is the use of our eyes for directing our steps. The brutes, which
have only their bodies to conserve, are continually occupied in
seeking sources of nourishment; but men, of whom the chief part is
the mind, ought to make the search after wisdom their principal
care, for wisdom is the true nourishment of the mind; and I feel
assured, moreover, that there are very many who would not fail in
the search, if they would but hope for success in it, and knew the
degree of their capabilities for it. There is no mind, how ignoble
soever it be, which remains so firmly bound up in the objects of the
senses, as not sometime or other to turn itself away from them in
the aspiration after some higher good, although not knowing
frequently wherein that good consists. The greatest favourites of
fortune--those who have health, honours, and riches in abundance--
are not more exempt from aspirations of this nature than others;
nay, I am persuaded that these are the persons who sigh the most
deeply after another good greater and more perfect still than any
they already possess. But the supreme good, considered by natural
reason without the light of faith, is nothing more than the
knowledge of truth through its first causes, in other words, the
wisdom of which philosophy is the study. And, as all these
particulars are indisputably true, all that is required to gain
assent to their truth is that they be well stated.

But as one is restrained from assenting to these doctrines by
experience, which shows that they who make pretensions to philosophy
are often less wise and reasonable than others who never applied
themselves to the study, I should have here shortly explained
wherein consists all the science we now possess, and what are the
degrees of wisdom at which we have arrived. The first degree
contains only notions so clear of themselves that they can be