For he truly engages in battle who endeavors to surmount all
the difficulties and errors which prevent him from reaching the knowledge
of truth, and he is overcome in fight who admits a false opinion touching
a matter of any generality and importance, and he requires thereafter much
more skill to recover his former position than to make great advances when
once in possession of thoroughly ascertained principles. As for myself, if
I have succeeded in discovering any truths in the sciences (and I trust
that what is contained in this volume 1 will show that I have found some),
I can declare that they are but the consequences and results of five or
six principal difficulties which I have surmounted, and my encounters with
which I reckoned as battles in which victory declared for me. I will not
hesitate even to avow my belief that nothing further is wanting to enable
me fully to realize my designs than to gain two or three similar
victories; and that I am not so far advanced in years but that, according
to the ordinary course of nature, I may still have sufficient leisure for
this end. But I conceive myself the more bound to husband the time that
remains the greater my expectation of being able to employ it aright, and
I should doubtless have much to rob me of it, were I to publish the
principles of my physics: for although they are almost all so evident that
to assent to them no more is needed than simply to understand them, and
although there is not one of them of which I do not expect to be able to
give demonstration, yet, as it is impossible that they can be in
accordance with all the diverse opinions of others, I foresee that I
should frequently be turned aside from my grand design, on occasion of the
opposition which they would be sure to awaken.
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