one deaf from birth judge of sounds. I would, therefore, have you, gentle reader, to take nothing on trust from me concerning the generation of animals; I appeal to your own eyes as my witnesses and judge. For as all true science rests upon those principles which have their origin in the operation of the senses, particular care is to be taken that by repeated dissection the grounds of our present subject be fully established. If we do otherwise, we shall but come to empty and unstable opinions; solid and true science will escape us altogether: just as commonly happens to those who form their notions of distant countries and cities, or who pretend to get a knowledge of the parts of the human body, from drawings and engravings, which but too frequently present things under false and erroneous points of view. And so it is, that in the present age we have an abundance of writers and pretenders to knowledge, but very few who are really learned and philosophers. Thus much have I thought good, gentle reader, to present to you, by way of preface, that understanding the nature of the assistance to which I have trusted, and the counsel by which I have been led in publishing these my observations and experiments; and that you yourself in passing over the same ground, may not merely be in a condition to judge between Aristotle and Galen, but, quitting subtleties and fanciful conjectures, embracing nature with your own eyes, that you may discover many things unknown to others, and of great importance. _Of the same matters, according to Aristotle._ There is no such thing as innate knowledge, according to Aristotle; neither opinion, nor art, nor understanding, nor speech, nor reason itself, inhere in us by nature and from our birth; but all of these, as well as the qualities and habitudes, which are believed to be spontaneous, and to lie under the control of our will, are to be regarded as among the number of those things that reach us from without according to nature: such as the virtues and the vices, for which men are either praised and rewarded or reproved and punished. All our knowledge, therefore, of every kind has to be acquired. But this is not the place to inquire into the first principles of knowledge. I believe, however, that it will not be useless if I premise a few words as to whence and how our knowledge reaches us, both with a view to rendering what I shall say on the subject of generation more readily intelligible, and of removing any doubts that may arise out of this opinion of the Stagirite,[125] who asserts that all doctrine and discipline based on reason are derived from antecedent knowledge; whence it seems to follow that there is either no first knowledge, or that this must be innate, a conclusion which is in contradiction with what has already been stated.