All The Characters Of The

Thus This Earth Resembles A Great Animall Or Rather An Inanimate Vegetable, Draws In Aethereal Breath For Its Dayly Refreshment And Vitall Ferment And Transpires Again Grosses Exhalations. And, According To The Condition Of All Other Things Living, Ought To Have Its Time Of Beginning, Youth, Old Age And Perishing.

The Best And Safest Way Of Philosophising Seems To Be, First To Enquire Diligently Into The Properties Of Things, And To Establish Those Properties By Experiences [experiments] And Then To Proceed Slowly To Hypotheses For The Explanation Of Them. For Hypotheses Should Be Employed Only In Explaining The Properties Of Things, But Not Assumed In Determining Them; Unless So Far As They May Furnish Experiments.

Our Present Work Sets Forth Mathematical Principles Of Philosophy. For The Basic Problem Of Philosophy Seems To Be To Discover The Forces Of Nature From The Phenomena Of Motions And Then To Demonstrate The Other Phenomena From These Forces. It Is To These Ends That The General Propositions In Books 1 And 2 Are Directed, While In Book 3 Our Explanation Of The System Of The World Illustrates These Propositions.

If You Are Affronted It Is Better To Pass It By In Silence, Or With A Jest, Though With Some Dishonor, Than To Endeavor Revenge. If You Can Keep Reason Above Passion, That And Watchfulness Will Be Your Best Defenders.

We Are To Admit No More Causes Of Natural Things Than Such As Are Both True And Sufficient To Explain Their Appearances.