126 Reviews and Notices of Books. 
trifles ? Shall I always spend my time in examining what is of no 
value? In so plentiful a harvest, so rich a vintage, so great a 
store of most important disquisitions, why do I only glean the 
seattered ears, search the neglected boughs, and gather the fallen 
grapes? When a chase after the more important and difficult 
things in the mathematics is offered,—a chase so full of variety, so 
pleasant, and so certain,—wherefore do I dwell so long upon those 
little questions, like one hunting after flies? I shun things of 
consequence, sport in serious, am gravely ridiculous, studiously 
seeking after, and nicely repeating and inculcating, even the 
slightest matter. Shall I then incessantly follow so many distant 
byways, so many uncouth turnings; and shall I never return 
again into the beaten path of the king’s highway? Shall I grow 
old in these outer courts of general matters? Shall I perpetually 
tarry in the entrance of the sciences? shall I always stick in the 
threshold? Shall I only knock at the doors of the mathematics, 
and never enter within the walls of the house, nor penetrate its 
more sacred recesses? Shall I ever be upon the parley, ever 
skirmish at a distance, and never engage hand to hand or come to 
a decisive battle? What do I but raise mists and doubts, sow 
strifes and contentions, raise storms and tumults, in that science 
which promises, which boasts of nothing but what is clear and 
evident, certain and tried, calm and serene? And by disputing 
more freely, and bringing many things to the scrutiny, I seem to 
detract and derogate from the certitude and evidence of the 
mathematics, which is so contrary to jarring and contentions. 
Thus am I wont to upbraid myself, and perhaps also others do 
the same, at least not without some seeming cause or appearance 
of justice. 
“Notwithstanding I am able to allege something in my own 
excuse to wipe away those reproaches; and since so much of the 
time destined for this lecture 1s now passed over, contrary to 
expectation, so that I am unable, though not unwilling, to enter 
upon another new subject, I humbly beg of you to pardon this, 
and indulge me with a little of your patience, while I am in some 
sort defending these trifles, and explainiug the reason of the design 
I have hitherto gone upon. As to these little niceties, I answer 
that these things are not always small which seem so, since the stars 
appear very small, and the sun not great; we are therefore to have 
a thorough knowledge from whence the appearance of a thing beheld 
comes, and whither it tends, before its magnitude can be judged of. 
Those things which are small in bulk are sometimes endued with 
vast strength; and those which contain nothing in them notable, 
do often draw after them very great consequences. The origins 
of the greatest things are almost always small: the largest stocks 
grow from small seeds; immense rivers swell from small foun- 
tains, And the nature of truth and error is most remarkably fruit- 
