Cosmologia Generalis

[we would] least of all suffer [a lack of] industry, which will be of such great emolument to us in other disciplines. We have unfolded the connection of things—without which the world in general cannot be conceived—with sufficient labor, especially because very few understand what it signifies, and for that reason there are many who confuse it with fatal necessity, from which, however, it differs more than a human being differs from a tree trunk. From this connection of things, we shall deduce truths that are entirely unexpected in natural Theology, and we shall find it equally fruitful in Ethics and Politics. You must needs be blind in the most arduous matters if you are ignorant of it, and no small part of philosophy will be exiled from a demonstrative system if you do not admit it therein. This will be most fully apparent when, once the entire system of Philosophy is completed, you desire to extract those propositions whose demonstrations are entered into either by the connection of things or by principles depending upon the connection of things. Posterity will no less marvel that introducing the connection of things into philosophy as a principle of demonstration was once considered a crime, just as we are now accustomed to marvel at the malice, conjoined with crass ignorance, of the Athenians, who considered it a crime to be punished by death and exile if anyone asserted that the moon is illuminated by the sun and eclipsed by the shadow of the earth (a). For truth is suppressed at the beginning; but it is never...

(a) See Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, bk. 2, ch. 24.