Of the Conduct of the Understanding
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Quid tam temerarium tamque indignum sapientis gravitate atque constantia quam aut falsum
sentire aut quod not satis explorate perceptum sit et cognitum sine ulla dubitations defendere ?
« What is so reckless and so unworthy of the earnest and unrelenting endeavour of the philosopher than either to hold a false opinion or to maintain unhesitatingly what has been accepted as knowledge without adequate observation and enquiry ? » Cicero, De Natura Deorum, Lib. I.
Section 01. Introduction.
The last resort a man has recourse to in the conduct of himself is his understanding ; for though we distinguish the faculties of the mind and give the supreme command to the will as to an agent, yet the truth is, the man which is the agent determines himself to this or that voluntary action upon some precedent knowledge or appearance of knowledge in the understanding. No man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or other which serves him for a reason for what he does ; and whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding, with such light as it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads ; and by that light, true or false, all his operative powers are directed. The will itself, how absolute and uncontrollable however it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dictates of the understanding. Temples have their sacred images, and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. But in truth the ideas and images in men’s minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all universally pay a ready submission. It is therefore of the highest concernment that great care should be taken of the understanding to conduct it right in the search of knowledge and in the judgments it makes.
The logic now in use has so long possessed the chair, as the only art taught in the schools for the direction of the mind in the study of the arts and sciences, that it would perhaps be thought an affectation of novelty to suspect that rules that have served the learned world these two or three thousand years and which without any complaint of defects the learned have rested in are not sufficient to guide the understanding. And I should not doubt but this attempt would be censured as vanity or presumption did not the great Lord Verulam’s authority justify it, who, not servilely thinking learning could not be advanced beyond what it was because for many ages it had not been, did not rest in the lazy approbation and applause of what was, because it was, but enlarged his mind to what might be. In his preface to his Novum Organum concerning logic he pronounces thus, Qui summas dialecticae partes tribuerunt ateque inde fidissima scientiis praesidia comparari putarunt, verissime et optime viderunt intellectum humanum sibi permissum merito suspectum esse debere. Verum infirmior omnino est malo medicina ; nec ipsa mali expers. Siquidem dialectica quae recepta est, licet ad civilia et artes quae in sermone et opinione positae sunt rectissime adhibeatur, naturae tamen subtilitatem longo intervallo non attingit ; et prensando quod non capit, ad errores potius stabiliendos et quasi figendos quam ad viam veritati aperiendam valuit. « They, » says he, « who attributed so much to logic perceived very well and truly that it was not safe to trust the understanding to itself without the guard of any rules. But the remedy reached not the evil but became a part of it ; for the logic which took place, though it might do well enough in civil affairs and the arts which consisted in talk and opinion, yet comes very far short of subtlety in the real performances of nature and, catching at what it cannot reach, has served to confirm and establish errors rather than to open a way to truth. » And therefore a little after he says, « That it is absolutely necessary that a better and perfected use and employment of the mind and understanding should be introduced. » Necessario requiritur ut melior et perfectior mentis et intellectus humani usus et adoperatio introducatur.
Section 02. Parts.
There is, it is visible, great variety in men’s understandings, and their natural constitutions put so wide a difference between some men in this respect that art and industry would never be able to master, and their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise on it that which other men easily attain unto. Amongst men of equal education there is great inequality of parts. And the woods of America, as well as the schools of Athens, produce men of several abilities in the same kind. Though this be so, yet I imagine most men come very short of what they might attain unto in their several degrees by a neglect of their understandings. A few rules of logic are thought sufficient in this case for those who pretend to the highest improvement, whereas I think there are a great many natural defects in the understanding capable of amendment which are overlooked and wholly neglected. And it is easy to perceive that men are guilty of a great many faults in the exercise and improvement of this faculty of the mind which hinder them in their progress and keep them in ignorance and error all their lives. Some of them I shall take notice of and endeavor to point out proper remedies for in the following discourse.
Section 03. Reasoning.
Besides the want of determined ideas and of sagacity and exercise in finding out and laying in order intermediate ideas, there are three miscarriages that men are guilty of in reference to their reason, whereby this faculty is hindered in them from that service it might do and was designed for. And he that reflects upon the actions and discourses of mankind will find their defects in this kind very frequent and very observable.
