like those that we meet with in Civil Affairs? And which most abounds with Fears and Doubts, and mistaken in Ideas of Things.
It cannot be denied, but the Men of Reading do very much busy themselves about such Conceptions, which are no where to be found out of their own Chambers. The Sense, the Custom, the Practice, the Judgement of the World, is quite a different thing from what they imagine it to be in private. And therefore it is no wonder, if when they come abroad into Business, the sight of Men, the Tumult and Noise of Cities, and the very brightness of Day it self affright them: Like that Rhetorician, who having been us'd to declaim in the shade of a School, when he came to plead a true Cause in the open Air, desir'd the Judges to remove their Seat under some Roof, because the Light offended him.
But now on the other side, the Men of Works and Experiments perhaps do not always handle the very same Subjects that are acted on the stage of the World; yet they are such as have a very great resemblance to them. It is Matter, a visible and sensible Matter, which is the object of their Labours: And the same is also us'd by Men of practical Lives. This likeness of their Imployments will soon make the one excel in the other. For it is far easier for him who has been conversant in one sort of Works, to apply himself to any other; than for him who has only thought much, to turn a Man of Practice: As he that can paint the Face of a Man or a Lion, will much sooner come to draw any other Creature; than he who has all the Rules of Limning in his head, but never yet us'd his hand to lay on a Colour.
And as for the Terrors and Misapprehensions which
