uncertainty and doubt into my manner of philosophizing, from which I
have carefully endeavoured to banish them, if people were to receive
their writings as mine, or as representing my opinions. I had, not
long ago, some experience of this in one of those who were believed
desirous of following me the most closely, [Footnote: Regius; see La
Vie de M. Descartes, reduite en abrege (Baillet). Liv. vii., chap.
vii.--T.] and one too of whom I had somewhere said that I had such
confidence in his genius as to believe that he adhered to no
opinions which I should not be ready to avow as mine; for he last
year published a book entitled "Fundamental Physics," in which,
although he seems to have written nothing on the subject of Physics
and Medicine which he did not take from my writings, as well from
those I have published as from another still imperfect on the nature
of animals, which fell into his hands; nevertheless, because he has
copied them badly, and changed the order, and denied certain
metaphysical truths upon which all Physics ought to be based, I am
obliged wholly to disavow his work, and here to request readers not
to attribute to me any opinion unless they find it expressly stated
in my own writings, and to receive no opinion as true, whether in my
writings or elsewhere, unless they see that it is very clearly
deduced from true principles. I well know, likewise, that many ages
may elapse ere all the truths deducible from these principles are
evolved out of them, as well because the greater number of such as
remain to be discovered depend on certain particular experiments
that never occur by chance, but which require to be investigated
with care and expense by men of the highest intelligence, as because
it will hardly happen that the same persons who have the sagacity to
make a right use of them, will possess also the means of making
them, and also because the majority of the best minds have formed so
low an estimate of philosophy in general, from the imperfections