  Rosmini sets out to establish the nature of thought and certainty in his A New Essay concerning the Origin of Ideas. Faced by the critical philosophy of Kant on the one hand, and by British empiricism on the other, Rosmini reaches back to the pre-Socratics, to Plato and Aristotle, to Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, in an endeavour to establish the nature of thought and the basis of certainty in human existence. As his guiding principles he takes the following rules: