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 ever does no Prejudice to their Simple Medicines, which may, perhaps, be very admirable, and which a long Experience may have taught the Chineses to apply with great Success; and it is possible that they may sometimes give not unhappy Guesses in ordinary Cases, by feeling their Patients Pulses: Still this is little to Physick, as an Art; and however the Chineses may be allowed to be excellent Empiricks, as many of the West-Indian Salvages are, yet it cannot be believed that they can be tolerable Philosophers; which, in an Enquiry into the Learning of any Nation, is the first Question that is to be considered.

But it is time now to leave those Countries, in some of which there seems never to have been any solid Learning originally, and in the rest but the Beginnings of it, to come to Greece, as it stood in the Age of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Euclid, and those other Great Men, who about the Time of Alexander the Great, and afterwards, did such great Things in almost all Parts of real Learning. If upon Enquiry it shall be found that a Comparison may be made between these Ancients and the Moderns, upon any Heads wherein Learning is principally concerned, which will not be to the Disadvan-