Rational Thoughts on the Powers of Human Understanding (German Logic)

[subject mat]ter is simply not to be found in all bookstores, and I
fear that even if someone who is not yet experienced in thorough
sciences thorough sciences; German: gründliche Wissenschaften; refers to rigorous, systematic fields of study like logic and natural philosophy encounters such a book, he would understand very little of it. Thus, there is no other way to reach this knowledge
than by learning to properly grasp thoroughly demonstrated truths German: demonstrirte Wahrheiten; logical proofs where each step follows necessarily from the previous one,
then investigating how they could have been discovered,
and when one has attained some ability for reflection German: nachzusinnen; the act of deep, methodical thinking
through this, striving to seek out things that are still unknown to us,
yes, perhaps even things not yet discovered by anyone else;
finally, one must make it a priority to investigate precisely
what the cause is that we are so clearly convinced
by demonstrated truths, and how it happens
that one can derive other still-hidden truths
from certain known ones. Now, any person would be either
highly impudent or extremely simple-minded who would claim
that, outside of mathematics, one could find truths
as thoroughly proven or demonstrated, or discoveries
as correct, as those within it. For outside of ma-