It is that chiefly which secures me
from the fear of censure, which I expect not to escape more than
better writers. Men's principles, notions, and relishes are so
different, that it is hard to find a book which pleases or
displeases all men. I acknowledge the age we live in is not the
least knowing, and therefore not the most easy to be satisfied. If I
have not the good luck to please, yet nobody ought to be offended with
me. I plainly tell all my readers, except half a dozen, this
Treatise was not at first intended for them; and therefore they need
not be at the trouble to be of that number. But yet if any one
thinks fit to be angry and rail at it, he may do it securely, for I
shall find some better way of spending my time than in such kind of
conversation. I shall always have the satisfaction to have aimed
sincerely at truth and usefulness, though in one of the meanest
ways. The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without
master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will
leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but every
one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that
produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable
Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough
to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little,
and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge;-
which certainly had been very much more advanced in the world, if
the endeavours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much
cumbered with the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or
unintelligible terms, introduced into the sciences, and there made
an art of, to that degree that Philosophy, which is nothing but the
true knowledge of things, was thought unfit or incapable to be brought
into well-bred company and polite conversation.
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