| 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 Critique of Practical Reason (1788), translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. |