has proved unsatisfactory; and this makes me think that it will be
useful to add a preface to it for the purpose of showing what the
MATTER of the work is, what END I had in view in writing it, and
what UTILITY may be derived from it. But although it might be my
part to write a preface of this nature, seeing I ought to know those
particulars better than any other person, I cannot nevertheless
prevail upon myself to do anything more than merely to give a
summary of the chief points that fall, as I think, to be discussed
in it: and I leave it to your discretion to present to the public
such part of them as you shall judge proper.

I should have desired, in the first place, to explain in it what
philosophy is, by commencing with the most common matters, as, for
example, that the word PHILOSOPHY signifies the study of wisdom, and
that by wisdom is to be understood not merely prudence in the
management of affairs, but a perfect knowledge of all that man can
know, as well for the conduct of his life as for the preservation of
his health and the discovery of all the arts, and that knowledge to
subserve these ends must necessarily be deduced from first causes;
so that in order to study the acquisition of it (which is properly
called philosophizing), we must commence with the investigation of
those first causes which are called PRINCIPLES. Now these principles
must possess TWO CONDITIONS: in the first place, they must be so
clear and evident that the human mind, when it attentively considers
them, cannot doubt of their truth; in the second place, the
knowledge of other things must be so dependent on them as that
though the principles themselves may indeed be known apart from what
depends on them, the latter cannot nevertheless be known apart from
the former. It will accordingly be necessary thereafter to endeavour
so to deduce from those principles the knowledge of the things that