ave been successively proposed.
Some have taken for an absolute and definite criterion the testimony
of the senses; others intuition; these evidence; those argument. M.
Lamennais affirms that there is no other criterion than universal
reason. Before him, M. de Bonald thought he had discovered it in
language. Quite recently, M. Buchez has proposed morality; and, to
harmonize them all, the eclectics have said that it was absurd to seek
for an absolute criterion, since there were as many criteria as special
orders of knowledge.

Of all these hypotheses it may be observed, That the testimony of the
senses is not a criterion, because the senses, relating us only to
phenomena, furnish us with no ideas; that intuition needs external
confirmation or objective certainty; that evidence requires proof, and
argument verification; that universal reason has been wrong many a time;
that language serves equally well to express the true or the false; that
morality, like all the rest, needs demonstration and rule; and finally,
that the eclectic idea is the least reasonable of all, since it is of no
use to say that there are several criteria if we cannot point out one.
I very much fear that it will be with the criterion as with the
philosopher's stone; that it will finally be abandoned, not only as
insolvable, but as chimerical. Consequently, I entertain no hopes of
having found it; nevertheless, I am not sure that some one more skilful
will not discover it.

Be it as it may with regard to a criterion or criteria, there are
methods of demonstration which, when applied to certain subjects,
may lead to the discovery of unknown truths, bring to light relations
hitherto unsuspected, and lift a paradox to the highest degree of
certainty. In such a case, it is not by its novelty, nor even by its
content, that a system should be judged, but by its method. The critic,
then, should follow the example of the Supreme Court, which, in the
cases which come before it, never examines the facts, but only the form
of procedure. Now, what is the form of procedure? A method.

I then looked to see what philosophy, in the absence of a criterion, had
accomplished by the aid of special methods, and I must say that I
could not discover--in spite of the loudly-proclaimed pretensions
of some--that it had produced any thing of real value; and, at last,
wearied with the philosophical twaddle, I resolved to make a new search
for the criterion. I confess it, to my