A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE

Even those systems that have received the most credit and have borne the highest pretensions to precise and profound reasoning have a poor foundation, as anyone with judgement and learning can see.

Principles taken on faith, lamely inferred consequences, a lack of coherence in the parts and evidence in the whole, these are all too common in the systems of the most prominent philosophers, and appear to have brought philosophy into disrepute. There is no need for such in-depth knowledge to discern the current state of the sciences; even the rabble outside the doors may deduce from the clamour and clamour that they hear that all is not well within. There is nothing that isn't up for argument, and there are no persons of learning who don't have opposing viewpoints.