_B._ There is no necessity of it. But if in your own meditation you light upon a difficulty, I think it is no loss of time, to enquire what other men say of it, but to rely only upon reason. For though there be some few effects of nature, especially concerning the heavens, whereof the philosophers of old time have assigned very rational causes, such as any man may acquiesce in, as of eclipses of the sun and moon by long observation, and by the calculation of their visible motions; yet what is that to the numberless and quotidian phenomena of nature? Who is there amongst them or their successors, that has satisfied you with the causes of gravity, heat, cold, light, sense, colour, noise, rain, snow, frost, winds, tides of the sea, and a thousand other things which a few men’s lives are too short to go through, and which you and other curious spirits admire (as quotidian as they are), and fain would know the causes of them, but shall not find them in the books of naturalists; and when you ask what are the causes of any of them, of a philosopher now, he will put you off with mere words; which words, examined to the bottom, signify not a jot more than I cannot tell, or because it is: such as are intrinsical quality, occult quality, sympathy, antipathy, antiperistasis, and the like. Which pass well enough with those that care not much for such wisdom, though wise enough in their own ways; but will not pass with you that ask not simply what is the cause, but in what manner it comes about that such effects are produced. _A._ That is cozening. What need had they of that? When began they thus to play the charlatans? _B._ Need had they none. But know you not that men from their very birth, and naturally, scramble for every thing they covet, and would have all the world, if they could, to fear and obey them? If by fortune or industry one light upon a secret in nature, and thereby obtain the credit of an extraordinary knowing man, should he not make use of it to his own benefit? There is scarce one of a thousand but would live upon the charges of the people as far as he dares. What poor geometrician is there, but takes pride to be thought a conjurer? What mountebank would not make a living out of a false opinion that he were a great physician? And when many of them are once engaged in the maintenance of an error, they will join together for the saving of their authority to decry the truth. _A._ I pray, tell me, if you can, how and where the study of philosophy first began.