date

p. 58 of the Translation The learned
p. 58 of the Translation

The learned whom I have consulted upon

this passage, are in doubt whether to consider

it as a prophecy of the anticipative

kind, or as an allusion to a point phenomenon

then known of knowledge then . in vogue familiar The first of these two sense certainty convenience has it's (for as to truth in matters of the mankind as all know that is neither here nor there) a ray thus brilliant can not fail of throwing fresh additional lustre on the prophetic mouth which characterises adorns that work. For all this I am

totibus manibus I am inclined

to the latter opinion; especially as it will

be afford a valuable addition and confirmation

to the notions of an ingenious modern

divine, who seeing how stubborn and

unruly human reason grows

from the new and substantial acquisitions aliment it is every day

making acquiring in the treasury storehouse of things

has hit upon a new scheme for sending

it an end-gathering for wool-gathering after words.

a believer in favour of the latter: for the

same sort of reason for which so many

charitable and enlighten'd persons are certain

that all good men that ever were till

within these 1800 years are to God eternally.

In plain english [if unless people are

not incorrigibly stupid and perverse], if the world takes

it in this sense, I shall get money by it: To substitute what is called Scholarship for Knowledge.

[if a certain reverend Donegyrist of antiquity

has written to any purpose, every one

who means to improve himself in Electricity

will] buy my book and get it by heart.

it will be inexcusible in a person who means to know any thing of Electricity, not to

read him all of them through from beginning to end,

(though you find nothing but confusion as

you go on,) read all of them and then you'll know.

I wait impatiently am all impatience to see this invaluable

passage make its triumphant entry into

the next edition of that work.

Every body knows the ingenious divine

who has shewn how much better a way

it is of improving one's self in the sciences

that have been created or within

these two or three hundred years to read Greek

and Latin than to consult our senses or those

who have consulted theirs

Accordingly as Electricity is spoken of in

more positive much more clearer terms than any useful invention

forms of knowledge (which all the world did not acknowledge

as well as this author to have been handed down from them) is

spoken of in any of the ancients whom

he has been at the pains to cite my humble

advice to gentlemen is, not to lose time in grinding drudging

with at a machine, but to buy this book

of mine and get it by heart; a thing that I am certainly no more interested in in all which I have no

more greater interest than a man who has thrown

away his life time in reading nonsense gibberish

in Greek and Latin has in persuading others

to drudge behind him in the same line.

who after having poked out from many waggon loads of rubbish a few grains of

somthing glistering [like gold] points to the

rubbish he has ransacked and cries; there

Gentlemen is where you must dig if you

would grow rich.+ + Dutens Recherches II p. 255 313. who after a life thrown away in study, spent in study if nonsense in Greek and Latin be nothing is nobody: who has just discernment enough to see this, tho' he had not enough to lead him into that course of real knowledge.

I honour him for the idea

Tis whether it was designed or no one of the best imagined most effective and subtlest attacks

that has been are made upon reason: which might have render'd this artifice unnecessary. who accordingly after it is too

late of in the day, to think of preaching

downright ignorance; there is no means left of

keeping mankind from knowing, but by

somthing which carries the face wears the guise of knowledge.

If Locke for example has traced out on a luculent & well-compacted

system the original of our ideas

do not study it in that system, but in a

few scraps of a few ancient authors, which

nobody could find either use or meaning for

till Locke published his book, but which

have since been found to be capable of

having a meaning given them somwhat

approaching to somthing said by him.

moreover as you cannot say how many

more such scraps there may be contained in

any given ancient author that you have not read

Dutens.
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