"Instead of applying observation to the things we wished to know, we have chosen rather to imagine them. Advancing from one ill-founded supposition to another, we have at last bewildered ourselves amidst a multitude of errors. These errors becoming prejudices, are, or course, adopted s principles, and we thus bewilder ourselves more and more. The method, too, by which we conduct our reasonings is as absurd; we abuse words which we do not understand, and call this the art of reasoning. When matters have been brought this length, when errors have been thus accumulated, there is but one remedy by which order can be restored to the faculty of thinking; this is to forget all that we have learned, to trace back our ideas to their source, to follow the train in which they rise, and as Bacon says, to frame the human understanding anew.” Abbé de Condillac (quoted by Lavoisier in Elements of Chemistry