were made on a different subject; but they will not, on this account, have less force, if the application of them be thought just.
'Instead of applying observation to the things we wished to know, we have chosen rather to imagine them. Advancing form on ill founded supposition to another, we have at last bewildered ourselves amidst a multitude of errors. These errors becoming prejudices, are, of course, adopted as principles, and we thus bewilder ourselves more and more. The method, too, by which we conduct our reasonings is as absurd; we abuse words which we do not understand, and call this the art of reasoning. When matter have been brought this length, when errors have been thus accumulated, there is but one remedy by which order can be restored to the faculty of thinking; this is, to forget all that we have learned, to trace back our ideas to their source, to follow the train in which they rise, and, as my Lord Bacon says, to frame the human understanding anew.
'This remedy becomes the more difficult in proportion as we think ourselves more learned.
