n thus: "How is such a
thing done?" Whereas they should say, "Is such a thing done?" Our
reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the
beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation: let it
but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth, and with
inanity as well as with matter:

"Dare pondus idonea fumo."

["Able to give weight to smoke."--Persius, v. 20.]

I find that almost throughout we should say, "there is no such thing,"
and should myself often make use of this answer, but I dare not: for they
cry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness of
understanding; and I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company,
and prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of;
besides that, in truth, 'tis a little rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny
a stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in things hard
to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesses
whose authority will stop our mouths from contradiction. In this way, we
know the foundations and means of things that never were; and the world
scuffles about a thousand questions, of which both the Pro and the Con
are false.

"Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem
locum non debeat se sapiens committere."

["False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not
trust himself in a precipitous place"--Cicero, Acad., ii. 21.]

Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are
the same, and we look upon them with the same eye. I find that we are
not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek and
offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as
a thing conformable to our being.

I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although they
were abortive, yet have we not failed to foresee what they would have
come to, had they lived their full age. 'Tis but finding the end of the
clew, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater
distance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there is
betwixt this and the greatest. Now the first that are imbued with this
beginning of novelty, when they set out with their tale, find, by the
oppositions they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and
so caulk up that place with some false piece;

[Vol