I am sensible, how much these remarks will offend the warm advocates for Indian antiquity; but we must not sacrifice truth to a base fear of giving o… - William Jones

Either the first eleven chapters of Genesis, all due allowances being made for a figurative Eastern style, are true, or the whole fabrick of our national religion is false.

By science I mean an assemblage of transcendental propositions discoverable by human reason, and reducible to first principles, axioms, or maxims, from which they may all be derived in a regular succession; and there are consequently as many sciences as there are general objects of our intellectual powers: when man first exerts those powers, his objects are himself and the rest of nature; himself he perceives to be composed of body and mind... and in the leisure... his intellect is directed to nature at large, to the substance of natural bodies, to their several properties, and to their quantity... and... arrives at the demonstration of a first intelligent cause; whence his collected wisdom, being arranged in the form of science, chiefly consists of physiology and medicine, metaphysicks and logick, ethicks and jurisprudence, natural philosophy and mathematicks; from which the religion of nature (since revealed religion must be referred to history, as alone affording evidence of it) has in all ages and in all nations been the sublime and consoling result.

Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung.