This, indeed, was the fatal mistake of that worthy gentleman, my most
ingenious friend Mr. Wotton, a person in appearance ordained for great
designs as well as performances, whether you will consider his notions or
his looks. Surely no man ever advanced into the public with fitter
qualifications of body and mind for the propagation of a new religion.
Oh, had those happy talents, misapplied to vain philosophy, been turned
into their proper channels of dreams and visions, where distortion of
mind and countenance are of such sovereign use, the base, detracting
world would not then have dared to report that something is amiss, that
his brain hath undergone an unlucky shake, which even his brother
modernists themselves, like ungrates, do whisper so loud that it reaches
up to the very garret I am now writing in.
Lastly, whoever pleases to look into the fountains of enthusiasm, from
whence in all ages have eternally proceeded such fattening streams, will
find the spring-head to have been as troubled and muddy as the current.
Of such great emolument is a tincture of this vapour, which the world
calls madness, that without its help the world would not only be deprived
of those two great blessings, conquests and systems, but even all mankind
would unhappily be reduced to the same belief in things invisible. Now
the former postulatum being held, that it is of no import from what
originals this vapour proceeds, but either in what angles it strikes and
spreads over the understanding, or upon what species of brain it ascends,
it will be a very delicate point to cut the feather and divide the
several reasons to a nice and curious reader, how this numerical
difference in the brain can produce effects of so vast a difference from
the same vapour as to be the sole point of individuation between
Alexander the Great, Jack of Leyden, and Monsieur Des Cartes. The
present argument is the most abstracted that ever I engaged in; it
strains my faculties to their highest stretch, and I desire the reader to
attend with utmost perpensity, for I now proceed to unravel this knotty
point.
There is in mankind a certain . . . _Hic multa_ . . . _desiderantur_. . .
and this I take to be a clear solution of the matter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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