a kind of knowledge acquired by long use without any teacher. It consists in the ideas of things we have seen or read, which the judgment has reflected on, to form itself a rule or method.

Authors make three kinds of experience: The first is the simple uses of the external senses, whereby we perceive the phenomena of natural things without any direct attention thereto, or making any application thereof. The second is, when we premeditately and designedly make trials of various things, or observe those done by others, attending closely to all effects and circumstances. The third is that preceded by a foreknowledge, or at least an apprehension of the event, and EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.

and determines whether the apprehension were true or false; which two latter kinds, especially the third, are of great service in philosophy.