An Essay on Human Understanding
MY LORD,
T
HIS
T
REATISE
, which is grown up under your lordship’s eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lord- ship for that protection which you several years since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader’s fancy. But there being nothing more to be de- sired for truth than a fair unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquain- tance with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lord- ship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of this
Treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading, and will prevail to have those parts a little weighted, which might otherwise perhaps be
7
John Locke thought to deserve no consideration, for being some- what out of the common road. The imputation of Nov- elty is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men’s heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none to be right but the received doc- trines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote any- where at its first appearance: new opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other rea- son but because they are not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it price, and not any antique fashion; and though it be not yet current by the public stamp, yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing instances of this,
T
HIS
T
REATISE
, which is grown up under your lordship’s eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lord- ship for that protection which you several years since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader’s fancy. But there being nothing more to be de- sired for truth than a fair unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquain- tance with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lord- ship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of this
Treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading, and will prevail to have those parts a little weighted, which might otherwise perhaps be
7
John Locke thought to deserve no consideration, for being some- what out of the common road. The imputation of Nov- elty is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men’s heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none to be right but the received doc- trines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote any- where at its first appearance: new opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other rea- son but because they are not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it price, and not any antique fashion; and though it be not yet current by the public stamp, yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing instances of this,