8. By which morality also may he made clearer. This gave me the
confidence to advance that conjecture, which I suggest, (chap. iii.)
viz. that morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics.
For the ideas that ethics are conversant about, being all real
essences, and such as I imagine have a discoverable connexion and
agreement one with another; so far as we can find their habitudes
and relations, so far we shall be possessed of certain, real, and
general truths; and I doubt not but, if a right method were taken, a
great part of morality might be made out with that clearness, that
could leave, to a considering man, no more reason to doubt, than he
could have to doubt of the truth of propositions in mathematics, which
have been demonstrated to him.
9. Our knowledge of substances is to be improved, not by
contemplation of abstract ideas, but only by experience. In our search
after the knowledge of substances, our want of ideas that are suitable
to such a way of proceeding obliges us to a quite different method. We
advance not here, as in the other, (where our abstract ideas are
real as well as nominal essences,) by contemplating our ideas, and
considering their relations and correspondences; that helps us very
little, for the reasons, that in another place we have at large set
down.
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