better of all the things we come in contact with, and thus be made
wiser, in which respect the effect will be quite the opposite of the
common philosophy, for we may easily remark in those we call pedants
that it renders them less capable of rightly exercising their reason
than they would have been if they had never known it. The third is,
that the truths which they contain, being highly clear and certain,
will take away all ground of dispute, and thus dispose men's minds
to gentleness and concord; whereas the contrary is the effect of the
controversies of the schools, which, as they insensibly render those
who are exercised in them more wrangling and opinionative, are
perhaps the prime cause of the heresies and dissensions that now
harass the world. The last and chief fruit of these Principles is,
that one will be able, by cultivating them, to discover many truths
I myself have not unfolded, and thus passing by degrees from one to
another, to acquire in course of time a perfect knowledge of the
whole of philosophy, and to rise to the highest degree of wisdom.
For just as all the arts, though in their beginnings they are rude
and imperfect, are yet gradually perfected by practice, from their
containing at first something true, and whose effect experience
evinces; so in philosophy, when we have true principles, we cannot
fail by following them to meet sometimes with other truths; and we
could not better prove the falsity of those of Aristotle, than by
saying that men made no progress in knowledge by their means during
the many ages they prosecuted them.

I well know that there are some men so precipitate and accustomed to
use so little circumspection in what they do, that, even with the
most solid foundations, they could not rear a firm superstructure;
and as it is usually those who are the readiest to make books, they
would in a short time mar all that I have done, and introduce