For, Until The Wisdom Of Men Bear

The Finest Productions Of Human Art Are Immensely Short Of The Meanest Work Of Nature. The Nicest Artist Cannot Make A Feather Or The Leaf Of A Tree.

In Every Case, We Ought To Act That Part Towards Another, Which We Would Judge To Be Right In Him To Act Toward Us, If We Were In His Circumstances And He In Ours; Or More Generally - What We Approve In Others, That We Ought To Practise In Like Circumstances, What We Condemn In Others We Ought Not To Do.

For, Until The Wisdom Of Men Bear Some Proportion To The Wisdom Of God, Their Attempts To Find Out The Structure Of His Works, By The Force Of Their Wit And Genius, Will Be Vain.

The Wisdom Of God Exceeds That Of The Wisest Man, More Than His Wisdom Exceeds That Of A Child. If A Child Were To Conjecture How An Army Is To Be Formed In The Day Of Battle--how A City Is To Be Fortified, Or A State Governed--what Chance Has He To Guess Right? As Little Chance Has The Wisest Man When He Pretends To Conjecture How The Planets Move In Their Courses, How The Sea Ebbs And Flows, And How Our Minds Act Upon Our Bodies.

We Find Sects And Parties In Most Branches Of Science; And Disputes Which Are Carried On From Age To Age, Without Being Brought To An Issue. Sophistry Has Been More Effectually Excluded From Mathematics And Natural Philosophy Than From Other Sciences. In Mathematics It Had No Place From The Beginning; Mathematicians Having Had The Wisdom To Define Accurately The Terms They Use, And To Lay Down, As Axioms, The First Principles On Which Their Reasoning Is Grounded. Accordingly, We Find No Parties Among Mathematicians, And Hardly Any Disputes.