But I confess (Sir) I much fear, that That which makes your Friend have such detracting thoughts of Theology, is a certain secret Pride, grounded upon a Conceit, that the Attainments of Natural Philosophers are of so noble a kind, and argue so transcendant an Excellency of Parts in the Attainer, that he may justly undervalue all other Learning, without excepting Theology it self.
You will not, I suppose, expect, that a person, who has written so much in the praise of Physiques, and laboured so much for a little skill in it, should now here endeavour to depretiate that so useful part of Philosophy. But I do not conceive, that it will be at all injurious to it, to prefer the knowledge of Supernatural, to that of meer Natural things, and to think, that the Truths, which God indiscriminately exposes to the whole Race of Mankind, and to the bad as well as to the good, are inferiour to those Mysterious ones, whose Disclosure he reckons among his peculiar Favours, and whose Contemplation employs the Curiosity, and, in some points, exacts the wonder of the very Angels. That I may therefore repress a little the overweening Opinion your Friend has of his Physical Attainments, give me leave to represent a few particulars conducive to that purpose.
And first, as for the Nobleness of the Truths taught by Theology and Physicks, those of the former sort have manifestly the Advantage, being not onely conversant about far nobler Objects, but discovering things that Humane Reason of it self can by no means reach unto; as has been sufficiently declared in the foregoing part of this Letter.
Next, we may consider, that, whatever may be said to excuse Pride (if there were any) in Moscus the Phoenician, who is affirmed to have first Invented the Atomical Hypothesis, and in Democritus and Leucippus, (for Epicurus scarce deserves to be named with them,) that highly Advanc’d that Philosophy; and in Monsieur Des-Cartes, who either Improv’d, or at least much Innovated the Corpuscularian Hypothesis: Whatever (I say) may be alledged on the behalf of these Mens pride; I see no great Reason, why it should be allowed in such as your Friend; who, though Ingenious Men, are neither Inventors, nor eminent Promoters of the Philosophy they would be admir’d for, but content themselves to Learn what others have Taught, or at least to make some little further Application of the Principles that others have Established, and the Discoveries they have made. And whereas your Friend is not a little proud of being able to confute several Errours of Aristotle and the Antients, it were not amiss if he consider’d, that many of the chief Truths that overthrow those Errours, were the Productions of Time and Chance, and not of his daring Ratiocinations: For, there needs no great Wit to disprove those that maintain the Uninhabitableness of the Torrid Zone, or deny the Antipodes, since Navigators have found many Parts of the former well Peopl’d, and Sailing round the Earth, have found men living in Countreys Diametrically opposite to Ours. Nor will it warrant a man’s Pride, that he believes not the Moon to be the onely Planet that shines with a borrowed Light, or the Galaxy to be a Meteor; since that now the Telescope shows us, that Venus has her Full and Wain like the Moon, and that the Milky way is made up of a vast multitude of little Stars, inconspicuous to the naked Eye. And indeed of those other Discoveries that overthrow the Astronomy of the Antients, and much of their Philosophy about the Celestial Bodies, few or none have any cause to boast, but the excellent Galileus, who pretends to have been the Inventor of the Telescope: For that Instrument once discover’d; to be able to reject the Septenary number of the Planets by the Detection of the four Satellites of Jupiter, or talk of the Mountains and Valleys in the Moon, requires not much more excellency in your Friend, than it would to descry in a Ship, where the naked Eye could discern but the Body of the Vessel, (to descry, I say) by the help of a Prospective Glass, the Masts, and Sails, and Deck, and perceive a Boat tow’d at her Stern: Though indeed Galileo himself had no great cause to boast of the Invention, though we are much oblig’d to him for the Improvement of the Telescope, since no less a Master of Dioptricks than Des-Cartes, does acknowledge with other Writers, that Perspective-Glasses were not first found out by Mathematicians or Philosophers, but casually by one Metius, a Dutch Spectacle-maker. On which occasion I shall mind you, that to hide Pride from Man, divers others of the chief Discoveries that have been made in Physicks, have been the Productions, not of Philosophy, but Chance, by which Gunpowder, Glass, and, for ought we know, the Verticity of the Load-stone, (to which we owe both the Indies) came to be found in these later Ages; as (more recently) the Milky Vessels of the Mesentery, the new Receptacle of the Chyle, and that other sort of Vessels which most men call the Lymphae-ducts, were lighted on but by Chance, according to the Ingenious Confession of the Discoverers themselves.