ESSAY THE SECOND: CONTAINING SOME REFLECTIONS On the Folly and Prefumption of PHILOSOPHERS, especially in Matters of the FIRST PHILOSOPHY ; On the Rise and Progress of their boasted SCIENCE; On the Propagation of ERROR and SUPERSTITION; And on the Partial Attempts that have been made to reform the Abuses of HUMAN REASON. ESSAY THE SEC ON D. SECTION I. HE who afferts that there would be more real knowledge and more true wisdom among mankind, if there was lefs learning and lefs philofophy, may offend fome men's ears by advancing a paradox; for fuch at least they will call it. But men who enquire. without prejudice, and who dare to doubt, will foon discover that this feeming paradox is a most evident truth. They will find it fuch in almost every part of human science, and above all others in that which is called metaphysical and theological. The vanity of the vaineft men alive, of fome who call themselves scholars and philofophers, will be hurt; but they who seek truth without any other regard, and who prefer therefore very wifely even ignorance to error, will rejoice at every such discovery. There was a time when navigators bent themselves obftinately to find a paffage by the North-East or the North-Weft to Cathay. Neither frequent loffes nor conftant disappointment could divert them from these enterprizes, as long as the fashionable folly prevailed. A 2 prevailed. The paffage was not found; the fashion wore out, and the folly ceafed. The bounds of navigation were fet: and fufficient warning was both given and taken against any further attempts in those dark and frozen regions. Many fuch there are in the intellectual world: and many fuch attempts have been made there with no better fuccefs. But the confequence has not been the fame. Neither examples nor experience have had their effect on philofophers, more fool-hardy than mariners: and where the former wandered to no purpose three thousand years ago, they wander to no purpofe, at least to no good purpose, still. "Il faut pouffer à une porte pour fçavoir qu'elle "nous eft clofe," fays Charron fomewhere in his Book of Wisdom. He fays right, " pour fçavoir qu'elle nous eft clofe." But when we know, or may know very certainly, by our own experience and by that of all the ftrong men in philofophy, antients and moderns, that a door is fhut which no human force can open, they who continue to fweat and toil in fhoving at it are most ridiculously employed. They who affect to guefs at the objects they cannot fee, and to talk as if the door ftood wide open whilst they peep through the key-hole, are employed still worse. The most antient philofophers may be excused in great measure for attempting to open every door of science; though they cannot be fo for impofing on mankind discoveries they never made. But they who followed thefe, in the courfe of philofophical generations, are inexcufeable on the first head as well as the laft; fince what was curiofity in the others became prefumption in them: and they scarce made amends, by the good they did in advancing fome real knowledge, for the hurt they did in entailing fo much that is quite phantaftical on pofterity. Tully confeffes very frankly that nothing is fo abfurd which fome philofopher or other has not faid: |