Page:The Analyst; or, a Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician.djvu/15

 HOUGH I am a Stranger to your Peron, yet I am not, Sir, a Stranger to the Reputation you have acquired, in that branch of Learning which hath been your peculiar Study; nor to the Authority that you therefore aume in things foreign to your Profeion, nor to the Abue that you, and too many more of the like Charader, are known to make of uch undue Authority, to the mileading of unwary Perons in matters of the highet Concernment, and whereof your mathematical Knowledge can by no means qualify you to be a competent Judge. Equity indeed and good Sene would incline one to diregard the Judgment of Men, in Points which they have not conidered or examined. But everal who make the loudet Claim to thoe Qualities, do, nevertheles, the very thing they would eem to depie, clothing themelves in the Livery of other Mens opinions, and putting on a general deference for the Judgment of you, Gentlement, who are preumed to be of all Men the greatet Maters of Reon, to be mot converant about ditinct Ideas, and never to take things upon trut, but always clearly to ee your way, as Men whoe contant Employment is the deducing Truth by the jutet inference from the mot evident Principles. With this bias on their Minds, they ubmit to your Deciions where you have no right to decide. And that this is one hort way of making Infidels I am credibly informed.

II. Whereas then it is uppoed, that you apprehend more ditinctly, conider more cloely, infer more jutly, conclude more accurately than other men, and that you are therefore les religious becaue more judicious, I hall claim the privilege of a Free-Thinker; and take the Liberty to inquire into the Object, Principles, and Method of Demontration admitted by the Mathematicians of the preent Age, with the ame freedom that you preume to treat the Principles and Myteries of Religion; to the end, that all Men may ee what right you have to lead, or what Encouragement others have to follow you. It hath been an older remark that Geometry is an excellent Logic. And it mut be owned, that when the Definitions are clear; when the Potulata cannot be refued, nor the Axioms denied; when from the ditinct Contemplation and Comparion of Figures, their Properties are derived, by a perpetual well-connected chain of Conequences, the Objects being till kept in view, and the attention ever fixed upon them; there is acquired an habit of reaoning, cloe and exact and methodical: which habit trengthens and harpens the Mind, and being transferred to other Subjects, is of general ue in the inquiry after Truth. But how far this is the cae of our Geometrical Analyts, it may be worth while to conider.

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