66 DEDICATION 



ous body of learned individuals, I had less to fear from others. 

 I even ventured to hope that I should have the comfort of find- 

 ing all that you had granted me in your sheer love of truth, 

 conceded by others who were philosophers like yourselves. True 

 philosophers, who are only eager for truth and knowledge, 

 never regard themselves as already so thoroughly informed, 

 but that they welcome further information from whomsoever 

 and from wheresoever it may come; nor are they so narrow- 

 minded as to imagine any of the arts or sciences transmitted to 

 us by the ancients, in such a state of forwardness or complete- 

 ness, that nothing is left for the ingenuity and industry of others. 

 On the contrary, very many maintain that all we know is still 

 infinitely less than all that still remains unknown; nor do 

 philosophers pin their faith to others' precepts in such wise that 

 they lose their liberty, and cease to give credence to the con- 

 clusions of their proper senses. Neither do they swear such 

 fealty to their mistress Antiquity, that they openly, and in sight 

 of all, deny and desert their friend Truth. But even as they see 

 that the credulous and vain are disposed at the first blush to 

 accept and believe everything that is proposed to them, so do 

 they observe that the dull and unintellectual are indisposed to 

 see what lies before their eyes, and even deny the light of the 

 noonday sun. They teach us in our course of philosophy to 

 sedulously avoid the fables of the poets and the fancies of the 

 vulgar, as the false conclusions of the sceptics. And then the 

 studious and good and true, never suffer their minds to be 

 warped by the passions of hatred and envy, which unfit men 

 duly to weigh the arguments that are advanced in behalf of 

 truth, or to appreciate the proposition that is even fairly demon- 

 strated. Neither do they think it unworthy of them to change 

 their opinion if truth and undoubted demonstration require them 

 to do so. They do not esteem it discreditable to desert error, 

 though sanctioned by the highest antiquity, for they know full 

 well that to err, to be deceived, is human ; that many things are 

 discovered by accident and that many may be learned in- 

 differently from any quarter, by an old man from a youth, by a 

 person of understanding from one of inferior capacity. 



My dear colleagues, I had no purpose to swell this treatise 

 into a large volume by quoting the names and writings of an- 

 atomists, or to make a parade of the strength of my memory, 



