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Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books written by Charles W. Eliot

C >> Charles W. Eliot >> Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books




Now my method, though hard to practise, is easy to explain; and it
is this. I propose to establish progressive stages of certainty. The
evidence of the sense, helped and guarded by a certain process of
correction, I retain. But the mental operation which follows the act
of sense I for the most part reject; and instead of it I open and
lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting
directly from the simple sensuous perception. The necessity of this
was felt no doubt by those who attributed so much importance to
Logic; showing thereby that they were in search of helps for the
understanding, and had no confidence in the native and spontaneous
process of the mind. But this remedy comes too late to do any
good, when the mind is already, through the daily intercourse and
conversation of life, occupied with unsound doctrines and beset on all
sides by vain imaginations. And therefore that art of Logic, coming
(as I said) too late to the rescue, and no way able to set matters
right again, has had the effect of fixing errors rather than
disclosing truth. There remains but one course for the recovery of
a sound and healthy condition,--namely, that the entire work of the
understanding be commenced afresh, and the mind itself be from the
very outset not left to take its own course, but guided at every step;
and the business be done as if by machinery. Certainly if in things
mechanical men had set to work with their naked hands, without help or
force of instruments, just as in things intellectual they have set to
work with little else than the naked forces of the understanding, very
small would the matters have been which, even with their best efforts
applied in conjunction, they could have attempted or accomplished. Now
(to pause while upon this example and look in it as in a glass) let us
suppose that some vast obelisk were (for the decoration of a triumph
or some such magnificence) to be removed from its place, and that men
should set to work upon it with their naked hands; would not any
sober spectator think them mad? And if they should then send for more
people, thinking that in that way they might manage it, would he
not think them all the madder? And if they then proceeded to make a
selection, putting away the weaker hands, and using only the strong
and vigorous, would he not think them madder than ever? And if
lastly, not content with this, they resolved to call in aid the art
of athletics, and required all their men to come with hands, arms,
and sinews well anointed and medicated according to the rules of art,
would he not cry out that they were only taking pains to show a kind
of method and discretion in their madness? Yet just so it is that
men proceed in matters intellectual,--with just the same kind of mad
effort and useless combination of forces,--when they hope great things
either from the number and cooperation or from the excellency and
acuteness of individual wits; yea, and when they endeavour by Logic
(which may be considered as a kind of athletic art) to strengthen the
sinews of the understanding; and yet with all this study and endeavour
it is apparent to any true judgment that they are but applying the
naked intellect all the time; whereas in every great work to be done
by the hand of man it is manifestly impossible, without instruments
or machinery, either for the strength of each to be exerted or the
strength of all to be united.

Upon these premises two things occur to me of which, that they may
not be overlooked, I would have men reminded. First it falls out
fortunately as I think for the allaying of contradictions and
heart-burnings, that the honour and reverence due to the ancients
remains untouched and undiminished; while I may carry out my designs
and at the same time reap the fruit of my modesty. For if I should
profess that I, going the same road as the ancients, have something
better to produce, there must needs have been some comparison or
rivalry between us (not to be avoided by any art of words) in respect
of excellency or ability of wit; and though in this there would be
nothing unlawful or new (for if there be anything misapprehended by
them, or falsely laid down, why may not I, using a liberty common
to all, take exception to it?) yet the contest, however just and
allowable, would have been an unequal one perhaps, in respect of the
measure of my own powers. As it is however,--my object being to open a
new way for the understanding, a way by them untried and unknown,--the
case is altered; party zeal and emulation are at an end; and I appear
merely as a guide to point out the road; an office of small authority,
and depending more upon a kind of luck than upon any ability or
excellency. And thus much relates to the persons only. The other point
of which I would have men reminded relates to the matter itself.

Be it remembered then that I am far from wishing to interfere with
the philosophy which now flourishes, or with any other philosophy
more correct and complete than this which has been or may hereafter
be propounded. For I do not object to the use of this received
philosophy, or others like it, for supplying matter for disputations
or ornaments for discourse,--for the professor's lecture and for the
business of life. Nay more, I declare openly that for these uses the
philosophy which I bring forward will not be much available. It does
not lie in the way. It cannot be caught up in passage. It does not
flatter the understanding by conformity with preconceived notions.
Nor will it come down to the apprehension of the vulgar except by its
utility and effects.

Let there be therefore (and may it be for the benefit of both) two
streams and two dispensations of knowledge; and in like manner two
tribes or kindreds of students in philosophy--tribes not hostile or
alien to each other, but bound together by mutual services;--let there
in short be one method for the cultivation, another for the invention,
of knowledge.

