Apollonius, Lucretius, Paracelsus, Des Cartes, and others; who, if they were now in the world, tied fast, and separate from their followers, would, in this our undistinguishing age, incur manifest danger of phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw. For, what man in the natural state or course of thinking, did ever conceive it in his power, to reduce the notions of all mankind, exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? yet, this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason. Epicurus modestly hoped, that one time or other, a certain fortuitous concourse of all men's opinions, after perpetual justlings, the sharp with the smooth, the light and the heavy, the round and the square, would, by certain clinamina, unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of all things. Cartesius reckoned to see, before he died, the sentiments of all philosophers, like so many lesser stars in his romantick system, wrapped and drawn within his own vortex. Now, I would gladly be informed, how it is possible to account for such imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon of vapours, ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions, for which the narrowness of our mother-tongue has not yet assigned any other name, beside that of madness or phrensy. Let us therefore now conjecture how it comes to pass, that none of these great prescribers, do ever fail[1] providing themselves and their notions,
- ↑ This is ungrammatical. It should be, do ever fail to provide themselves, &c. or if the participle be used, it should be, do ever fail of providing, &c.
