tendency that even the most superior minds will have need of much
time and attention to remark all I designed to embrace therein.

After this, that I might lead men to understand the real design I
had in publishing them, I should have wished here to explain the
order which it seems to me one ought to follow with the view of
instructing himself. In the first place, a man who has merely the
vulgar and imperfect knowledge which can be acquired by the four
means above explained, ought, before all else, to endeavour to form
for himself a code of morals, sufficient to regulate the actions of
his life, as well for the reason that this does not admit of delay
as because it ought to be our first care to live well. In the next
place, he ought to study Logic, not that of the schools, for it is
only, properly speaking, a dialectic which teaches the mode of
expounding to others what we already know, or even of speaking much,
without judgment, of what we do not know, by which means it corrupts
rather than increases good sense--but the logic which teaches the
right conduct of the reason with the view of discovering the truths
of which we are ignorant; and, because it greatly depends on usage,
it is desirable he should exercise himself for a length of time in
practising its rules on easy and simple questions, as those of the
mathematics. Then, when he has acquired some skill in discovering
the truth in these questions, he should commence to apply himself in
earnest to true philosophy, of which the first part is Metaphysics,
containing the principles of knowledge, among which is the
explication of the principal attributes of God, of the immateriality
of the soul, and of all the clear and simple notions that are in us;
the second is Physics, in which, after finding the true principles
of material things, we examine, in general, how the whole universe
has been framed; in the next place, we consider, in particular, the