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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 known. in vogue familiar The former first of these two sense certainty convenience has it's advantages (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; and especially as it will
be afford a valuable addition and confirmation
to the notions of an ingenious modern
divine, who seeing the how stubborn and
unruly human reason grows every day
from the new and substantial acquisitions aliment it is every day
making acquiring in the field 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 pious
charitable and enlighten'd persons are certain
that all good men that ever were till
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within these 1800 years are to God eternally.
In plain english [if unless people are
not incorrigibly stupid and perverse], I shall if the world takes
yet manage by it it in this sense, I shall get money by it: To substitute what is called Scholarship for what is Knowledge.
[if a certain reverend Donegyrist of antiquity
has written to any purpose, every body 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
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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 know 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 I would my humble
advice to gentlemen is, not to lose time in grinding drudging
with at a machine, but to buy this my 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 pocked 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.
---page break---
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 & con- 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
now 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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