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advanced your fpeculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach, or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of this treatife, will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading; and will prevail to have those parts a little weighed, which might otherwise, perhaps, be thought to deserve no confideration, for being fomewhat out of the common road. The imputation of novelty is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men's heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion; and can allow none to be right, but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote any where at its first appearance: new opinions are always suspected, and usually oppofed, without any other reason, but because they are not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it price, and not any antique fashion: and though it be not yet current by the public stamp; yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing instances of this, whenever you please to oblige the public with fome of those large and comprehenfive difcoveries you have made of truths hitherto unknown, unless to fome few, from whom your lordship has been pleased not wholly to conceal them. This alone were a fufficient reason, were there no other, why I should dedicate this Essay to your lordship; and its having some little correfpondence with fome parts of that nobler and vast system of the sciences your lordship has made fo new, exact, and instructive a draught of, I think it glory enough, if your lordship permit me to boast, that here and there I have fallen into fome thoughts

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not wholly different from yours. If your lordship think fit, that, by your encouragement, this should appear in the world, I hope it may be a reason, some time or other, to lead your lordship farther; and you will allow me to say, that you here give the world an earnest of something, that, if they can bear with this, will be truly worth their expectation. This, my lord, shows what a present I here make to your lordship; just such as the poor man does to his rich and great neighbour, by whom the basket of flowers or fruit is not ill taken, though he has more plenty of his own growth, and in much greater perfection. Worthless things receive a value, when they are made the offerings of respect, esteem, and gratitude: these you have given me fo mighty and peculiar reasons to have, in the highest degree, for your lordship, that if they can add a price to what they go along with, proportionable to their own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your lordship the richest present you ever received. This I am sure, I am under the greatest obligations to feek all occafions to acknowledge a long train of favours I have received from your lordship; favours, though great and important in themselves, yet made much more fo by the forwardness, concern, and kindness, and other obliging circumstances, that never failed to accompany them. To all this, you are pleased to add that which gives yet more weight and relish to all the rest: you vouchsafe to continue me in some degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in your good thoughts; I had almost said friendship. This, my lord, your words and actions so conftantly show on all occafions, even to others when I am absent, that it is not vanity in me to mention what every body knows: but it would be want of good man

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ners, not to acknowledge what so many are witnesses of, and every day tell me, I am indebted to your lordship for. I wish they could as eafily affift my gratitude, as they convince me of the great and growing engagements it has to your lordship. This I am fure, I should write of the understanding without having any, if I were not extremely sensible of them, and did not lay hold on this opportunity to testify to the world, how much I am obliged to be, and how much I am,

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READER,

HERE put into thy hands, what has been the diversion of fome of my idle and heavy hours: if it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading, as I had in writing it, thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed. Mistake not this, for a commendation of my work; nor conclude, because I was pleased with the doing of it, that therefore I am fondly taken with it now it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows, has no less sport, though a much less confiderable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game: and he is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise, the UNDERSTANDING, who does not know, that as it is the most elevated faculty of the foul, so it is employed with a greater and more constant delight than any of the other. Its searches after truth, are a fort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure. Every step the mind takes in its progress towards knowledge, makes fome difcovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the time at least.

For the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own fight, cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having lefs regret for what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised

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himself above the alms-basket, and not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on work, to find and follow truth, will (whatever he lights on) not miss the hunter's fatisfaction; every moment of his pursuit will reward his pains with fome delight, and he will have reason to think his time not ill-spent, even when he cannot much boast of any great acquifition.

This, Reader, is the entertainment of those who let loose their own thoughts, and follow them in writing; which thou oughtest not to envy them, fince they afford thee an opportunity of the like diversion, if thou wilt make use of thy own thoughts in reading. It is to them, if they are thy own, that I refer myself: but if they are taken upon trust from others, it is no great matter what they are, they are not following truth, but fome meaner confideration: and it is not worth while to be concerned, what he fays or thinks, who fays or thinks only as he is directed by another. If thou judgeft for thyself, I know thou wilt judge candidly; and then I shall not be harmed or offended, whatever be thy censure. For though it be certain, that there is nothing in this treatise, of the truth whereof I am not fully perfuaded; yet I consider myself as liable to mistakes, as I can think thee, and know that this book must stand or fall with thee, not by any opinion I have of it, but thy own. If thou findest little in it new or instructive to thee, thou art not to blame me for it. It was not meant for those that had already mastered this subject, and made a thorough acquaintance with their own understandings; but for my own information, and the fatisfaction of a few friends, who acknowledged themfelves not to have sufficiently confidered it. Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or fix friends meeting at my chamber, and difcoursing on a fubject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every fide. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a refolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took a wrong course; and