PREFACE.

...ontological principles, its precepts cannot be demonstrated at all. Being therefore fully convinced of the utility—and indeed the absolutely indispensable necessity—of this science, I began to think about its reform. I proposed to myself that I should seek distinct notions meaning clear and well-defined concepts that can be distinguished from one another, a hallmark of Wolff's philosophy both of being in general original: entis in genere; existence considered in its most basic form without specific qualities and of those predicates attributes or characteristics which belong to it, whether you consider being as such in itself, or relate it to other beings insofar as they are beings. From these notions, I intended to deduce determined propositions, which are the only kind useful for reasoning, as I have taught extensively in my Logic Referring to Wolff's earlier work on the rules of thinking and the structure of arguments.. Finally, in demonstrating these propositions, I would not admit any principles except those established in what came before, just as I have shown in Logic must be done in the demonstrative method demonstrative method a way of teaching or writing where every conclusion is logically proven from previously established certainties, modeled after geometric proofs.

And so, at last, this present work was born and now comes before the public, presenting First Philosophy original: Philosophia prima; the foundational branch of philosophy, later known primarily as Ontology, which deals with the most basic principles of reality clothed in an entirely new form. Although the scientific method scientific method original: methodus scientifica; in the 18th century, this referred to a rigorous, deductive system of reasoning rather than the modern experimental method. which I have used here—and will use in the subsequent parts of philosophy—requires that each point be treated in the specific place where it can be understood and demonstrated from what precedes it, I nevertheless wished to observe the order of the school order of the school original: scholae ordinem; the traditional curriculum or organizational structure used in university classrooms as much as that method permits, just as was done in my Logic. For this reason, I have divided the entire work into two parts, and have seen fit to further subdivide each of these into sections, and those again into chapters. Thus it has happened that I have occasionally used ter-