62 DISSERTATION SECOND. [paiit j. 



have taken up seems to be erroneous and inconsistent. It 

 is the duration of the world, or of the human race, as reck- 

 oned from the extremity that is past, and not from the point 

 of time which is present, that constitutes the true antiquity to 

 which the advancement of science may be conceived to bear 

 some proportion ; and just as we expect more wisdom and 

 experience in an old than in a young man, we may expect 

 more knowledge of nature from the present than from any 

 of the ages that are past. 



" It is not to be esteemed a small matter in this estimate, 

 that, by the voyages and travels of these later times, so 

 much more of nature has been discovered than was known 

 at any former period. It would, indeed, be disgraceful to 

 mankind, if, after such tracts of the material world have 

 been laid open, which were unknown in former times, — so 

 many seas traversed, — so many countries explored, — so 

 many stars discovered, — that philosophy, or the intelligible 

 world, should be circumscribed by the same boundaries as 

 before." 



Another cause has greatly obstructed the progress of 

 philosophy, viz. that men inquire only info the causes of 

 rare, extraordinary, and great phenomena, without troubling 

 themselves about the explanation of such as are common, 

 and make a part of the general course of nature. 1 It is, 

 however, certain, that no judgment can be formed concern- 

 ing the extraordinary and singular phenomena of nature, 

 without comparing them with those that are ordinary and 

 frequent. 



The laws which are every day in action, are those which 

 it is most important for us to understand ; and this is well 

 illustrated by what has happened in the scientifick world 

 since the time when Bacon wrote. The simple falling 



'Nov. Org. Lib. i. Aph. 119. 



