The vanity of dogmatizing: or confidence in opinions (1661) - Page 9

The Preface.

the Title tells it. It is gathered against Dogmatizing arrogant certainty, and attacks a bold Enemy, Confidence in Opinions. The knowledge I teach is ignorance: and I think the Theory of our own natures should be enough to teach it to us. We came into the world, and we know not how; we live in it in a state of not knowing ourselves original: "self-nescience", and we leave again and are just as ignorant of our departure. We grow, we live, we move at first in a Microcosm the "little world" of the womb or the human body, and can give no more scientific account of the state of our nine-month confinement original: "three quarters confinement" than if we had never existed in the greater world, but had died in a miscarriage original: "abortion"; we are freed from the prison of the womb, we live, we grow, and produce children like ourselves: we see, we hear, and outward objects affect our other

The Preface.

senses: we understand, we will, we imagine, and remember: and yet know no more of the direct reasons for most of these common functions than those little Embryo Anchorites fetuses living like secluded monks: We breathe, we talk, we move, while we are ignorant of the way these vital actions happen. The Dogmatist one who is overconfident in their opinions knows not how he moves his finger; nor by what art or method he turns his tongue in his speech. New parts are added to our bodies to replace our constant decaying, and as we die we are born daily; nor can we give a certain account of how food is prepared for nutrition, or by what physical process original: "mechanism" it is so regularly distributed; the turning of it into chyle a milky fluid of digested fats by the stomach's heat is a general and unsatisfying explanation.