PREFATORY NOTE BY THE AUTHOR
If this Discourse appear too long to be read at once, it may be divided
into six Parts: and, in the first, will be found various considerations
touching the Sciences; in the second, the principal rules of the Method
which the Author has discovered, in the third, certain of the rules of
Morals which he has deduced from this Method; in the fourth, the
reasonings by which he establishes the existence of God and of the Human
Soul, which are the foundations of his Metaphysic; in the fifth, the order
of the Physical questions which he has investigated, and, in particular, the
explication of the motion of the heart and of some other difficulties
pertaining to Medicine, as also the difference between the soul of man and
that of the brutes; and, in the last, what the Author believes to be required
in order to greater advancement in the investigation of Nature than has yet
been made, with the reasons that have induced him to write.