Page:History of the Royal Society.djvu/117

Rh But having made so much Haste thro' the formal Part of these their Meetings, I shall not so soon dispatch the substantial; which consists in directing, judging, conjecturing, improving, discoursing, upon Experiments.

Towards the first of these Ends, it has been their usual Course, when they themselves appointed Trial, to propose one Week some particular Experiments, to be prosecuted the next; and to debate before Hand, concerning all Things that might conduce to the better carrying them on. In this preliminary Collection, it has been the Custom, for any of the Society, to urge what came into their Thoughts, or Memories concerning them; either from the Observations of others, or from Books, or from their own Experience, or even from common Fame itself. And in performing this, they did not exercise any great Rigour of choosing and distinguishing between Truths and Falshoods: but amass all together as they came, the certain Works, the Opinions, the Guesses, the Inventions, with their different Degrees and Accidents, the Probabilities, the Problems, the general Conceptions, the miraculous Stories, the ordinary Productions, the Changes incident to the same Matter in several Places, the Hindrances, the Benefits, of Airs, or Seasons, or Instruments; and whatever they found to have been begun, to have failed, to have succeeded, in the Matter which was then under their Disquisition.

This is a most necessary Preparation, to any that resolve to make a perfect Search. For they cannot but go blindly, and lamely, and confusedly about the Business, unless they have first laid before them a full Account of it. I confess the excellent Monsieur des