Obscurity, ignorance and patient reading

Meaning

Obscurity is a difficulty of philosophical language and an occasion for competing responses. The dedication contrasts patient interpretation with impatience and inconsiderate contempt; the preface opposes the fog of ignorance to the pursuit of useful truth. These are Nuysement’s polemical characterizations, not proof that all critics are ignorant.

His appeal also has limits. Chymical experience is said to disclose principles and their modification through fire, while probable reasons and ancient authorities support the exposition submitted to judgement. Probable is not certain, and submitting the argument is not the same as declaring every claim self-evident. Read beside secrecy, obscurity may result from veiling or difficult expression without making every unclear phrase a deliberate malicious concealment.

The invited curieux are inquisitive readers, not merely people censured for prying. The title calls the work CURIEUX as well as profitable, the dedication addresses doctes curieux, and the preface admonishes les curieux while restricting what it offers. Reason, inquiry and curiosity explains this shifting application to the work and its seekers; obscurity therefore calls for discriminating inquiry rather than automatic disbelief or credulity.