Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/119

 whether Aristotle, had he but seen the novelties discovered in Heaven, would not have changed his opinion, amended his Books, and embraced the more sensible Doctrine; rejecting those silly Gulls, which too scrupulously go about to defend what ever he hath said; not considering, that if Aristotle were such a one as they fancy him to themselves, he would be a man of an untractable wit, an obstinate mind, a barbarous soul, a stubborn will, that accounting all men else but as silly sheep, would have his Oracles preferred before the Senses, Experience, and Nature her self? They are the Sectators of Aristotle that have given him this Authority, and not he that hath usurped or taken it upon him; and because it is more easie for a man to sculk under anothers shield than to shew himself openly, they tremble, and are affraid to stir one step from him; and rather than they will admit some alterations in the Heaven of Aristotle, they will impertinently deny those they behold in the Heaven of Nature.

These kind of Drolleries put me in mind of that Statuary which having reduced a great piece of Marble to the Image of an Hercules, or a thundring Jupiter, I know not whether, and given it with admirable Art such a vivacity and threatning fury, that it moved terror in as many as beheld it; he himself began also to be affraid thereof, though all its sprightfulnesse, and life was his own workmanship; and his affrightment was such, that he had no longer the courage to affront it with his Chizzels and Mallet.

I have many times wondered how these nice maintainers of what ever fell from Aristotle, are not aware how great a prejudice they are to his reputation and credit; and how that the more they go about to encrease his Authority, the more they diminish it; for whilest I see them obstinate in their attempts to maintain those Propositions which I palpably discover to be manifestly false; and in their desires to perswade me that so to do, is the part of a Philosopher; and that Aristotle himself would do the same, it much abates in me of the opinion that he hath rightly philosophated about other conclusions, to me more abstruse: for if I could see them concede and change opinion in a manifest truth, I would believe, that in those in which they should persist, they may have some solid demonstrations to me unknown, and unheard of.

Or when they should be made to see that they have hazarded too much of their own and Aristotle's repuatation in confessing, that they had not understood this or that conclusion found out by some other man; would it not be a less evil for them to seek for it amongst his Texts, by laying many of them together, according to the art intimated to us by Simplicius? for if his