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to the danger of being shortly ignorant of those truths themselves. An excess and luxury (as it were) of knowledge, cannot be too great, and is never a doubtful sign of the flourishing state of science. The more it occasions new researches, the more it confirms and matures the preceding ones. We see already, but too plainly, the bad effects of this spirit of economy, which, hurtful to itself, diminishes the present stock of knowledge, by imprudently refusing to extend it. By lopping off the branches, which hasty judgments deem unprofitable, they weaken and impair the trunk itself. But the truth is, it would cost some pains to discover new facts of a different kind from what we are used to; and therefore men chuse to spare themselves the trouble, by continually confining themselves to the old ones. Writers only show us what resembles our own manners. In vain hath nature varied her productions with such infinite diversity. Although a very small movement would procure us a new point of view, we have not, it seems, either leisure or courage to attempt it. We are content to paint the manners of that contracted society in which we live, or perhaps of only a small part of the inhabitants of one single city; and this passes without any opposition for a
