3. In order to make out the truth of this charge it will be necessary first to consider, how far it becomes man to employ himself in the prosecution of knowledge; and then it will be easy to determine, whether our general pursuit of it be immoderate or no. Now for the determination of the former, let us observe the present state of man, the posture wherein he now stands. 4. And, First, The utmost knowledge man can arrive at in this world, by his utmost endeavours, is very inconsiderable. *God indeed has given us reason enough to distinguish us from the brute creation, and we may improve it so far, as to distinguish ourselves from one another: and so one man may deserve to be called learned and knowing, in comparison of another that is less so. But absolutely speaking, the most that any or all of us either know or can know, is of little consideration. What we know of God is but little; for as the apostle says, _We see through a glass darkly_: what we know of ourselves perhaps is less, and what we know of the world about us, is not much. “We have seen but a few of God’s works,” and we understand yet fewer. There are almost an infinite number of things which we never so much as thought of: and of most things we conceive very darkly and uncertainly; and there is not one thing from the greatest to the least, which we do or can understand throughly. Those that apply their whole study to any one thing, can never come to the end of that; for not only every science, but every particular of each has its unmeasurable depths and recesses. ’Tis confest by a great enquirer into the nature of _antimony_ (as ’tis related by Mr. _Boyle_) “That ’tis impossible for one man to understand throughly that single mineral only.” And if a man can’t understand _all_ of so _little_, how little must he understand of all? Suppose farther, that all the knowledge of all the learned were put together, it would weigh but light. For what one art or science is there, that is brought to any tolerable perfection? And if the common stock be so little, how small a pittance is it that must fall to every particular man’s share? And where is that man, who after all his poring and studying, is able to answer all the questions, I will not say which God put to _Job_, but which may be asked him by the next idiot he meets? 5. ’Tis superfluous, as well as endless, to display the particulars of our ignorance; though indeed, when all accounts are cast up, that will be found to be our best knowledge. This only in general, our life is so short, our progress in learning so slow, and learning itself so long and tedious, and what we do or can know so very little, that the sceptics had much more reason to conclude from the disability of our faculties, and the slightness of our attainments, than from the uncertainty and instability of truth, that there is no knowledge.