, that too little and too much may be
said in it. If thou findest anything wanting, I shall be glad that
what I have written gives thee any desire that I should have gone
further. If it seems too much to thee, thou must blame the subject;
for when I put pen to paper, I thought all I should have to say on
this matter would have been contained in one sheet of paper; but the
further I went the larger prospect I had; new discoveries led me still
on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in. I will
not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass
than it is, and that some parts of it might be contracted, the way
it has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of
interruption, being apt to cause some repetitions. But to confess
the truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy, to make it shorter.
I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation,
when I knowingly let it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most
judicious, who are always the nicest readers. But they who know
sloth is apt to content itself with any excuse, will pardon me if mine
has prevailed on me, where I think I have a very good one. I will
not therefore allege in my defence, that the same notion, having
different respects, may be convenient or necessary to prove or
illustrate several parts of the same discourse, and that so it has
happened in many parts of this: but waiving that, I shall frankly avow
that I have sometimes dwelt long upon the same argument, and expressed
it different ways, with a quite different design.
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