"It is owing to the changeability of sciences and philosophy that they are so unproductive of glory, either at the hands of contemporaries or posterity. For when new discoveries, or new ideas and conjectures, greatly alter the condition of this or that science from its present state, how will the writings and thoughts of men now celebrated in these sciences be regarded? Who, for instance, now reads Galileo's works? Yet in his time they were most wonderful; nor could better and nobler books, full of greater discoveries and grander conceptions, be then written on such subjects. But now every tyro in physics or mathematics surpasses Galileo in his knowledge. Again, how many people in the present day read the writings of Francis Bacon? Who troubles himself about Malebranche? And how much time will soon be bestowed on the works of Locke, if the science almost founded by him progresses in future as rapidly as it gives promise of doing?"