For The Things Of This

There Are Two Modes Of Knowledge: Through Argument And Through Experience. Argument Brings Conclusions And Compels Us To Concede Them, But It Does Not Cause Certainty Nor Remove Doubts That The Mind May Rest In Truth, Unless This Is Provided By Experience.

It Is Not Necessarily Impossible For Human Beings To Fly, But It So Happens That God Did Not Give Them The Knowledge Of How To Do It. It Follows, Therefore, That Anyone Who Claims That He Can Fly Must Have Sought The Aid Of The Devil. To Attempt To Fly Is Therefore Sinful.

There Are In Fact Four Very Significant Stumbling Blocks In The Way Of Grasping The Truth, Which Hinder Every Man However Learned, And Scarcely Allow Anyone To Win A Clear Title To Wisdom, Namely, The Example Of Weak And Unworthy Authority, Longstanding Custom, The Feeling Of The Ignorant Crowd, And The Hiding Of Our Own Ignorance While Making A Display Of Our Apparent Knowledge.

First, By The Figurations Of Art There Be Made Instruments Of Navigation Without Men To Row Them, As Great Ships To Brooke The Sea, Only With One Man To Steer Them, And They Shall Sail Far More Swiftly Than If They Were Full Of Men; Also Chariots That Shall Move With Unspeakable Force Without Any Living Creature To Stir Them. Likewise An Instrument May Be Made To Fly Withall If One Sits In The Midst Of The Instrument, And Do Turn An Engine, By Which The Wings, Being Artificially Composed, May Beat The Air After The Manner Of A Flying Bird.

[i]f In Other Sciences We Should Arrive At Certainty Without Doubt And Truth Without Error, It Behooves Us To Place The Foundations Of Knowledge In Mathematics, In So Far As Disposed Through It We Are Able To Reach Certainty In Other Sciences And Truth By The Exclusion Of Error.