TO THE READER. 



41 



in the very quarry ; yea, even of making brick where there was no straw 

 but what they gleaned, and lay dispersed up and down ; nor did they 

 think their pains yet ill bestowed, if, through the assiduous labour and a 

 train of continual experiments, they might at last furnish, and leave solid 

 and uncorrupt materials to a succeeding and more grateful age, for the 

 building up a body of real and substantial philosophy, which should never 

 succumb to time, but with the ruins of nature, and the world itself 



In order to this, how many, and almost innumerable, have been their 

 trials and experiments, through the large and ample field both of art and 

 nature ! we call our journals, registers, correspondence, and transactions 

 to witness ; and may, with modesty, provoke all our systematical 

 methodists, natural historians, and pretenders, hitherto extant from the 

 beginning of letters to this period, to show us so ample, so worthy, and 

 so useful a collection. It is a fatality and an injury to be deplored, that 

 those who give us hard words, will not first vouchsafe impartially to 

 examine these particulars, since all ingenuous spirits could not but be 

 abundantly satisfied, that this illustrious assembly has not met so many 

 years purely for speculation only ; though I take even that to be no 

 ignoble culture of the mind, or time mispent, for persons who have so 

 few friends, and slender obligations to those who should patronize and 

 encourage them : but they have aimed at greater things, and greater 

 things produced. By emancipating and freeing themselves from the 

 tyranny of opinion, delusory and fallacious shows, they receive nothing 

 upon trust, but bring all things to the Lydian touch ; make them pass 

 the fire, the anvil and the file, till they come forth perfectly repurged, and 

 of consistence. They are not hasty in pronouncing fi-om a single, or 

 incompetent number of experiments, the ecstatic 'Eupv)xa, and offer 

 hecatombs ; but, after the most diligent scrutiny, and by degrees, and 

 wary inductions honestly and faithfully made, record the truth and event 

 of trials, and transmit them to posterity. They resort not immediately to 

 general propositions upon every specious appearance, but stay for light 

 and information from particulars, and make report de facto, and as sense 

 informs them. They reject no sect of philosophers, no mechanic helps, 

 except no persons of men; but cheerfully embracing all, cull out of all, and 

 alone retain what abides the test; that, from a plentiful and well-furnished 

 magazine of true experiments, they may in time advance to solemn and 

 established axioms, general rules and maxims ; and a structure may 



