Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries into Very Many Received Tenents

To the READER.

Would Truth dispense, we could be content, with Plato, that Knowledge were but Remembrance; that intellectual acquisition were but reminiscential evocation, and new impressions but the colouring of old stamps which stood pale in the soul before. For, what is worse, knowledge is made by oblivion, and to purchase a clear and warrantable body of Truth, we must forget and part with much we know. Our tender enquiries taking up learning at large, and together with true and assured notions, receiving many, wherein our reviewing judgements do find no satisfaction. And therefore in this Encyclopædie and round of Knowledge, like the great and exemplary wheels of Heaven, we must observe two circles: that while we are daily carried about, and whirled on by the swing and rapt of the one, we may maintain a natural and proper course, in the slow and sober wheel of the other. And this we shall more readily perform, if we timely survey our knowledge; impartially singling out those encroachments, which junior compliance and popular credulity hath admitted. Whereof at present we have endeavoured a long and serious Adviso; proposing not only a large and copious List, but from experience and reason attempting their decisions.

And first we crave exceeding pardon in the audacity of the Attempt; humbly acknowledging a work of such concernment unto truth, and difficulty in itself, did well deserve the conjunction of many heads. And surely more advantageous had it been unto Truth, to have fallen in-