Het regt gebruik der werelt beschouwingen, ter overtuiginge van ongodisten en ongelovigen

...would have thought a much simpler, and therefore much truer supposition hypothesis, could be devised concerning it; others would imagine they could show, beyond doubt, that someone who assumed the true manner of it spoke without basis; since it requires that a human being must live for as many months in water in the mother's body as a fish. They would believe they could refute this by obvious experience, since no one can last even a few minutes in water without dying. Let those who reflect on this with me judge how little one can build on bare suppositions, even those that are otherwise ingeniously devised.

§. 20. I do not know if (to resume our thread) I should also take this fundamental rule, which is accepted and advocated by some, namely: that in philosophy one must pay no attention to final causes or intended purposes, as a third separate leads to unhappy thoughts, or otherwise place it among the wrong ways of philosophizing.

I do not here accuse those philosophers who say that in physics the study of nature, where one investigates how everything is, works, and is moved, the consideration of final causes the ultimate purpose for which something exists strictly has no place; and I readily admit, when one asks how does this happen?, that it is an incorrect answer to say, it happens to this end. But it is nonetheless true that this rule, being thus taken indefinitely, leads some to a crude understanding that everything is made without purpose, and that random chance or unconscious causes have a place in the world. Indeed, the question of why something happens, or to what end something is useful, is considered unworthy of great minds and should not be discarded from the whole of philosophy. Even if one admits that it does not strictly belong to that part of physics which considers efficient causes the physical forces that produce an effect; it will, I believe, be admitted by everyone who has ever with pleasure seen the uses of natural things and the service they perform for the Universe the whole of creation and for mankind.

It is true that in contemporary philosophy, this is not taught separately from other matters; but just as in Pneumatics the study of spiritual beings the properties of spiritual beings are treated, in Physics those of bodily things, in Mechanics movements, in Astronomy that which concerns the heavenly bodies, and in Optics that which concerns light and sight; it seems to me, and I believe not without reason, that if one applied oneself in another special part to show the intentions and wise ends of the Creator from the constitution of things and their uses, this Scopologia the science of purposes or aims would constitute one of the most sublime parts of philosophy. It would be capable not only of convincing many people, who otherwise forget God, of their obligation and due gratitude to their great Maker, but also of making famous to posterity those who have been diligent and successful in finding new uses, even for things long

known. Thus we see that Harvey William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood in finding the circulation of the blood, a use of the heart, veins, and arteries never known before; Malpighi Marcello Malpighi, a pioneer in microscopic anatomy various parts of animals and plants; and Borelli Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, who applied mechanics to biology having discovered a use of the instruments of movement, have thereby caused their names to be remembered with much honor by the following generation.

§. 21. How much the experimental investigation of creatures serves to avoid the bad consequences of this imprudently adopted fundamental rule is shown to us by the most accurate investigators of this time, especially the Anatomists those who study the structure of living things. They are explicitly accustomed to add the purposes for which things are thus made, or their uses, to all descriptions of them; and they frequently, on that basis, break out into the praise of the wisdom and goodness of the Former; of which illustrious examples are to be found in those previously mentioned with respect: Harvey, Malpighi, Borelli, and a multitude of many others.

§. 22. For the fourth of the last-mentioned kind, which in itself always brings atheism with it, but which has nonetheless led many insensibly to it, or at least prevented them from being convinced of the most important and divine truths, one can place the so many disputes which have been conducted over the same, without an end yet in sight.

This does not need to be proven to those familiar with the old and contemporary disagreements among philosophers; who, although they both seek to protect the perfections of God against the Atheists those who deny the existence of God, nonetheless mutually reject some of each other's arguments brought for that purpose as not proving the point. Through these constant differences, especially when vehemence is mixed in among learned gentlemen, the unsteady are led into further doubt; and too much ground is given to the Atheists to maintain with some appearance of truth that everything said and believed here lacks the proper certainty.

§. 23. To not be subject to these disputes, and to end those that exist, one could propose a means here that would be suitable for that purpose; that is to earnestly begin the investigation of wherein the true mark of the truth or falsehood of a proposition or Enunciation a formal statement consists. For if people had agreed on this one thing, one could always know with certainty of a proposition, without further disputes, that if it had the right mark of truth, it was true; having contrary marks, that it was false; and the marks being still obscure on both sides, that it was still doubtful and uncertain.

But since it is more to be wished for than expected that among philosophers the difference over the marks of truth will ever be settled in that