Treatise of Human Nature

Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to
discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than
to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those,
which have been advanced before them. And indeed were they content with
lamenting that ignorance, which we still lie under in the most important
questions, that can come before the tribunal of human reason, there are
few, who have an acquaintance with the sciences, that would not readily
agree with them. It is easy for one of judgment and learning, to
perceive the weak foundation even of those systems, which have obtained
the greatest credit, and have carried their pretensions highest
to accurate and profound reasoning. Principles taken upon trust,
consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts,
and of evidence in the whole, these are every where to be met with in
the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn
disgrace upon philosophy itself.