ollow the
demonstration when you have a machine beside you; whereas without
that help all appears involved and more subtle than it really is. To
examples of this kind,--being in fact nothing more than an application
of the second part in detail and at large,--the fourth part of the
work is devoted.

* * * * *

The fifth part is for temporary use only, pending the completion of
the rest; like interest payable from time to time until the principal
be forthcoming. For I do not make so blindly for the end of my
journey, as to neglect anything useful that may turn up by the way.
And therefore I include in this fifth part such things as I have
myself discovered, proved, or added,--not however according to the
true rules and methods of interpretation, but by the ordinary use of
the understanding in inquiring and discovering. For besides that I
hope my speculations may in virtue of my continual conversancy with
nature have a value beyond the pretensions of my wit, they will
serve in the meantime for wayside inns in which the mind may rest
and refresh itself on its journey to more certain conclusions.
Nevertheless I wish it to be understood in the meantime that they are
conclusions by which (as not being discovered and proved by the true
form of interpretation) I do not at all mean to bind myself. Nor
need any one be alarmed at such suspension of judgment, in one who
maintains not simply that nothing can be known, but only that nothing
can be known except in a certain course and way; and yet establishes
provisionally certain degrees of assurance, for use and relief until
the mind shall arrive at a knowledge of causes in which it can
rest. For even those schools of philosophy which held the absolute
impossibility of knowing anything were not inferior to those which
took upon them to pronounce. But then they did not provide helps for
the sense and understanding, as I have done, but simply took away all
their authority: which is quite a different thing--almost the reverse.

* * * * *

The sixth part of my work (to which the rest is subservient and
ministrant) discloses and sets forth that philosophy which by
the legitimate, chaste, and severe course of inquiry which I have
explained and provided is at length developed and established. The
completion however of this last part is a thing both above my strength
and beyond my hopes. I have made a beginning of the work--