Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/68

 'On the other side, what a stock of experience have you already in most things? What a faculty have you of making every thing you see an argument of some usefull conclusion or other? How much are you practised in the method of cleere and scientifical reasoning? How well doe you understand the true use and signification of words, whereby to register and compute your own conceptions. So well are you accomplisht in all these particulars, that I safely persuade myself, but that your modesty thinks every scribler wiser than yourself, that you can draw more knowledge and satisfaction from two hours of your own meditation, than from 12 hours endurance of other men's loquacity. For when you meditate, it is always upon some thing that you are not yet cleere in (and a little armor will serve, being put upon the right place); but when you reade, you must take your chance and perhaps be corrupted with lies, disgusted with absurdities, and tired with impertinencies; or made ready to vomitt at the bis (imò centies) recocta crambe offered unto you. Besides what a difference is there between walking with our naturall legs, and crutches? or betweene a cloth, whose subtegmen is the same from end to end, and another peeced up out of a 1000 gaudy rags? But the proverb (verbum sapienti) forbids me to be more tedious. The next disease you labour under, is your apprehension of many diseases, and a continual fear that you are always inclining, or falling into one or other. Here I might tell you of the vanity of life; or that to fear any evil long, is more intolerable, than the evil itselfe suffered; &c.

'But I had rather put you in mind that this distemper is incident to all that begin the study of diseases. Now it is possible that it hangs yet upon you, according to the opinion you may have of yourself, rather than according to the knowledge that others have of your greater maturity in the faculty. But ad rem. Few terrible diseases have their pathognomonical signes. Few know those signes without experiences of them, and that in others rather than themselves. Moreover; the same inward causes produce different outward signes; and, vice versa, the same outward signes may proceed from different inward causes, and therefore those little rules