(i) The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think according to the example of others, whether parents, neighbors, ministers or who else they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit faith in for the saving of themselves the pains and trouble of thinking and examining for themselves.
(ii) The second is of those who put passion in the place of reason and, being resolved that shall govern their actions and arguments, neither use their own nor hearken to other people’s reason any further than it suits their humour, interest or party ; and these, one may observe, commonly content themselves with words which have no distinct ideas to them, though in other matters that they come with an unbiased indifference to they want not abilities to talk and hear reason, where they have no secret inclination that hinders them from being tractable to it.
(iii) The third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason but, for want of having that which one may call large, sound, roundabout sense, have not a full view of all that relates to the question and may be of moment to decide it. We are all shortsighted and very often see but one side of a matter ; our views are not extended to all that has a connection with it. From this defect I think no man is free. We see but in part and we know but in part, and therefore it is no wonder we conclude not right from our partial views. This might instruct the proudest esteemer of his own parts how useful it is to talk and consult with others, even such as came short of him in capacity, quickness and penetration ; for since no one sees all and we generally have different prospects of the same thing according to our different, as I may say, positions to it, it is not incongruous to think nor beneath any man to try whether another may not have notions of things which have escaped him and which his reason would make use of if they came into his mind. The faculty of reasoning seldom or never deceives those who trust to it ; its consequences from what it builds on are evident and certain ; but that which it oftenest, if not only, misleads us in is that the principles from which we conclude, the grounds upon which we bottom our reasoning are but a part ; something is left out which should go into the reckoning to make it just and exact. Here we may imagine a vast and almost infinite advantage that angels and separate spirits may have over us, who in their several degrees of elevation above us may be endowed with more comprehensive faculties and some of them perhaps have perfect and exact views of all finite beings that come under their consideration, can, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye collect together all their scattered and almost boundless relations. A mind so furnished, what reason has it to acquiesce in the certainty of its conclusions !
In this we may see the reason why some men of study and thought that reason right and are lovers of truth do make no great advances in their discoveries of it. Error and truth are uncertainly blended in their minds ; their decisions are lame and defective, and they are very often mistaken in their judgments ; the reason whereof is, they converse but with one sort of men, they read but one sort of books, they will not come in the hearing but of one sort of notions ; the truth is, they canton out to themselves a little Goshen in the intellectual world where light shines and, as they conclude, day blesses them ; but the rest of that vast expansion they give up to night and darkness and so avoid coming near it. They have a pretty tragic with known correspondents in some little creek ; within that they confine themselves and are dexterous managers enough of the wares and products of that corner with which they content themselves, but will not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge to surveys the riches that nature has stored other parts with, no less genuine, no less solid, no less useful than what has fallen to their lot in the admired plenty and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to them contains whatsoever is good in the universe. Those who live thus mewed up within their own contracted territories and will not look abroad beyond the boundaries that chance, conceit or laziness has set to their enquiries, but live separate from the notions, discourses and attainments of the rest of mankind, may not amiss be represented by the inhabitants of the Mariana Islands, which, being separate by a large tract of sea from all communion with the habitable parts of the earth, thought themselves the only people of the world. And though the straitness of the conveniences of life amongst them had never reached so far as to the use of fire till the Spaniards, not many years since, in their voyages from Acapulco to Manilla brought it amongst them, yet in the want and ignorance of almost all things they looked upon themselves, even after that the Spaniards had brought amongst them the notice of variety of nations abounding in sciences, arts and conveniences of life of which they knew nothing, they looked upon themselves, I say, as the happiest and wisest people of the universe. But for all that, nobody, I think, will imagine them deep naturalists or solid metaphysicians ; nobody will deem the quickest sighted amongst them to have very enlarged views in ethics or politics ; nor can anyone allow the most capable amongst them to be advanced so far in his understanding as to have any other knowledge but of the few little things of his and the neighboring islands within his commerce, but far enough from that comprehensive enlargement of mind which adorns a soul devoted to truth, assisted with letters and a free consideration of the several views and sentiments of thinking men of all sides. Let not men therefore that would have a sight of what everyone pretends to be desirous to have a sight of, truth in its full extent, narrow and blind their own prospect. Let not men think there is no truth but in the sciences that they study or the books that