I Shall Not Mingle Conjectures With Certainties.

The Synthesis Consists In Assuming The Causes Discovered And Established As Principles, And By Them Explaining The Phænomena Proceeding From Them, And Proving The Explanations.

I Have Been Much Amused At Ye Singular Phenomena Resulting From Bringing Of A Needle Into Contact With A Piece Of Amber Or Resin Fricated On Silke Clothe. Ye Flame Putteth Me In Mind Of Sheet Lightning On A Small-how Very Small-scale.

Are Not All Hypotheses Erroneous, In Which Light Is Supposed To Consist In Pression Or Motion, Propagated Through A Fluid Medium? For In All These Hypotheses The Phaenomena Of Light Have Been Hitherto Explain'd By Supposing That They Arise From New Modifications Of The Rays; Which Is An Erroneous Supposition.

Blind Metaphysical Necessity, Which Is Certainly The Same Always And Every Where, Could Produce No Variety Of Things. All That Diversity Of Natural Things Which We Find Suited To Different Times And Places Could Arise From Nothing But The Ideas And Will Of A Being, Necessarily Existing.

The Folly Of Interpreters Has Been, To Foretell Times And Things By This Prophecy, As If God Designed To Make Them Prophets. By This Rashness They Have Not Only Exposed Themselves, But Brought The Prophecy Also Into Contempt. The Design Of God Was Much Otherwise. He Gave This And The Prophecies Of The Old Testament, Not To Gratify Mens Curiosities By Enabling Them To Foreknow Things, But That After They Were Fulfilled They Might Be Interpreted By The Event, And His Own Providence, Not The Interpreters, Be Then Manifested Thereby To The World.