Psychologia Empirica

For when we shall expose it to the public light, it will be manifest that, unless distinct notions of the faculties of the mind are presupposed, it is by no means possible to arrive at distinct notions of the divine attributes. How much it matters, however, that we possess distinct notions of these, will then be clearly evident when we shall treat in natural law of the duties toward God, in moral philosophy of piety and other theological virtues, in teleology of knowing God from the works of nature, and in natural theology itself of the method to be observed in this knowledge. The things we have discussed concerning the use of empirical psychology are not to be referred to the number of those things which seem more to be wished for than hoped for; for we speak only of what has been experienced. And for that reason, it has pleased us, with provident counsel, to separate empirical psychology from rational, so that the foundations of so arduous a structure may remain unshaken. For since in rational psychology we explain the nature and essence of the human mind and thence derive the reason for those things which are observed in the mind a priori, with a certain new and enviable daring; yet one must needs be a stranger and a guest in literary history who is ignorant that he reigns in the world—