a&O OF THE PROLONGA T,l Q N 



fciences, and particularly the philofopher's ftone, pafs 

 in Europe, with numbers of people, for very chimeri- 

 cal things. 



This was water to the dervife's mill. According to 

 him, that was the fublime philofophy, the only philo- 

 fophy deferving of the name, which confifTed in the 

 cabbala and the fciences that led to the pofTeffion of 

 the philofophers ftone — in fhort, he was, jufi as one 

 may chufe to call him, a magical, or theurgical, or 

 hermetical philofopher, and an adept in this fuperna- 

 rural philofophy, confequently had a fovereign con- 

 tempt for all fciences that are built upon univerfal ex- 

 perience, obfervation, experiments, meafures, calcu- 

 lations, and rational combinations. As fuch, he ex- 

 plains himfelf to our good man in pretty ftrong terms, 

 and gives us clearly to underftand, that philofophers, 

 who are obliged to keep to the leading-firings of rea- 

 fon, are in his opinion but very ignorant fellows, whofe 

 feeble eyes cannot bear tfcie light of the truly wife. 

 c c The genuine wife man, fays he, is the only man 

 ce who has a right to pretend to philofophife. He de- 

 6C pends upon nothing in the world. He fees all things 

 cc here around him dying and being born again, with- 

 €C out concerning himfelf in the leaft about it. He can 

 " procure himfelf greater riches than the mightieft 

 <c kings have ever had : but he treads them under foot, 

 iC and this magnanimous contempt gives him a gran- 

 * % deur even in the midft of indigence, that raifes him 

 <c fuperior to all the events of life." 



We know this language — it is the old gibberilh of 

 all the gold makers, cabbalifts, trifmegifts, magi, in 

 fhort, of all the pretended reflorers of mankind to their 



pri- 



