Page:History of the Royal Society.djvu/461

 The Work itself indeed is vast, and almost incomprehensible, when it is consider'd in Gross: But they have made it feasible and easy, by distributing the Burden. They have shewn to the World this great Secret, That Philosophy ought not only to be attended by a select Company of refin'd Spirits. As they desire that its reductions should be vulgar, so they also declare, that they may be promoted by vulgar Hands. They exact no extraordinary Preparations of Learning; to have found Senses and Truth, is with them a sufficient Qualification. Here is enough Business for Minds of all Sizes: And so boundless is the Variety of these Studies, that here is also enough Delight to recompence the Labours of them all, from the most ordinary Capacities, to the highest and most searching Wits.

Here first they may take a plain View of all particular Things, their Kinds, their Order, their Figure, their Place, their Motion: and even this naked Prospect cannot but fill their Thoughts with much Satisfaction, seeing it was the first Pleasure which the Scripture relates God himself to have taken at the Creation; and that not only once, but at the end of every Day's Work, when he saw all that he had made, and approv'd it to be good. From this they may proceed to survey the Difference of their Composition, their Effects, the Instruments of their Beings and Lives, the Subtilty and Structure, the Decay and Supply of their Parts; wherein how large is the space of their Delight, seeing the very Shape of a Mite, and the Sting of a Bee appears so prodigious. From hence they may go to apply Things together, to make them work one upon another, to imitate their Productions to help their Defects, and with the noblest Duty to assist Rh