they read. To prejudge other men’s notions before eve have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes. « Try all things, hold fast that which is good » is a divine rule coming from the Father of light and truth ; and it is hard to know what other Bay men may come at truth, to lay hold of it, if they do not dig and search for it as for gold and hid treasure ; but he that does so must have much earth and rubbish before he gets the pure metal ; sand and pebbles and dross usually lie blended with it, but the gold is nevertheless gold and will enrich the man that employs his pains to seek and separate it. Neither is there any danger he should be deceived by the mixture. Every man carries about him a touchstone, if he will make use of it, to distinguish substantial gold from superficial glitterings, truth from appearances. And indeed the use and benefit of this touchstone, which is natural reason, is spoiled and lost only by assumed prejudices, overweening presumption and narrowing our minds. The want of exercising it in the full extent of things intelligible is that which weakens and extinguishes this noble faculty in us. Trace it and see whether it be not so. The day laborer in a country village has commonly but a small pittance of knowledge because his ideas and notions have been confined to the narrow bounds of a poor conversation and employment ; the low mechanic of a country town does somewhat outdo him ; porters and cobblers of great cities surpass them. A country gentleman who, leaving Latin and learning in the university, removes thence to his mansion house and associates with neighbors of the same strain, who relish nothing but hunting and a bottle (…) with those alone he spends his time, with those alone he converses and can away with no company whose discourse goes beyond what claret and dissoluteness inspire. Such a patriot, formed in this happy way of improvement, cannot fail, as you see, to give notable decisions upon the bench at quarter sessions and eminent proofs of his skill in politics, when the strength of his purse and party have advanced him to a more conspicuous station. To such a one truly an ordinary coffee-house cleaner of the city is an errant statesman, and as much superior to, as a man conversant about Whitehall and the Court is to an ordinary shopkeeper. To carry this a little further, here is one muffled up in the zeal and infallibility of his own sect and will not touch a book or enter into debate with a person that will question any of those things which to him are sacred. Another surveys our differences in religion with an equitable and fair indifference, and so finds probably that none of them are in everything unexceptionable. These decisions and systems were made by men and carry the mark of fallible on them ; and in those whom he differs from, and till he opened his eyes had a general prejudice against, he meets with more to be said for a great many things than before he was aware of or could have imagined. Which of these two now is most likely to judge right in our religious controversies and to be most stored with truth, the mark all pretend to aim at ? All these men that I have instanced in, thus unequally furnished with truth and advanced in knowledge, I suppose of equal natural parts ; all the odds between them has been the different scope that has been given to their understandings to range in, for the gathering up of information and furnishing their heads with ideas, notions and observations whereon to employ their minds and form their understandings.
It will possibly be objected, Who is sufficient for all this ? I answer, more than can be imagined. Everyone knows what his proper business is and what, according to the character he makes of himself, the world may justly expect of him ; and to answer that, he will find he will have time and opportunity enough to furnish himself, if he will not deprive himself by a narrowness of spirit of those helps that are at hand. I do not say to be a good geographer that a man should visit every mountain, river, promontory and creek ; upon the face of the earth, view the buildings and survey the land everywhere, as if he were going to make a purchase. But yet everyone must allow that he shall know a country better that makes often sallies into it and traverses it up and down than he that, like a mill-horse, goes still round in the same tract or keeps within the narrow bounds of a field or two that delight him. He that will enquire out the best books in every science and inform himself of the most material authors of the several sects of philosophy and religion, will not find it an infinite work to acquaint himself with the sentiments of mankind concerning the most weighty and comprehensive subjects. Let him exercise the freedom of his reason and understanding in such a latitude as this, and his mind will be strengthened, his capacity enlarged, his faculties improved ; and the light which the remote and scattered parts of truth will give to one another still so assist his judgment, that he will seldom be widely out or miss giving proof of a clear head and a comprehensive knowledge. At least, this is the only way I know to give the understanding its due improvement to the full extent of its capacity, and to distinguish the two most different things I know in the world, a logical chicaner from a man of reason. Only, he that would thus give the mind its flight and send abroad his enquiries into all parts after truth must be sure to settle in his head determined ideas of all that he employs his thoughts about, and never fail to judge himself and judge unbiasedly of all that he receives from others either in their writings or discourses. Reverence or prejudice must not be suffered to give beauty or deformity to any of their opinions.
Section 04. Of practice and habits.
We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us further than can be easily imagined ; but it is only the exercise of those powers which gives us ability and skill in anything and leads us towards perfection.
