_When I first undertook the Publication of this English Translation, I thought it would not be amiss to present the World with a Specimen of it first. But since the Introduction is such, that the Reader can no more by it give a Guess at what is contain'd in the Book itself, than a Man can judge of his Entertainment by seeing the Cloath laid; I have thought it necessary to give him a Bill of Fare_. _The Design of the Author (who was a Mahometan Philosopher) is to shew how Humane Reason may, by Observation and Experience, arrive at the Knowledge of Natural Things, and from thence to Supernatural; particularly the Knowledge of God and a Future State. And in order to this, he supposes a Person brought up by himself where he was altogether destitute of any Instruction, but what he could get from his own Observation_. _He lays the Scene in some_ Fortunate _Island situate under the Equinoctial; where he supposes this Philosopher, either to have been bred (according to_ Avicen_'s Hypothesis, who conceiv'd a possibility of a Man's being formed by the Influence of the Planets upon Matter rightly disposed) without either Father or Mother; or self-expos'd in his Infancy, and providentially suckled by a Roe. Not that our Author believ'd any such matter, but only having design'd to contrive a convenient place for his Philosopher, so as to leave him to Reason by himself, and make his Observations without any Guide. In which Relation, he proposes both these ways, without speaking one Word in favour of either_. _Then he shews by what Steps and Degrees he advanc'd in the Knowledge of Natural Things, till at last he perceiv'd the Necessity of acknowledging an Infinite, Eternal, Wise Creator, and also the Immateriality and Immortality of his own Soul, and that its Happiness consisted only in a continued Conjunction with this supream Being_. _The Matter of this Book is curious, and full of useful Theorems; he makes most use of the Peripatetick Philosophy, which he seems to have well understood; it must be confess'd indeed, that when he comes to talk of the Union with God, &c. (as in the Introduction) there are some Enthusiastick Notions, which are particularly consider'd and refuted by the Editor in his Appendix_. _Whose Design in publishing this Translation, was to give those who are as yet unacquainted with it, a Taste of the_ Acumen _and_ Genius _of the_ Arabian _Philosophers, and to excite young Scholars to the reading of those Authors, which, through a groundless Conceit of their Impertinence and Ignorance, have been too long neglected_.