C PREFACE 



nation at the difficulty of inquiry, and the obscurity of 

 things, and champing, as it were, the bit, have still per 

 sisted in pressing their point, and pursuing their inter 

 course with nature; thinking, as it seems, that the better 

 method was not to dispute upon the very point of the pos 

 sibility of anything being known, but to put it to the test 

 of experience. Yet they themselves, by only employing 

 the power of the understanding, have not adopted a fixed 

 rule, but have laid their whole stress upon intense medita 

 tion, and a continual exercise and perpetual agitation of 

 the mind. 



Our method, though difficult in its operation, is easily 

 explained. It consists in determining the degrees of cer 

 tainty, while we, as it were, restore the senses to their 

 former rank, but generally reject that operation of the 

 mind which follows close upon the senses, and open and 

 establish a new and certain course for the mind from the 

 first actual perceptions of the senses themselves. This, no 

 doubt, was the view taken by those who have assigned so 

 much to logic; showing clearly thereby that they sought 

 some support for the mind, and suspected its natural and 

 spontaneous mode of action. But this is now employed 

 too late as a remedy, when all is clearly lost, and after the 

 mind, by the daily habit and intercourse of life, has come 

 prepossessed with corrupted doctrines, and filled with the 

 vainest idols. The art of logic therefore being (as we have 

 mentioned), too late a precaution, 1 and in no way remedy- 



1 Because it was idle to draw a logical conclusion from false principles, error 



i being propagated as much by false premises, which logic does not -pretend to 



j examine, as by illegitimate inference. Hence, us Bacon says further on, men 



being easily led lo confound legitimate inference with truth, were confirmed 



V in their errors by the very subtilty of their genius. Ed. 



