A D M O N I T I O N S . original: "Monenda." These are points the author wishes the reader to keep in mind before starting the text.

My Reader, do not be frightened by the bulk of this book. It is a great evil when a subject, often explained elsewhere, is continuously encrusted only by an increase in words, or is re-presented with the order reversed and interpolated. Perhaps here, where the subject matter is not so common, you will find nothing of the sort. In the meantime, he who is free from prejudices original: "praejudiciis." In this context, Poiret refers to preconceived notions or biases inherited from traditional schooling. might, for the sake of brevity, skip the entire first book and several chapters of the second; for they are spent more on destroying [old ideas] than on building up [new ones]. It is not a pleasant thing to clear away mud; I know that it was done there not without tedium, but also not without necessity—indeed, even by compulsion. I have sometimes, though rarely, recounted the opinions of certain philosophers for no other reason than that their fame makes their harmful prejudices influential among many. I had to descend into Scholastic Scholasticism: A medieval method of learning that emphasized dialectical reasoning and often became bogged down in complex, abstract categories. trivialities several times so that those hindered by them might be set free. For it is especially for such people that these things were written. In other matters, I do not follow individual persons, but the signs of truth engraved by God in the depths of minds and leading to God—not so that I might subject Him, who is incomprehensible, to reason, but rather subject reason to Him, so that the testimonies of Himself which He left within reason may be revealed to His glory.

Therefore, I pay no heed to those who think it is not the role of genuine Philosophy to rise from natural notions and things to the knowledge and love of God. A diabolical strategy!—so that everyone aspiring to knowledge might vanish far away from God. I have attempted here to render that strategy void. Regarding the subject matter I have undertaken, I have written things which, back when I was still ignorant of them and was distressed by opposing prejudices and difficulties, I would have wished had been shown to me by others.

Furthermore, I care nothing for the thinness or, if you prefer, the barbarity of my style. The author is apologizing for his "New Latin," which may lack the elegance of classical Cicero but is functional for philosophical debate. I did not write for the ears, nor for those gasping for verbal tricks and feeding themselves on them, nor even for the contentious, who—simply because certain words are used in different senses in various places—have no grounds to claim either a contradiction or an ambiguity; since care was taken so that from the flow of the discourse original: "discur-". This is a catchword, an 18th-century printing convention where the first syllable of the next page is printed at the bottom of the current one. itself...