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due care to erect a Pharos for a Caution against undiscern'd dangers.
By Anatomy we have sometimes enter'd into the Chambers and Cabinets of Animal Functions, to find many Meanders and changeable Varieties, and the immediate Organs and Conduits of Life and Sensation.
As for the Growth of Arts and Inventions, I think, it may justly be said, That these our Entries sometimes assist and promote their Improvements. And the same will hereafter remain faithful Records to shew, By what steps and degrees, and by what Essays, Emulations, and Encouragements these Noble Arts advanced to perfection. And a punctual information of these Gradual Processes, may be instructive to promote other Inventions. And the Wise will consider it, at what easie rates they obtained Monthly Advices of the Designs and Successes of Industrious and Eminent Persons, and by the same means came to know as much, as was purchased at their great charges and assiduous labour. Of which Arts as they are now improved, and still improving, I presume I need not spare to say, That they would have obliged an Alexander, or a Solomon, and I must avouch with confidence, That they would have raised Acclamations, Applauses, and Admiration of most, and have provoked them to refund full Rivers of Treasures in Just Rewards, and extraordinary Achievements.
Neither is it much amiss, that there are yet some, who do prefer the darkness of old Heathenisme before this Noon-light. Otherwise, the next Age might hardly believe, that Men pretending to Wit, Prudence, and Learning, would ever make such strange Oppositions against their own great Emolument and Accommodations: And so the Vertuous might be deprived of a fair beam of the future Glory, due to their Memories for their unchangeable Resolutions, as unconcern'd in scoffing Discourses, and standing firm as Rocks against the dashes of foaming Disputants. And truly, they do much oblige us, in that they are pleased by their frets, and eager contentions, and by their fruitless and obstreperous Verbosity, to make themselves a foil, to let off the Serene Lustre of the real and obliging performances of the Experimental Philosophers.
