ABSTRACT
The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object. This, therefore, being John Locke purpose, to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent. This way of getting and improving our knowledge in substances only by experience and history, which is all that the weakness of our faculties in this state of mediocrity we are in this world can attain to, makes me suspect that natural philosophy is not capable of being made a science. This is certain, that what in one age was affirmed upon slight grounds, can never after come to be more valid in future ages by being often repeated.
