| So it is with all crude attempts
where the principal part of the business depends on the use of reason,
a use which does not come of itself, like the use of the feet, by frequent
exercise, especially when attributes are in question which cannot be directly
exhibited in common experience. But after the maxim had come into vogue,
though late, to examine carefully beforehand all the steps that reason
purposes to take, and not to let it proceed otherwise than in the track
of a previously well considered method, then the study of the structure
of the universe took quite a different direction, and thereby attained
an incomparably happier result. The fall of a stone,
the motion of a sling, resolved into their elements and the forces that
are manifested in them, and treated mathematically, produced at last that
clear and henceforward unchangeable insight into the system of the world
which, as observation is continued, may hope
always to extend itself, but need never fear to be compelled to retreat.
Immanuel Kant, from the Conclusion of THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON (1788), translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. |