To this purpose...

To this purpose, it may not perhaps be amiss to decline some things that are likely to bewilder us, or at least lie our of our way.-First, as all that maze of words and phrases which have been invented and employed only to instruct and amuse people in the art of disputing, and will be found perhaps, when looked into, to have little or no meaning; and with this kind of stuff the logics, physics, ethics, metaphysics, and divinity of the schools are thought by some to be too much filled.

This I am sure, that where we leave distinctions without finding a difference in things; where we make variety of phrases, or think we furnish ourselves with arguments without a progress in the real knowledge of things, we only fill our heads with empty sounds, which, however thought to belong to learning and knowledge, will no more improve our understandings and strengthen our reason, than the noise of a jack will fill our bellies or strengthen our bodies: and the art to fence with those which are called subtleties, is of no more use than it would be to be dexterous in tying and untying knots in cobwebs.

Words are of no value nor use, but as they are the signs of things; when they stand for nothing, they are less than cyphers, for, instead of augmenting the value of those they are joined with, they lessen it, and make it nothing; and where they have not a clear distinct signification, they are like unusual or ill-made figures that confound our meaning. 2nd. An aim and desire to know what hath been other men's opinions.

Truth needs no recommendation, and error is not mended by it; and in our inquiry after knowledge, it as little concerns us what other men have thought, as it does one who is to go from Oxford to London, to know what scholars walk quietly on foot, inquiring the way and surveying the country as the went, who rode post after their guide without minding the way he went, who were carried along muffled up in a coach with their company, or where one doctor lost or went out of his way, or where another stuck in the mire.