but that many
use as much or more reason then we; and having consider'd how much one
Man with his own understanding, bred up from his childhood among the
French or the Dutch, becomes different from what he would be, had he
alwayes liv'd amongst the _Chineses_, or the _Cannibals_: And how even
in the fashion of our Clothes, the same thing which pleas'd ten years
since, and which perhaps wil please ten years hence, seems now to us
ridiculous and extravagant. So that it's much more Custome and Example
which perswades us, then any assured knowledg; and notwithstanding that
plurality of voices is a proof of no validity, in those truths which
are hard to be discovered; for that it's much more likely for one man
alone to have met with them, then a whole Nation; I could choose no Man
whose opinion was to be preferr'd before anothers: And I found my self
even constrain'd to undertake the conduct of my self.

But as a man that walks alone, and in the dark, I resolv'd to goe so
softly, and use so much circumspection in all things, that though I
advanc'd little, I would yet save my self from falling. Neither would I
begin quite to reject, some opinions, which formerly had crept into my
belief, without the consent of my reason, before I had employed time
enough to form the project of the work I undertook, and to seek the true
Method to bring me to the knowledg of all those things, of which my
understanding was capable.

I had a little studyed, being young, of the parts of Philosophy, Logick,
and of the Mathematicks, the Analysis of the Geometricians, and
_Algebra_: Three arts or sciences which seem'd to contribute somewhat
conducing to my designe: But examining them, I observ'd, That as for
Logick, its Sylogisms, and the greatest part of its other Rules, serve
rather to expound to another the things they know, or even as _Lullies_
art, to speak with judgment of the things we are ignorant of, then to
learn them. And although in effect it contain divers most true and good
precepts, yet there are so many others mixed amongst them, either
hurtfull or superfluous, That it's even as difficult to extract them, as
'tis to draw a _Diana_ or a _Mercury_ out of a lump of Marble, which is
not yet rough-hewn; as for the Analysis of the Ancients, and the
_Algebra_ of the Moderns; besides that, they extend only to matters very
abstract, and which seem to be of no use; The first being alwayes so
tyed to the consideration of figures, That it cannot