the privilege of being tried only by the standard which itself has set up, and of being called to an account only for the work which it undertook to execute.
It is submitted that the system is both reasoned and true.2. In the first place, it is submitted that these Institutes have complied with the two general requisitions set forth in the Introduction (§ 2), as obligatory on every system which lays claim to the title of philosophy. They are reasoned, and they are true. They are reasoned, inasmuch as their conclusions follow necessarily and inevitably from their initial principle; and they are true, inasmuch as their initial principle is a necessary truth or law of reason.
The chief consideration to be looked to in estimating the system.3. But in the second place, the point most particularly to be considered, as affecting the substance of the inquiry, is this—has the system done the work which it undertook to do? It undertook to correct the contradictory inadvertencies incident to popular opinion, and the deliberate errors prevalent in psychological science; and in the room of these inadvertencies and errors to substitute necessary ideas, or unquestionable truths of reason. This was declared to be the business, and the only business, of philosophy, (see Introduction, §§ 44, 45). How, then, has the system acquitted itself in respect to that engagement?
