ng and stopping inquiry; and have done more harm by spoiling
and putting an end to other men's efforts than good by their own.
Those on the other hand who have taken a contrary course, and asserted
that absolutely nothing can be known,--whether it were from hatred of
the ancient sophists, or from uncertainty and fluctuation of mind,
or even from a kind of fulness of learning, that they fell upon this
opinion,--have certainly advanced reasons for it that are not to be
despised; but yet they have neither started from true principles nor
rested in the just conclusion, zeal and affectation having carried
them much too far. The more ancient of the Greeks (whose writings
are lost) took up with better judgment a position between these two
extremes,--between the presumption of pronouncing on everything,
and the despair of comprehending anything; and though frequently and
bitterly complaining of the difficulty of inquiry and the obscurity of
things, and like impatient horses champing the bit, they did not
the less follow up their object and engage with Nature; thinking (it
seems) that this very question,--viz. whether or no anything can be
known,--was to be settled not by arguing, but by trying. And yet they
too, trusting entirely to the force of their understanding, applied
no rule, but made everything turn upon hard thinking and perpetual
working and exercise of the mind.

Now my method, though hard to practise, is easy to explain; and it
is this. I propose to establish progressive stages of certainty. The
evidence of the sense, helped and guarded by a certain process of
correction, I retain. But the mental operation which follows the act
of sense I for the most part reject; and instead of it I open and
lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting
directly from the simple sensuous perception. The necessity of this
was felt no doubt by those who attributed so much importance to
Logic; showing thereby that they were in search of helps for the
understanding, and had no confidence in the native and spontaneous
process of the mind. But this remedy comes too late to do any
good, when the mind is already, through the daily intercourse and
conversation of life, occupied with unsound doctrines and beset on all
sides by vain imaginations. And therefore that art of Logic, coming
(as I said) too late to the rescue, and no way able to set matters
right again, has had the effect of fixing errors rather than
disclosin