A middle-aged ploughman will scarce ever be brought to the carriage and language of a gentleman, though his body be as well proportioned and his joints as supple and his natural parts not any way inferior. The legs of a dancing-master and the fingers of a musician fall as it were naturally without thought or pains into regular and admirable motions. Bid them change their parts, and they will in vain endeavor to produce like motions in the members not used to them, and it will require length of time and long practice to attain but some degrees of a like ability. What incredible and astonishing actions do we find rope-dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to (…) in almost all manual arts are as wonderful, but I name those which the world takes notice of for such, because on that very account they give money to see them. All these admired motions beyond the reach and almost the conception of unpracticed spectators are nothing but the mere effects of use and industry in men whose bodies have nothing peculiar in them from those of the amazed lookers on.
As it is in the body, so it is in the mind ; practice makes it what it is, and most even of those excellences which are looked on as natural endowments will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery, others for apologues and apposite diverting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who excel in either of them never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to be learnt. But yet it is true that at first some lucky hit, which took with somebody and gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it without perceiving how, and that is attributed wholly to nature which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first rise to it ; but that never carries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade and never produces anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same matter, at Court and in the university. And he that will go but from Westminster Hall to the Exchange will find a different genius and turn in their ways of talking, and yet one cannot think that all whose lot fell in the City were born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or Inns of Court.
To what purpose all this but to show that the difference so observable in men’s understandings and parts does not arise so much from their natural faculties as acquired habits. He would be laughed at that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger at past fifty ; and he will not have much better success who shall endeavor at that age to make a man reason well or speak handsomely who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or orators. Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules or laying them up in his memory ; practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule, and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician extempore by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting as a coherent thinker or strict reasoner be a set of rules showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
This being so, that defects and weaknesses in men’s understandings, as well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds, I am apt to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature and there is often a complaint of w ant of parts when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them. We see men frequently dexterous and sharp enough in making a bargain who, if you reason with them about matters of religion, appear perfectly stupid.
Section 05. Ideas.
I will not here, in what relates to the right conduct and improvement of the understanding, repeat again the getting clear and determined ideas and the employing our thoughts rather about them than about sounds put for them, nor of settling the signification of words which we use with ourselves in the search of truth or Pith others in discoursing about it. Those hindrances of our understandings in the pursuit of knowledge I have sufficiently enlarged upon in another place , so that nothing more needs here to be said of those matters.
Section 06. Principles.
There is another fault that stops or misleads men in their knowledge, Which I have also spoken something of but yet is necessary to mention here again, that we may examine it to the bottom and see the root it springs from, and that is a custom of taking up with principles that are not self-evident and very often not so much true. It is not unusual to see men rest their opinions upon foundations that have no more certainty nor solidity than the propositions built on them and embraced for their sake. Such foundations are these and the like, viz. : the founders or leaders of my party are good men and therefore their tenets are true ; it is the opinion of a sect that is erroneous, therefore it is false ; it has been long received in the world, therefore it is true ; or it is new, and therefore false.
These and mans the like, which are by no means the measures of truth and falsehood, the generality of men make the standards by which they accustom their understanding to judge. And thus they falling into a habit of determining of truth and falsehood by such wrong measures, it is no wonder they should embrace error for certainty and be very positive in things they have no ground for.
There is not any who pretends to the least reason but, when any of these his false maxims are brought to the test, must acknowledge them to be fallible and such as he will not allow in those that differ from him ; and yet after he is convinced of this you shall see him go on in the use of them and the very next occasion that offers argue again upon the same grounds. Would one not be ready to think that men are willing to impose upon themselves and mislead their own understanding who conduct them by such wrong measures even after they see they cannot be relied on ? But yet they will not appear so blameable as may be thought at first sight ; for I think there are a great many that argue thus in earnest and do it not to impose on themselves or others. They are persuaded of what they say and think there is weight in it, though in a like case they have been convinced there is none ; but men would be intolerable to themselves and contemptible to others, if they should embrace opinions without any ground and hold what they could give no manner of reason for. True or false, solid or sandy, the mind must have some foundation to rest itself upon, and, as I have remarked in another place, it no sooner entertains any proposition but it presently hastens to some hypothesis to bottom it on ; till then it is unquiet and unsettled. So much do our own very tempers dispose us to a right use of our understandings, if we would follow as we should the inclinations of our nature.
