Lecture I.--the Existence of Universal and Necessary Principles 39

Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is the problem of the philosophy of our time.--Universal and necessary principles.--Examples of different kinds of such principles.--Distinction between universal and necessary principles and general principles.--Experience alone is incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the knowledge of the sensible world.--Reason as being that faculty of ours which discovers to us these principles.--The study of universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest parts of philosophy.