all those perverse 

 and troublesome obstacles by which true science hath been 

 checked and retarded, so that it is not at all astonishing 

 that men should have been so long involved, and toiled on, 

 in the meshes of error. 



And in this part of the subject one thing will felicitously 

 come in, as a solid reason for hope, namely, that although 

 the true interpretation of nature, wherein we toil, be justly 

 held most difficult, yet by far the greatest part of that 

 difficulty depends upon what lies within our own power 

 and admits of correction, not on things placed beyond our 

 sphere of capacity ; I mean in the mind, not in things, or 

 in the senses. 



Now if any one deem that scrupulous care with which we 

 strive to prepare men s minds is uncalled for, that it is of 

 the nature of parade, and got up for purposes of display, 

 and should therefore desire to see denuded of all circum 

 locution and the scaffolding of preliminaries, a simple state 

 ment; assuredly such an insinuation, were it founded in 

 truth, would come well recommended to us. Would that it 

 were as easy for us to conquer difficulties and obstructions, 



