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TRUTH scarce ever yet carried it by vote any where at its first appearance: new Opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed without any other reason, but because they are not already common. But Truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. "Tis tial and examination must give it price, and not any antique fashion and though it be not yet current by the public stamp, yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less genuine.

The Epistle Dedicatory.

EPISTLE TO THE READER.

HE is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise, the Understanding, who does not know, that as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is employed with a greater and more constant delight than any of the other. Its searches after Truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure. Every step the mind takes in its progress towards knowledge makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the time at least. For the Understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own sight, cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having less regret for what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised himself above the alms-basket, and, not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on work to find and follow Truth, will, whatever he lights on, not miss the hunter's satisfaction; every moment of this pursuit will reward his pains with some delight, and he will have reason to think his time not ill spent, even when he cannot much boast of any great acquisition.

This book was not meant for those that had al

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