Note 28 — LECTURE II. ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.

We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and confirmed by the errors of those who have dared to break it, this rule of true psychological analysis, that, before passing to the question of the origin of an idea, a notion, a belief, any principle whatever, the actual characters of this idea, this notion, this belief, this principle, must have been a long time studied and well established, with the firm resolution of not altering them under any pretext whatever in wishing to explain them. We believe that we have, as Leibnitz says, settled this point. See 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and the Opening Discourse; vol. iii., lecture 1, Locke; lecture 2, Condillac; lecture 3, almost entire, and lecture 8, p. 260; 2d Series, vol. iii., Examen du Système de Locke, lecture 16, p. 77-87; 3d Series, vol. iv., Examination of the Lectures of M. Loremquière, p. 268.