Nor need any one be alarmed at such suspension of judgment, in one who maintains not simply that nothing can be known, but only that nothing can be known except in a certain course and way; and yet establishes provisionally certain degrees of assurance, for use and relief until the mind shall arrive at a knowledge of causes in which it can rest.

For even those schools of philosophy which held the absolute impossibility of knowing anything were not inferior to those which took upon them to pronounce.

But then they did not provide helps for the sense and understanding, as I have done, but simply took away all their authority: which is quite a different thing--almost the reverse.
* * * * * The sixth part of my work (to which the rest is subservient and ministrant) discloses and sets forth that philosophy which by the legitimate, chaste, and severe course of inquiry which I have explained and provided is at length developed and established.

The completion however of this last part is a thing both above my strength and beyond my hopes.

I have made a beginning of the work--a beginning, as I hope, not unimportant:--the fortune of the human race will give the issue;--such an issue, it may be, as in the present condition of things and men's minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined.