Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/350

 wherein and how far they have been exceeded, and shew the several Steps whereby this sort of Learning has from Age to Age received Improvement; which ends Disputes and satisfies the Understanding at once.

Itherto in the main I please my self, that there cannot be much said against what I have asserted, though I have all along taken Care not to speak too positively, where I found that it was not an easie Thing to vindicate every Proposition without entring into a Controversy, which would bear plausible things on both sides, and so might be run out into a Multitude of Words, which in Matters of this kind are very tiresome. But there are other Parts of Learning still behind, where the very offering to compare the Moderns to the Ancients may seem a Paradox; where the subject Matter is entirely ancient, and is chiefly, if not altogether contained in Books that were