Page:Anacalypsis vol 1.djvu/17

xii precludes me from founding my thinkings or reasonings on facts deduced by experiment, like the modern natural philosopher; but I endeavour to do this as far as is in my power. I found them on the records of facts, and on quotations from ancient authors, and on the deductions which were made by writers without any reference to my theory or system. A casual observation, or notice of a fact, is often met with in an author which he considers of little or no consequence, but which, from that very circumstance, is the more valued by me, because it is the more likely to be true.

This book is intended for those only who think that the different mythoses and histories are yet involved in darkness and confusion: and it is an attempt to elucidate the grounds on which the former were founded, and from which they have risen to their present state. It is evident that, if I have succeeded, and if I have discovered the original principles, although, perhaps, trifling circumstances or matters may be erroneously stated, yet new discoveries will every day add new proofs to my system, till it will be established past all dispute. If, on the contrary, I be wrong, new discoveries will soon expose my errors, and, like all preceding theories, my theory will die away, as they are dying away, and it will be forgotten.

I have just said that this work is a theory, and professes, in a great measure, to arrive at probabilities only. I am of opinion that, if ancient authors had attended more to the latter, we should have been better informed than we now are upon every thing relating to the antiquities of nations. The positive assertions, false in themselves, yet not meant to mislead, but only to express the opinions of some authors, together with the intentional falsities of others, have accumulated an immense mass of absurdities, which have rendered all ancient history worse than a riddle. Had the persons first named only stated their opinion that a thing was probable, but which, in composition, it is exceedingly difficult to do, as I have constantly found, their successors would not have been misled by their want of sense or judgment. Every succeeding generation has added to the mass of nonsense, until the enormity is beginning to cure itself, and to prove that the whole, as a system, is false: it is beginning to convince most persons that some new system must be had recourse to, if one can be devised, which may at least have the good quality of containing within itself the possibility of being true, a quality which the present old system most certainly wants. Now I flatter myself that my new system, notwithstanding many errors which it may contain, will possess this quality; and if I produce a sufficient number of known facts that support it, for the existence of which it accounts, and without which system their existence cannot be accounted for, I contend that I shall render it very probable that my system is true. The whole force of this observation will not be understood till the reader comes to the advanced part of my next volume, wherein I shall treat upon the system of the philosophic Niebuhr respecting the history of the ancient Romans.

Of whatever credulity my reader may be disposed to accuse me, in some respects, there will be no room for any charge of this kind, on account of the legends of bards or monks, or the forgeries of the Christian priests of the middle ages; as, for fear of being