et it has seldom happened that they have
offered any objection which I had not in some measure foreseen; so that
I have never, I may say, found a critic who did not seem to be either
less rigorous or less fair-minded than myself.

Whereupon I gladly take this opportunity to beg those who shall come
after us never to believe that the things which they are told come from
me unless I have divulged them myself; and I am in nowise astonished at
the extravagances attributed to those old philosophers whose writings
have not come down to us. They were the greatest minds of their time,
but have been ill-reported. Why, I am sure that the most devoted of
those who now follow Aristotle would esteem themselves happy if they had
as much knowledge of nature as he had, even on the condition that they
should never have more! They are like ivy, which never mounts higher
than the trees which support it, and which even comes down again after
it has attained their summit. So at least, it seems to me, do they who,
not content with knowing all that is explained by their author, would
find in him the solution also of many difficulties of which he says
nothing, and of which, perhaps, he never thought.

Yet their method of philosophising is very convenient for those who have
but middling minds, for the obscurity of the distinctions and principles
which they employ enables them to speak of all things as boldly as if
they had knowledge of them, and sustain all they have to say against the
most subtle and skilful without there being any means of convincing
them; wherein they seem to me like a blind man who, in order to fight on
equal terms with a man who has his sight, invites him into the depths of
a cavern. And I may say that it is to their interest that I should
abstain from publishing the principles of the philosophy which I employ,
for so simple and so evident are they that to publish them would be like
opening windows into their caverns and letting in the day. But if they
prefer acquaintance with a little truth, and desire to follow a plan
like mine, there is no need for me to say to them any more in this
discourse than I have already said.

For if they are capable of passing beyond what I have done, much rather
will they be able to discover for themselves whatever I believe myself
to have found out; besides which, the practice which they will acquire
in seeking out easy things and thence passing to others which are more
difficult, will ste