And for those who prefer the former, either from hurry or from
considerations of business or for want of mental power to take in and
embrace the other (which must needs be most men's case), I wish that
they may succeed to their desire in what they are about, and obtain
what they are pursuing. But if any man there be who, not content
to rest in and use the knowledge which has already been discovered,
aspires to penetrate further; to overcome, not an adversary in
argument, but nature in action; to seek, not pretty and probable
conjectures, but certain and demonstrable knowledge;--I invite all
such to join themselves, as true sons of knowledge, with me, that
passing by the outer courts of nature, which numbers have trodden,
we may find a way at length into her inner chambers. And to make my
meaning clearer and to familiarise the thing by giving it a name, I
have chosen to call one of these methods or ways _Anticipation of the
Mind_, the other _Interpretation of Nature_.

Moreover I have one request to make. I have on my own part made it my
care and study that the things which I shall propound should not only
be true, but should also be presented to men's minds, how strangely
soever preoccupied and obstructed, in a manner not harsh or
unpleasant. It is but reasonable however (especially in so great a
restoration of learning and knowledge) that I should claim of men one
favour in return; which is this; If any one would form an opinion or
judgment either out of his own observation, or out of the crowd of
authorities, or out of the forms of demonstration (which have now
acquired a sanction like that of judicial laws), concerning these
speculations of mine, let him not hope that he can do it in passage or
by the by; but let him examine the thing thoroughly; let him make some
little trial for himself of the way which I describe and lay out; let
him familiarise his thoughts with that subtlety of nature to which
experience bears witness; let him correct by seasonable patience and
due delay the depraved and deep-rooted habits of his mind; and when
all this is done and he has begun to be his own master, let him (if he
will) use his own judgment.




PREFACE TO THE FIRST FOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS (1623)[A]

TO THE GREAT VARIETY OF READERS


From the most able, to him that can but spell: There you are number'd.
We had rather you were weighd. Especially, when the fate of all Bookes
depends vpon your capacities: and not of your heads alone, but of your
purses. Well! it is now publique, & you wil stand for your priuiledges
wee know: to read, and censure. Do so, but buy it first. That doth
best commend a Booke, the Stationer saies. Then, how odde soeuer your
braines be, or your wisedomes, make your licence the same, and
spare not. Iudge your sixe-pen'orth, your shillings worth, your fiue
shillings worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the iust rates,
and welcome. But, what euer you do, Buy. Censure will not driue a
Trade, or make the Iacke go. And though you be a Magistrate of wit,
and sit on the Stage at _Black-Friers_, or the _Cock-pit_, to arraigne
Playes dailie, know, these Playes haue had their triall alreadie,
and stood out all Appeals; and do now come forth quitted rather by a
Decree of Court, then any purchas'd Letters of commendation.

It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that
the Author himselfe had liu'd to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne
writings. But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death
departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the
office of their care, and paine to haue collected & publish'd them,
and so to haue publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with
diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the
frauds and stealthes of iniurious imposters, that expos'd them euen
those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their
limbes, and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued
them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle
expresser of it. His mind and hand went together. And what he thought,
he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him
a blot in his papers. But it is not our prouince, who onely gather his
works, and giue them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him.
And there we hope, to your diuers capacities, you will finde enough,
both to draw, and hold you for his wit can no more lie hid then it
could be lost. Reade him, therefore and againe and againe. And if then
you doe not like him surely you are in some manifest danger, not to
vnderstand him. And so we leaue you to other of his Friends, whom if
you need can bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade
your selues, and others. And such Readers we wish him.

JOHN HEMINGE HENRIE CONDELL.


[Footnote A: Little more than half of Shakespeare's plays were
published during his lifetime; and in the publication of these there
is no evidence that the author had any hand. Seven years after his
death, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two of his fellow-actors,
collected the unpublished plays, and, in 1623, issued them along with
the others in a single volume, usually known as the First Folio.
When one considers what would have been lost had it not been for the
enterprise of these men, it seems safe to say that the volume they
introduced by this quaint and not too accurate preface, is the most
important single book in the imaginative literature of the world.]




PREFACE TO THE PHILOSOPHIAE NATURALIS PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA

BY SIR ISAAC NEWTON. (1686)[A]


