If I Had Stayed For Other People

I Keep The Subject Of My Inquiry Constantly Before Me, And Wait Till The First Dawning Opens Gradually, By Little And Little, Into A Full And Clear Light.

I Do Not Know What I May Appear To The World, But To Myself I Seem To Have Been Only A Boy Playing On The Seashore.

Are Not Gross Bodies And Light Convertible Into One Another; And May Not Bodies Receive Much Of Their Activity From The Particles Of Light Which Enter Into Their Composition? The Changing Of Bodies Into Light, And Light Into Bodies, Is Very Conformable To The Course Of Nature, Which Seems Delighted With Transmutations.

This Principle Of Nature Being Very Remote From The Conceptions Of Philosophers, I Forbore To Describe It In That Book, Least I Should Be Accounted An Extravagant Freak And So Prejudice My Readers Against All Those Things Which Were The Main Designe Of The Book.

A Good Watch May Serve To Keep A Recconing At Sea For Some Days And To Know The Time Of A Celestial Observ[at]ion: And For This End A Good Jewel Watch May Suffice Till A Better Sort Of Watch Can Be Found Out. But When The Longitude At Sea Is Once Lost, It Cannot Be Found Again By Any Watch.