derns. They are
great Hunters of Ancient Manuscripts, and have in great Veneration any
thing that has escaped the Teeth of Time; and if Age has obliterated the
Characters, 'tis the more valuable for not being legible. These
Superstitious bigotted idolaters of time past, are children in their
Understanding all their lives, for they hang so incessantly upon the
leading-strings of Authority, that their Judgments like the Limbs of
some _Indian_ Penitents, become altogether crampt and motionless for
want of use. In fine, they think it a disparagement of their Learning to
talk what other Men understand, and will scarce believe that two and two
make four, under a Demonstration from _Euclid_, or a _Quotation from
Aristotle_.

The World shall allow a Man to be a wise Man, a good Naturalist, a good
Mathematician, Politician or Poet, but not a _Scholar_, or Learned Man,
unless he be a Philologer and understands Greek and Latin. But for my
part I take these Gentlemen have just inverted the life of the Term, and
given that to the Knowledge of Words, which belongs more properly to
Things. I take Nature to be the Book of Universal Learning, which he
that reads best in all or any of its Parts, is the greatest Scholar, the
most Learned Man; and 'tis as ridiculous for a Man to count himself more
learned than another, if he have no greater Extent of Knowledge of
things, because he is more vers'd in Languages, as it would be for an
old fellow to tell a young One, his own Eyes were better than the
other's because he reads with spectacles, the other without.

* _Impertinence_ is a Failing that has its Root in Nature, but is not
worth laughing at, till it has received the finishing strokes of _Art_.
A man thro' natural Defects may do abundance of incoherent foolish
Actions, yet deserves compassion and Advice rather than derision. But to
see Men spending their Fortunes, as well as lives, in a Course of
regular Folly, and with an industrious as well as expensive idleness
running thro' tedious systems of impertinence, would have split the
sides of _Heraclitus_, had it been his Fortune to have been a Spectator.
It's very easie to decide which of these impertinents is the most
signal: the Virtuoso is manifestly without a Competitor. For our follies
are not to be measured by the Degree of Ignorance that appears in 'em,
but by the study, labour and expence they cost us to finish and compleat
'em.

So that the more Regularity and Artifice there ap