(seq. 1)

Cambridge 6 April 1784------------

Dear Sir,

Last evening I was favored with a letter
from you, which contained much curious & useful
information. We have not the work from which it was
drawn, nor any prospect of having it soon.

I am told that Diman is very careless about the
Worcester papers. They have not been taken from Battles'
on my account since I saw you.

When I wrote to you of Priestley's essay, all my de-
sign was to refer you to that book for a specimen of
what I conceive to be the absurdity of reasoning from
assumed principles. Whether the letter was sense or nonsense
I am unable at this time to determine; for it only contained
my then present apprehensions in the same manner as
I should have expressed them had you been present.
The ideas made as little transient an impression on me
as if the communication had been merely in the way of
conversation.

If I rightly recollect, the Doctor has only one expe -
riment to support his opinion of the penetrability of mat -
ter. This is that light pervades bod transparent bodies
equally in all directions. The fact at present appears to
me so far from certain, that I think it proveably false
by one of those most common appearances. But this is at
present merely opnion; I have had no opportunity to examine
it with any body of a metaphysical turn.

In the mere want of variety, I have undertaken
to look over Banier's mythology. At Vol. 1. p 46 [He,?] tells
us that Aganice daughter of Hegetor, a Thesalian, having
learned to predict eclipses, informed her acquaintance that