to make many ignorant people embrace the profession, as an innocent, if not even a laudable one; and puzzle people of some degree of knowledge, to answer me point by point.  I have seen a book, entitled ‘Quidlibet ex Quolibet’, or the art of making anything out of anything; which is not so difficult as it would seem, if once one quits certain plain truths, obvious in gross to every understanding, in order to run after the ingenious refinements of warm imaginations and speculative reasonings.  Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, a very worthy, ingenious, and learned man, has written a book, to prove that there is no such thing as matter, and that nothing exists but in idea:  that you and I only fancy ourselves eating, drinking, and sleeping; you at Leipsig, and I at London:  that we think we have flesh and blood, legs, arms, etc., but that we are only spirit.  His arguments are, strictly speaking, unanswerable; but yet I am so far from being convinced by them, that I am determined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep that matter, which I so mistakenly imagine my body at present to consist of, in as good plight as possible.  Common sense (which, in truth, very uncommon) is the best sense I know of:  abide by it, it will counsel you best.  Read and hear, for your amusement, ingenious systems, nice questions subtilly agitated, with all the refinements that warm imaginations suggest; but consider them only as exercitations for the mind, and turn always to settle with common sense.

I stumbled, the other day, at a bookseller’s, upon “Comte Gabalis,” in two very little volumes, which I had formerly read.  I read it over again, and with fresh astonishment.  Most of the extravagances are taken from the Jewish Rabbins, who broached those wild notions, and delivered them in the unintelligible jargon which the Caballists and Rosicrucians deal in to this day.  Their number is, I believe, much lessened, but there are still some; and I myself have known two; who studied and firmly believed in that mystical nonsense.  What extravagancy is not man capable of entertaining, when once his shackled reason is led in triumph by fancy and prejudice!  The ancient alchemists give very much into this stuff, by which they thought they should discover the philosopher’s stone; and some of the most celebrated empirics employed it in the pursuit of the universal medicine.  Paracelsus, a bold empiric and wild Caballist, asserted that he had discovered it, and called it his ‘Alkahest’.  Why or wherefore, God knows; only that those madmen call nothing by an intelligible name.  You may easily get this book from The Hague:  read it, for it will both divert and astonish you, and at the same time teach you ‘nil admirari’; a very necessary lesson.