4. Dangerous to build upon precarious principles.
But be it in the mathematics as it will, whether it be clearer,
that, taking an inch from a black line of two inches, and an inch from a red line of two inches, the remaining parts
of the two lines will be equal, or that if you take equals from equals, the remainder will be equals: which, I say, of
these two is the clearer and first known, I leave to any one to determine, it not being material to my present
occasion. That which I have here to do, is to inquire, whether, if it be the readiest way to knowledge to begin with
general maxims, and build upon them, it be yet a safe way to take the principles which are laid down in any other
science as unquestionable truths; and so receive them without examination, and adhere to them, without suffering
them to be doubted of, because mathematicians have been so happy, or so fair, to use none but self-evident and
undeniable. If this be so, I know not what may not pass for truth in morality, what may not be introduced and
proved in natural philosophy.
Let that principle of some of the old philosophers, That all is Matter, and that there is nothing else, be received for
certain and indubitable, and it will be easy to be seen by the writings of some that have revived it again in our
days, what consequences it will lead us into. Let any one, with Polemo, take the world; or with the Stoics, the
aether, or the sun; or with Anaximenes, the air, to be God; and what a divinity, religion, and worship must we
needs have! Nothing can be so dangerous as principles thus taken up without questioning or examination;
especially if they be such as concern morality, which influence men's lives, and give a bias to all their actions.
Who might not justly expect another kind of life in Aristippus, who placed happiness in bodily pleasure; and in
Antisthenes, who made virtue sufficient to felicity? And he who, with Plato, shall place beatitude in the
knowledge of God, will have his thoughts raised to other contemplations than those who look not beyond this spot
of earth, and those perishing things which are to be had in it. He that, with Archelaus, shall lay it down as a
principle, that right and wrong, honest and dishonest, are defined only by laws, and not by nature, will have other
measures of moral rectitude and pravity, than those who take it for granted that we are under obligations
antecedent to all human constitutions.
