3. But, perhaps, we may be too partial to ourselves in placing the fault
originally in our faculties, and not rather in the wrong use we make of
them. IT IS A HARD THING TO SUPPOSE THAT RIGHT DEDUCTIONS FROM TRUE
PRINCIPLES SHOULD EVER END IN CONSEQUENCES WHICH CANNOT BE MAINTAINED or
made consistent. We should believe that God has dealt more bountifully
with the sons of men than to give them a strong desire for that knowledge
which he had placed quite out of their reach. This were not agreeable to
the wonted indulgent methods of Providence, which, whatever appetites it
may have implanted in the creatures, doth usually furnish them with such
means as, if rightly made use of, will not fail to satisfy them. Upon the
whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of
those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked
up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselves--that we have
first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.

4. My purpose therefore is, to try if I can discover what those
Principles are which have introduced all that doubtfulness and
uncertainty, those absurdities and contradictions, into the several sects
of philosophy; insomuch that the wisest men have thought our ignorance
incurable, conceiving it to arise from the natural dulness and limitation
of our faculties. And surely it is a work well deserving our pains to
make a strict inquiry concerning the First Principles of Human Knowledge,
to sift and examine them on all sides, especially since there may be some
grounds to suspect that those lets and difficulties, which stay and
embarrass the mind in its search after truth, do not spring from any
darkness and intricacy in the objects, or natural defect in the
understanding, so much as from false Principles which have been insisted
on, and might have been avoided.

5. How difficult and discouraging soever this attempt may seem, when I