The Principles of Philosophy | Page 5

that it is incomparably better he should himself direct his
attention to it; just as it is doubtless to be preferred that a man should
make use of his own eyes to direct his steps, and enjoy by means of the
same the beauties of colour and light, than that he should blindly follow
the guidance of another; though the latter course is certainly better than
to have the eyes closed with no guide except one's self. But to live
without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed
without attempting to open them; and the pleasure of seeing all that
sight discloses is not to be compared with the satisfaction afforded by
the discoveries of philosophy. And, finally, this study is more

imperatively requisite for the regulation of our manners, and for
conducting us through life, than 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 acquired without meditation; the second
comprehends all that the experience of the senses dictates; the third,
that which the conversation of other men teaches us; to which may be
added as the fourth, the reading, not of all books, but especially of such
as have been written by persons capable of conveying proper
instruction, for it is a species of conversation we hold with their authors.
And it seems to me that all the wisdom we in ordinary possess is
acquired only in these four ways; for I do not class divine revelation

among them, because it does not conduct us by degrees, but elevates us
at once to an infallible faith.
There have been, indeed, in all ages great minds who endeavoured to
find a fifth road to wisdom, incomparably more sure and elevated than
the other four. The path they essayed was the search of first causes and
true principles, from which might be deduced the reasons of all that can
be known by man; and it is to them the appellation of philosophers has
been more especially accorded. I am not aware that there is any one of
them up to the present who has succeeded in this enterprise. The first
and chief whose writings we possess are Plato and Aristotle, between
whom there was no difference, except that the former, following in the
footsteps of his master, Socrates, ingenuously confessed that he had
never yet been able to find anything certain, and that he was contented
to write what seemed to him probable, imagining, for this end, certain
principles by which he endeavoured to account for the other things.
Aristotle, on the other hand, characterised by less candour, although for
twenty years the disciple of Plato, and with no principles beyond those
of his master, completely reversed his mode of putting them, and
proposed as true and certain what it is probable he himself never
esteemed as such. But these two men had acquired much judgment and
wisdom by the four preceding