The vanity of dogmatizing: or confidence in opinions

The Preface.

tedium of long preliminaries. But lest the Ingenious stumble at my threshold, and take offense at the seemingly disproportionate excess, which I ascribe to Adam's senses: I'll subjoin a word to prevent the scruple. First then, for those that go the way of the Allegory, and assert pre-existence the theory that the soul existed before being born into a human body; I'm secure enough from their dissatisfaction. For, that the ethereal Adam could easily sense the most tender touches upon his passive vehicle the subtle or spiritual body that carries the soul, and so had a clear and full perception of objects, which we since plunged into the grosser Hyle matter are not at all, or but a little aware of; can be no doubt in their Hypothesis theoretical explanation. Nor can there as great a difference be supposed between the senses of eighty, and those of twenty, between the

The Preface.

Opticks the science of sight and light of the blind Bat and perspicacious Eagle, as there was between those pure un-eclipsed Sensations, and these of our now-embodied, muddied Sensitive the faculty of feeling or perceiving. Now that the pre-existent Adam could so advantageously form his vehicle, as to receive better information from the most distant objects, than we by the most helpful Telescopes; will be no difficult admission to the friends of the Allegory. So that what may seem a mere hyperbolical, and fanciful display to the Sons of the letter those who interpret the story of Adam literally; to the Allegorists will be but a defective representation of literal realities. And I cannot be obnoxious to their censure, but for my coming short in the description.

But I am like more dangerously to be beset by them that go the way