Note 358 — THE CONCLUSION: COMPREHENDING A RETROSPECT OF THE LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE,
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“Let others creep by timid steps, and slow,
On plain experience, lay foundations low;
By common sense, to common knowledge bred;
And lost to nature’s cause through nature led:
All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide,
Mother of Arrogance and source of pride!
We nobly take the high priori road,
And reason downward, till we doubt of God.”
Pope’s Dunciad, b. IV. l. 455.
The following observation, in the form of a note, is referred to, from the lines above quoted, in a work which contains that extract, viz. “Those, who, from the effects in this visible world, deduce the eternal power and Godhead of the first cause, though they cannot attain to an adequate idea of the Deity, yet discover so much of him, as enables them to see the end of their creation and the means of their happiness: whereas they who take “the high priori road,” as Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, and some better reasoners, for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in “mists,” or ramble after visions, which deprive them of all sight of their end, and mislead them in the choice of wrong means.”
Mr. Pope had put the above poetical lines into the mouth of one of his Dunces, when addressing himself to the goddess Dullness. And as the great Dr. Samuel Clarke had previously endeavoured to shew,[358a] that the Being of a God may be demonstrated by arguments deduced â priori, the Doctor conceived himself to be struck at, among those “better reasoners” alluded to, in the note above mentioned.