Prefatory note by the author
If this Discourse appear too long to be read at once, it may be divided in-
to six Parts: and, in the first, will be found various considerations touch-
ing the Sciences; in the second, the principal rules of the Method which
the Author has discovered, in the third, certain of the rules of Morals
which he has deduced from this Method; in the fourth, the reasonings by
which he establishes the existence of God and of the Human Soul, which
are the foundations of his Metaphysic; in the fifth, the order of the Phys-
ical questions which he has investigated, and, in particular, the explica-
tion of the motion of the heart and of some other difficulties pertaining
to Medicine, as also the difference between the soul of man and that of
the brutes; and, in the last, what the Author believes to be required in or-
der to greater advancement in the investigation of Nature than has yet
been made, with the reasons that have induced him to write.
