PREFACE.

...[ter]ms original: "terminis"; the word completes the sentence from the previous page. not yet explained; and although this may seem to go against the laws of the scientific method original: "methodi scientificæ"; here referring to the rigorous, deductive logical structure popularized by thinkers like Wolff and Leibniz., it could nonetheless be done without any danger. This is because these terms are understood through clear, though confused, notions original: "notiones claras, etsi confusas"; in early modern logic, a "clear" notion allows you to recognize something, but it is "confused" if you cannot yet list its specific defining characteristics. that are common to everyone. However, the distinct notions of these things do not enter into any demonstration as a foundational principle until they are officially introduced and explained.

If someone should wonder at, or even outright criticize, the fact that this work defines things that are already adequately recognized through common understanding, or that it proves things which no sane person would doubt and which anyone would willingly grant without proof—such a person does not at all grasp the present undertaking.

We are providing a philosophy of being in general original: "Philosophiam de ente in genere"; the study of what it means for anything to exist, regardless of what specific kind of thing it is.; therefore, it is not enough to simply list its predicates original: "prædicata"; the properties or characteristics that belong to a subject., whether they are absolute or relative. Instead, the reason must also be given why those predicates belong to that being. This allows us to be convinced a priori original: "a priori"; knowledge that proceeds from theoretical deduction or definitions rather than from observation or experience. that these properties are rightly attributed to it, and can always be attributed to it whenever the same conditions are present.

For it is not enough that certain propositions are "clear" simply because of the common, vague ideas we have of them. Rather, by "unfolding" or evolving these ideas, we must show exactly what is contained within them. Only then can we judge that a specific characteristic is truly inseparable from the subject itself. Examples merely illustrate the propositions that experience suggests to us; they do not establish their universality original: "universalitatem"; the quality of being true in every possible case, a key goal of rationalist philosophy.. Such universality is only brought to light when...

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