are incapable of beholding the light of truth, and who are become so
drowsy from drinking immoderately of the cup of oblivion, that their
whole life is nothing more than a transmigration from sleep to sleep, and
from dream to dream, like men passing from one bed to another,--to such
as these, the road through which we have been traveling will appear to be
a delusive passage, and the objects which we have surveyed to be nothing
more than fantastic visions, seen only by the eye of imagination, and
when seen, idle and vain as the dreams of a shadow.

The following arguments, however, may perhaps awaken some few of these
who are less lethargic than the rest, from the sleep of sense, and enable
them to elevate their mental eye from the dark mire in which they are
plunged, and gain a glimpse of this most weighty truth, that there is
another world, of which this is nothing more than a most obscure
resemblance, and another life, of which this is but the flying mockery.
My present discourse therefore is addressed to those who consider
experiment as the only solid criterion of truth. In the first place then,
these men appear to be ignorant of the invariable laws of demonstration
properly so called, and that the necessary requisites of all
demonstrative propositions are these: that they exist as causes, are
primary, more excellent, peculiar, true, and known than the conclusions.
For every demonstration not only consists of principles prior to others,
but of such as are eminently first; since if the assumed propositions may
be demonstrated by other assumptions, such propositions may indeed
appear prior to the conclusions, but are by no means entitled to the
appellation of first. Others, on the contrary, which require no
demonstration, but are of themselves manifest, are deservedly esteemed
the first, the truest, and the best. Such indemonstrable truths were
called by the ancients axioms from their majesty and authority, as the
assumptions which constitute demonstrative syllogisms derive all their