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THE BOOKSELLER TO THE READER.

_When I first undertook the Publication of this English Translation, I
thought it would not be amiss to present the World with a Specimen of it
first. But since the Introduction is such, that the Reader can no more
by it give a Guess at what is contain'd in the Book itself, than a Man
can judge of his Entertainment by seeing the Cloath laid; I have thought
it necessary to give him a Bill of Fare_.

_The Design of the Author (who was a Mahometan Philosopher) is to shew
how Humane Reason may, by Observation and Experience, arrive at the
Knowledge of Natural Things, and from thence to Supernatural;
particularly the Knowledge of God and a Future State. And in order to
this, he supposes a Person brought up by himself where he was
altogether destitute of any Instruction, but what he could get from his
own Observation_.

_He lays the Scene in some_ Fortunate _Island situate under the
Equinoctial; where he supposes this Philosopher, either to have been
bred (according to_ Avicen_'s Hypothesis, who conceiv'd a possibility of
a Man's being formed by the Influence of the Planets upon Matter rightly
disposed) without either Father or Mother; or self-expos'd in his
Infancy, and providentially suckled by a Roe. Not that our Author
believ'd any such matter, but only having design'd to._

_He lays the Scene in some_ Fortunate Island _situate under the
Equinoctial; where he supposes this Philosopher, either to have been