If, when I had finished my translation of this first section of the Elements of Philosophy, I had presently committed the same to the press, it might have come to your hands sooner than now it doth. But as I undertook it with much diffidence of my own ability to perform it well; so I thought fit, before I published it, to pray Mr. Hobbes to view, correct, and order it according to his own mind and pleasure. Wherefore, though you find some places enlarged, others altered, and two chapters, XVIII and XX, almost wholly changed, you may nevertheless remain assured, that as now I present it to you, it doth not at all vary from the author's own sense and meaning. As for the Six Lessons to the Savilian Professors at Oxford, they are not of my translation, but were written, as here you have them in English, by Mr. Hobbes himself; and are joined to this book, because they are chiefly in defence of the same.[[A]]
[A]. They will be published in a separate volume, with other works of a similar description. W. M.
THE AUTHOR'S EPISTLE DEDICATORY,
TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE, MY MOST HONORED LORD,
WILLIAM, EARL OF DEVONSHIRE.
This first section of the Elements of Philosophy, the monument of my service and your Lordship's bounty, though, after the Third Section published, long deferred, yet at last finished, I now present, my most excellent Lord, and dedicate to your Lordship. A little book, but full; and great enough, if men count well for great; and to an attentive reader versed in the demonstrations of mathematicians, that is, to your Lordship, clear and easy to understand, and almost new throughout, without any offensive novelty. I know that that part of philosophy, wherein are considered lines and figures, has been delivered to us notably improved by the ancients; and withal a most perfect pattern of the logic by which they were enabled to find out and demonstrate such excellent theorems as they have done. I know also that the hypothesis of the earth's diurnal motion was the invention of the ancients; but that both it, and astronomy, that is, celestial physics, springing up together with it, were by succeeding philosophers strangled with the snares of words. And therefore the beginning of astronomy, except observations, I think is not to be derived from farther time than from Nicolaus Copernicus; who in the age next preceding the present revived the opinion of Pythagoras, Aristarchus, and Philolaus. After him, the doctrine of the motion of the earth being now received, and a difficult question thereupon arising concerning the descent of heavy bodies, Galileus in our time, striving with that difficulty, was the first that opened to us the gate of natural philosophy universal, which is the knowledge of the nature of motion. So that neither can the age of natural philosophy be reckoned higher than to him. Lastly, the science of man's body, the most profitable part of natural science, was first discovered with admirable sagacity by our countryman Doctor Harvey, principal Physician to King James and King Charles, in his books of the Motion of the Blood, and of the Generation of Living Creatures; who is the only man I know, that conquering envy, hath established a new doctrine in his life-time. Before these, there was nothing certain in natural philosophy but every man's experiments to himself, and the natural histories, if they may be called certain, that are no certainer than civil histories. But since these, astronomy and natural philosophy in general have, for so little time, been extraordinarily advanced by Joannes Keplerus, Petrus Gassendus, and Marinus Mersennus; and the science of human bodies in special by the wit and industry of physicians, the only true natural philosophers, especially of our most learned men of the College of Physicians in London. Natural Philosophy is therefore but young; but Civil Philosophy yet much younger, as being no older (I say it provoked, and that my detractors may know how little they have wrought upon me) than my own book De Cive. But what? were there no philosophers natural nor civil among the ancient Greeks? There were men so called; witness Lucian, by whom they are derided; witness divers cities, from which they have been often by public edicts banished. But it follows not that there was philosophy. There walked in old Greece a certain phantasm, for superficial gravity, though full within of fraud and filth, a little like philosophy; which unwary men, thinking to be it, adhered to the professors of it, some to one, some to another, though they disagreed among themselves, and with great salary put their children to them to be taught, instead of wisdom, nothing but to dispute, and, neglecting the laws, to determine every question according to their own fancies. The first doctors of the Church, next the Apostles, born in those times, whilst they endeavoured to defend the Christian faith against the Gentiles by natural reason, began also to make use of philosophy, and with the decrees of Holy Scripture to mingle the sentences of heathen philosophers; and first some harmless ones of Plato, but afterwards also many foolish and false ones out of the physics and metaphysics of Aristotle; and bringing in the enemies, betrayed unto them the citadel of Christianity. From that time, instead of the worship of God, there entered a thing called school divinity, walking on one foot firmly, which is the Holy Scripture, but halted on the other rotten foot, which the Apostle Paul called vain, and might have called pernicious philosophy; for it hath raised an infinite number of controversies in the Christian world concerning religion, and from those controversies, wars. It is like that Empusa in the Athenian comic poet, which was taken in Athens for a ghost that changed shapes, having one brazen leg, but the other was the leg of an ass, and was sent, as was believed, by Hecate, as a sign of some approaching evil fortune. Against this Empusa I think there cannot be invented a better exorcism, than to distinguish between the rules of religion, that is, the rules of honouring God, which we have from the laws, and the rules of philosophy, that is, the opinions of private men; and to yield what is due to religion to the Holy Scripture, and what is due to philosophy to natural reason. And this I shall do, if I but handle the Elements of Philosophy truly and clearly, as I endeavour to do. Therefore having in the Third Section, which I have published and dedicated to your Lordship, long since reduced all power ecclesiastical and civil by strong arguments of reason, without repugnance to God's word, to one and the same sovereign authority; I intend now, by putting into a clear method the true foundations of natural philosophy, to fright and drive away this metaphysical Empusa; not by skirmish, but by letting in the light upon her. For I am confident, if any confidence of a writing can proceed from the writer's fear, circumspection, and diffidence, that in the three former parts of this book all that I have said is sufficiently demonstrated from definitions; and all in the fourth part from suppositions not absurd. But if there appear to your Lordship anything less fully demonstrated than to satisfy every reader, the cause was this, that I professed to write not all to all, but some things to geometricians only. But that your Lordship will be satisfied, I cannot doubt.
There remains the second section, which is concerning Man. That part thereof, where I handle the Optics, containing six chapters, together with the tables of the figures belonging to them, I have already written and engraven lying by me above these six years. The rest shall, as soon as I can, be added to it; though by the contumelies and petty injuries of some unskilful men, I know already, by experience, how much greater thanks will be due than paid me, for telling men the truth of what men are. But the burthen I have taken on me I mean to carry through; not striving to appease, but rather to revenge myself of envy, by encreasing it. For it contents me that I have your Lordship's favour, which, being all you require, I acknowledge; and for which, with my prayers to Almighty God for your Lordship's safety, I shall, to my power, be always thankful.
Your Lordship's most humble servant,