Now these principles
must possess TWO CONDITIONS: in the first place, they must be so
clear and evident that the human mind, when it attentively considers
them, cannot doubt of their truth; in the second place, the
knowledge of other things must be so dependent on them as that
though the principles themselves may indeed be known apart from what
depends on them, the latter cannot nevertheless be known apart from
the former. It will accordingly be necessary thereafter to endeavour
so to deduce from those principles the knowledge of the things that
depend on them, as that there may be nothing in the whole series of
deductions which is not perfectly manifest. God is in truth the only
being who is absolutely wise, that is, who possesses a perfect
knowledge of all things; but we may say that men are more or less
wise as their knowledge of the most important truths is greater or
less. And I am confident that there is nothing, in what I have now
said, in which all the learned do not concur.
I should, in the next place, have proposed to consider the utility
of philosophy, and at the same time have shown that, since it
embraces all that the human mind can know, we ought to believe that
it is by it we are distinguished from savages and barbarians, and
that the civilisation and culture of a nation is regulated by the
degree in which true philosophy nourishes in it, and, accordingly,
that to contain true philosophers is the highest privilege a state
can enjoy.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26