The greater part of students are not born with abilities to construct
systems, or advance knowledge; nor can have any hope beyond that of
becoming intelligent hearers in the schools of art, of being able to
comprehend what others discover, and to remember what others teach. Even
those to whom Providence hath allotted greater strength of
understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every
other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which
they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as
peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of
knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times,
the collective labour of a thousand intellects.
In science, which, being fixed and limited, admits of no other variety
than such as arises from new methods of distribution, or new arts of
illustration, the necessity of following the traces of our predecessors
is indisputably evident; but there appears no reason, why imagination
should be subject to the same restraint. It might be conceived, that of
those who profess to forsake the narrow paths of truth, every one may
deviate towards a different point, since, though rectitude is uniform
and fixed, obliquity may be infinitely diversified.
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