ADDRESS TO THE READER.
Dr. Primrose,
Is not this the same person as the physician mentioned by Mrs. Hutchinson in her Memoirs of her husband?
Book I. c. 8. s. 1. The veracity and credibility of Herodotus have increased and increase with the increase of our discoveries. Several of his relations deemed fabulous, have been authenticated within the last thirty years from this present 1808.
Ib. s. 2.
Sir John Mandevill left a book of travels:—herein he often attesteth
the fabulous relations of Ctesias.
Many, if not most, of these Ctesian fables in Sir J. Mandevill were monkish interpolations.
Ib. s. 13.
Cardanus—is of singular use unto a prudent reader; but unto him that
only desireth 'hoties', or to replenish his head with varieties,—he
may become no small occasion of error.
'Hoties'—{Greek: hoti s}—'whatevers,' that is, whatever is written, no matter what, true or false,—'omniana'; 'all sorts of varieties,' as a dear young lady once said to me.
Ib. c. ix.
If Heraclitus with his adherents will hold the sun is no bigger than
it appeareth.
It is not improbable that Heraclitus meant merely to imply that we perceive only our own sensations, and they of course are what they are;—that the image of the sun is an appearance, or sensation in our eyes, and, of course, an appearance can be neither more nor less than what it appears to be;—that the notion of the true size of the sun is not an image, or belonging either to the sense, or to the sensuous fancy, but is an imageless truth of the understanding obtained by intellectual deductions. He could not possibly mean what Sir T. B. supposes him to have meant; for if he had believed the sun to be no more than a mile distant from us, every tree and house must have shown its absurdity.