er to
proceed much farther in our discoveries, but we are likewise delivered
from a multitude of groundless apprehensions, that frightened them from
prosecuting discoveries. We give no credit now to the fables that not
only amused antiquity, but even obtained credit within a few generations.
The authority of Pliny will not persuade us that there are any nations
without heads, whose eyes and mouths are in their breasts, or that the
Arimaspi have only one eye, fixed in their forehead, and that they are
perpetually at war with the Griffins, who guard hidden treasures; or that
there are nations that have long hairy tales, and grin like monkeys. No
traveller can make us believe that, under the torrid zone, there are a
nation every man of which has one large flat foot, with which, lying upon
his back, he covers himself from the sun. In this respect we have the
same advantage over the ancients that men have over children; and we
cannot reflect without amazement on men's having so much knowledge and
learning in other respects, with such childish understandings in these.

By the labours of these great men in the two last centuries we are taught
to know what we seek, and how it is to be sought. We know, for example,
what parts of the north are yet undiscovered, and also what parts of the
south. We can form a very certain judgment of the climate of countries
undiscovered, and can foresee the advantages that will result from
discoveries before they are made; all which are prodigious advantages,
and ought certainly to animate us in our searches. I might add to this
the great benefits we receive from our more perfect acquaintance with the
properties of the loadstone, and from the surprising accuracy of
astronomical observations, to which I may add the physical discoveries
made of late years in relation to the figure of the earth, all of which
are the result of the lights which these great men have given us.

It is true that some of the zealous defenders of the ancients, and some
of the great admirers of the Eastern nations, dispute these facts, and
would have us believe that almost everything was known to the old
philosophers, and not only known but practised by the Chinese long before
the time of the great men to whom we ascribe them. But the difference
between their assertions and ours is, that we fully prove the facts we
allege, whereas they produce no evidence at all; for instance, Albertus
Magnus says that Aristotle wrote