The systems of learning therefore must be sometimes reviewed,
complications analyzed into principles, and knowledge disentangled from
opinion. It is not always possible, without a close inspection, to
separate the genuine shoots of consequential reasoning, which grow out
of some radical postulate, from the branches which art has ingrafted on
it. The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured
them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those
rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be
discovered.
Criticism has sometimes permitted fancy to dictate the laws by which
fancy ought to be restrained, and fallacy to perplex the principles by
which fallacy is to be detected; her superintendence of others has
betrayed her to negligence of herself; and, like the ancient Scythians,
by extending her conquests over distant regions, she has left her throne
vacant to her slaves.
Among the laws of which the desire of extending authority, or ardour of
promoting knowledge, has prompted the prescription, all which writers
have received, had not the same original right to our regard. Some are
to be considered as fundamental and indispensable, others only as useful
and convenient; some as dictated by reason and necessity, others as
enacted by despotick antiquity; some as invincibly supported by their
conformity to the order of nature and operations of the intellect;
others as formed by accident, or instituted by example, and therefore
always liable to dispute and alteration.
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