Since the ancients (as we are told by Pappus) made great account of
the science of mechanics in the investigation of natural things; and
the moderns, laying aside substantial forms and occult qualities,
have endeavored to subject the phenomena of nature to the laws of
mathematics, I have in this treatise cultivated mathematics so far as
it regards philosophy. The ancients considered mechanics in a twofold
respect; as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration, and
practical. To practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from
which mechanics took its name. But as artificers do not work with
perfect accuracy, it comes to pass that mechanics is so distinguished
from geometry, that what is perfectly accurate is called geometrical;
what is less so is called mechanical. But the errors are not in the
art, but in the artificers. He that works with less accuracy is an
imperfect mechanic: and if any could work with perfect accuracy, he
would be the most perfect mechanic of all; for the description of
right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs
to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but
requires them to be drawn; for it requires that the learner should
first be taught to describe these accurately, before he enters upon
geometry; then it shows how by these operations problems may be
solved. To describe right lines and circles are problems, but not
geometrical problems. The solution of these problems is required from
mechanics; and by geometry the use of them, when so solved, is shown;
and it is the glory of geometry that from those few principles,
fetched from without, it is able to produce so many things. Therefore
geometry is founded in mechanical practice, and is nothing but that
part of universal mechanics which accurately proposes and demonstrates
the art of measuring. But since the manual arts are chiefly conversant
in the moving of bodies, it comes to pass that geometry is commonly
referred to their magnitudes, and mechanics to their motion. In this
sense rational mechanics will be the science of motions resulting
from any forces whatsoever, and of the forces required to produce any
motions, accurately proposed and demonstrated. This part of mechanics
was cultivated by the ancients in the five powers which relate to
manual arts, who considered gravity (it not being a manual power) no
otherwise than as it moved weights by those powers. Our design, not
respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject, not manual, but
natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to
gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like
forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this
work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty
of philosophy seems to consist in this--from the phenomena of motions
to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces
to demonstrate the other phenomena; and to this end the general
propositions in the first and second book are directed. In the third
book we give an example of this in the explication of the system of
the World; for by the propositions mathematically demonstrated in the
first book, we there derive from the celestial phenomena the forces
of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets.
Then, from these forces, by other propositions which are also
mathematical, we deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the
moon, and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of
nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for
I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend
upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes
hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and
cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other;
which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the
search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid
down will afford some light either to that or some truer method of
philosophy.

In the publication of this work, the most acute and universally
learned Mr. Edmund Halley not only assisted me with his pains in
correcting the press and taking care of the schemes, but it was to
his solicitations that its becoming public is owing; for when he
had obtained of me my demonstrations of the figure of the celestial
orbits, he continually pressed me to communicate the same to the Royal
Society, who afterwards, by their kind encouragement and entreaties,
engaged me to think of publishing them. But after I had begun to
consider the inequalities of the lunar motions, and had entered upon
some other things relating to the laws and measures of gravity,
and other forces; and the figures that would be described by bodies
attracted according to given laws; and the motion of several bodies
moving among themselves; the motion of bodies in resisting mediums;
the forces, densities, and motions of mediums; the orbits of the
comets, and such like; I put off that publication till I had made a
search into those matters, and could put out the whole together. What
relates to the lunar motions (being imperfect) I have put all together
in the corollaries of proposition 66, to avoid being obliged to
propose and distinctly demonstrate the several things there contained
in a method more prolix than the subject deserved, and interrupt the
series of the several propositions. Some things, found out after the
rest, I chose to insert in places less suitable, rather than change
the number of the propositions and the citations. I heartily beg that
what I have here done may be read with candor; and that the defects
I have been guilty of upon this difficult subject may be not so much
reprehended as kindly supplied, and investigated by new endeavors of
my readers.

Cambridge, Trinity College, ISAAC NEWTON.

May 8, 1686


[Footnote A: Sir Isaac Newton, the great English mathematician and
physicist, was born at Woolsthorpe in 1642, and died at Kensington in
1727. He held a professorship at Cambridge, represented the University
in Parliament, as master of the mint reformed the English coinage, and
for twenty five years was president of the Royal Society. His theory
of the law of universal gravitation, the most important of his many
discoveries, is expounded in his "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematical," usually known merely as the "Principia," from which,
this Preface is translated.]




PREFACE TO FABLES,

ANCIENT AND MODERN

BY JOHN DRYDEN. (1700)[A]


'Tis with a poet as with a man who designs to build, and is very
exact, as he supposes, in casting up the cost beforehand, but,
generally speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons short
of the expense he first intended. He alters his mind as the work
proceeds, and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had
not thought when he began. So has it happened to me; I have built a
house, where I intended but a lodge; yet with better success than a
certain nobleman,[1] who, beginning with a dog kennel, never liv'd to
finish the palace he had contriv'd.

