First Sentence

"A late-eighteenth-century scientific dictionary explained what distinguished a natural philosopher: If we consider the difference there is between natural philosophers, and other men, with regard to their knowledge of phenomena, we shall find it consists not in an exacter knowledge of the efficient cause that produces them, for that can be no other than the will of the Deity; but only in a greater and more enlarged comprehension, by which analogies, harmonies, and agreements are described in the works of nature, and the particular effects explained; that is, reduced to general rules, which rules grounded on the analogy and uniformness observed in the production of natural effects, are more agreeable, and sought after by the mind; for that they extend our prospect beyond what is present, and near to us, and enable us to make very probable conjectures, touching things that may have happened at very great distances of time and place, as well as to predict things to come; which sort of endeavour towards"