AUTHORS PREFACE 17 



ternal doubts and scruples, and the darkness and fantastic 

 images of the mind; that at length we might make more 

 sure and certain discoveries for the benefit of posterity. 

 And if we shall have effected anything to the purpose, 

 what led us to it was a true and genuine humiliation of 

 mind. Those who before us applied themselves to the dis 

 covery of arts, having just glanced upon things, examples, 

 and experiments: immediately, as if invention was but a 

 kind of contemplation, raised up their own spirits to deliver 

 oracles: whereas our method is continually to dwell among 

 things soberly, without abstracting or setting the under 

 standing further from them than makes their images meet; 

 which leaves but little work for genius and mental abilities. 

 And the same humility that we practice in learning, the 

 same we also observe in teaching, without endeavoring to 

 stamp a dignity on any of our inventions, by the triumphs 

 of confutation, the citations of antiquity, the producing of 

 authorities, or the mask of obscurity: as any one might 

 do, who had rather give lustre to his own name, than light 

 to the minds of others. We offer no violence, and spread 

 no nets for the judgments of men, but lead them on to 

 things themselves, and their relations; that they may view 

 their own stores, what they have to reason about, and what 

 they may add, or procure, for the common good. And if 

 at any time ourselves have erred, mistook, or broke off too 

 soon, yet as we only propose to exhibit things naked, and 

 open, as they are, our errors may be the readier observed, 

 and separated, before they considerably infect the mass of 

 knowledge; and our labors be the more easily continued. 

 And thus we hope to establish forever a true and legitimate 

 union between the experimental and rational faculty, whose 

 fallen and inauspicious divorces and repudiations have dis 

 turbed everything in the family of mankind. 



But as these great things are not at our disposal, we 

 here, at the entrance of our work, with the utmost humility 

 and fervency, put forth our prayers to God, that remember 

 ing the miseries of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this life, 