From translating the first of Homer's _Iliads_ (which I intended as an
essay to the whole work) I proceeded to the translation of the twelfth
book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, because it contains, among other
things, the causes, the beginning, and ending, of the Trojan war.
Here I ought in reason to have stopp'd; but the speeches of Ajax
and Ulysses lying next in my way, I could not balk 'em. When I had
compass'd them, I was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth
book, (which is the masterpiece of the whole _Metamorphoses_,) that
I enjoin'd myself the pleasing task of rend'ring it into English. And
now I found, by the number of my verses, that they began to swell into
a little volume; which gave me an occasion of looking backward on some
beauties of my author, in his former books. There occurred to me the
_Hunting of the Boar, Cinyras and Myrrha_, the good-natur'd story of
_Baucis and Philemon_, with the rest, which I hope I have translated
closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had
in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent
of every poet. He who has arriv'd the nearest to it, is the ingenious
and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if I may
properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this
concluding century. For Spenser and Fairfax both flourish'd in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth; great masters in our language, and who
saw much farther into the beauties of our numbers than those who
immediately followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and
Mr. Waller of Fairfax, for we have our lineal descents and clans as
well as other families. Spenser more than once insinuates that the
soul of Chaucer was transfus'd into his body, and that he was begotten
by him two hundred years after his decease. Milton has acknowledg'd to
me that Spenser was his original, and many besides myself have heard
our famous Waller own that he deriv'd the harmony of his numbers
from the _Godfrey of Bulloign_, which was turned into English by Mr.
Fairfax. But to return. Having done with Ovid for this time, it
came into my mind that our old English poet, Chaucer, in many things
resembled him, and that with no disadvantage on the side of the modern
author, as I shall endeavor to prove when I compare them; and as I
am, and always have been, studious to promote the honor of my native
country, so I soon resolv'd to put their merits to the trial, by
turning some of the _Canterbury Tales_ into our language, as it is
now refin'd; for by this means, both the poets being set in the same
light, and dress'd in the same English habit, story to be compar'd
with story, a certain judgment may be made betwixt them by the reader,
without obtruding my opinion on him. Or, if I seem partial to my
countryman and predecessor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity
are not few; and besides many of the learn'd, Ovid has almost all the
beaux, and the whole fair sex, his declared patrons. Perhaps I have
assum'd somewhat more to myself than they allow me, because I have
adventur'd to sum up the evidence; but the readers are the jury, and
their privilege remains entire, to decide, according to the merits of
the cause, or if they please, to bring it to another hearing before
some other court. In the mean time, to follow the thrid of my
discourse, (as thoughts, according to Mr. Hobbes, have always some
connection,) so from Chaucer I was led to think on Boccace, who was
not only his contemporary, but also pursued the same studies; wrote
novels in prose, and many works in verse; particularly is said to have
invented the octave rhyme,[2] or stanza of eight lines, which ever
since has been maintain'd by the practice of all Italian writers, who
are, or at least assume the title of, heroic poets. He and Chaucer,
among other things, had this in common, that they refin'd their mother
tongues; but with this difference, that Dante had begun to file their
language, at least in verse, before the time of Boccace, who likewise
receiv'd no little help from his master Petrarch. But the reformation
of their prose was wholly owing to Boccace himself, who is yet the
standard of purity in the Italian tongue; tho' many of his phrases are
become obsolete, as in process of time it must needs happen. Chaucer
(as you have formerly been told by our learn'd Mr. Rymer) first
adorn'd and amplified our barren tongue from the Provencal,[3] which
was then the most polish'd of all the modern languages; but this
subject has been copiously treated by that great critic, who deserves
no little commendation from us his countrymen. For these reasons of
time, and resemblance of genius in Chaucer and Boccace, I resolv'd
to join them in my present work; to which I have added some original
papers of my own; which, whether they are equal or inferior to my
other poems, an author is the most improper judge, and therefore I
leave them wholly to the mercy of the reader. I will hope the best,
that they will not be condemn'd; but if they should, I have the excuse
of an old gentleman, who mounting on horseback before some ladies,
when I was present, got up somewhat heavily, but desir'd of the fair
spectators that they would count fourscore and eight before they
judg'd him. By the mercy of God, I am already come within twenty years
of his number, a cripple in my limbs; but what decays are in my mind,
the reader must determine. I think myself as vigorous as ever in the
faculties of my soul, excepting only my memory, which is not impair'd
to any great degree; and if I lose not more of it, I have no great
reason to complain. What judgment I had, increases rather than
diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast
upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject; to run
them into verse, or to give them the other harmony of prose. I have so
long studied and practic'd both, that they are grown into a habit, and
become familiar to me. In short, tho' I may lawfully plead some part
of the old gentleman's excuse, yet I will reserve it till I think I
have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the faults of
this my present work, but those which are given of course to human
frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortness of time in
which I writ it, or the several intervals of sickness. They who think
too well of their own performances are apt to boast in their prefaces
how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of
more importance interfere'd; but the reader will be as apt to ask the
question, why they allow'd not a longer time to make their works more
perfect, and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges
as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they deser'd no
better.