In some matters of concernment, especially those of religion, men are not permitted to be always wavering and uncertain ; they must embrace and profess some tenets or other ; and it would be a shame, nay a contradiction, too heavy for anyone’s mind to lie constantly under, for him to pretend seriously to be persuaded of the truth of any religion and yet not to be able to give any reason of one’s belief or to say anything for his preference of this to any other opinion. And therefore they must make use of some principles or other, and those can be no other than such as they have and can manage ; and to say they are not in earnest persuaded by them and do not rest upon those they make use of. is contrary to experience and to allege that they are not misled when we complain they are.
If this be so, it will be urged, why then do they not rather make use of sure and unquestionable principles rather than rest on such grounds as may deceive them and will, as is visible, serve to support error as well as truth ?
To this I answer, the reason why they do not make use of better and surer principles is because they cannot ; but this inability proceeds not from w ant of natural parts (for those few whose case that is are to be excused) but for want of use and exercise. Few men are from their youth accustomed to strict reasoning and to trace the dependence of any truth in a long train of consequences to its remote principles and to observe its connection ; and he that by frequent practice has not been used to this employment of his understanding, it is no more wonder that he should not, when he is grown into years, be able to bring his mind to it, than that he should not be on a sudden able to grave or design, dance on the ropes, or write a good hand who has never practiced either of them.
Nay, the most of men are so wholly strangers to this, that they do not so much as perceive their leant of it. They dispatch the ordinary business of their callings by rote, as we say, as they have learnt it, and if at any time they miss success, they impute it to anything rather than want of thought or skill ; that they conclude (because they know no better) they have in perfection. Or if there be any subject that interest or fancy has recommended to their thoughts, their reasoning about it is still after their own fashion ; be it better or worse, it serves their turns and is the best they are acquainted with ; and therefore when they are led by it into mistakes and their business succeeds accordingly, they impute it to any cross accident or default of others rather than to their own want of understanding ; that is what nobody discovers or complains of in himself. Whatsoever made his business to miscarry, it leas not want of right thought and judgment in himself ; he sees no such defect in himself, but is satisfied that he carries on his designs well enough by his own reasoning, or at least should have done, had it not been for unlucky traverses not in his power. Thus being content with this short and very imperfect use of his understanding, he never troubles himself to seek out methods of improving his mind, and lives all his life without any notion of close reasoning in a continued connection of a long train of consequences from sure foundations, such as is requisite for the making out and clearing most of the speculative truths most men own to believe and are most concerned in. Not to mention here what I shall have occasion to insist on by and by more fully, viz., that in many cases it is not one series of consequences will serve the turn, but manor different and opposite deductions must be examined and laid together before a man can come to make a right judgment of the point in question. What then can be expected from men that neither see the want of any such kind of reasoning as this nor, if they do, know they how to set about it or could perform it ? You may as well set a countryman who scarce knows the figures and never cast up a sum of three particulars to state a merchant’s long account and find the true balance of it.
What then should be done in the case ? I answer, we should always remember what I said above, that the faculties of our souls are improved and made useful to us just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would you have a man write or paint, dance or fence well, or perform any other manual operation dexterously and with ease, let him have never so much vigor and activity, suppleness and address naturally, yet nobody expects this from him unless he has been used to it and has employed time and pains in fashioning and forming his hand or outward parts to these motions. Just so it is in the mind ; would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observing the connection of ideas and following them in train. Nothing does this better than mathematics, which therefore I think should be taught all those who have the time and opportunity, not so much to make them mathematicians as to make them reasonable creatures ; for though we all call ourselves so, because we are born to it if we please, yet we may truly say nature gives us but the seeds of it ; we are born to be, if is e please, rational creatures, but it is use and exercise only that makes us so, and we are indeed so no further than industry and application has carried us. And therefore in ways of reasoning which men have not been used to, he that will observe the conclusions they take up must be satisfied they are not all rational.
This has been the less taken notice of, because everyone in his private affairs uses some sort of reasoning or other, enough to denominate him reasonable. But the mistake is that he that is found reasonable in one thing is concluded to be so in all, and to think or say otherwise is thought so unjust an affront and so senseless a censure that nobody ventures to do it. It looks like the degradation of a man below the dignity of his nature. It is true, that he that reasons well in any one thing has a mind naturally capable of reasoning well in others, and to the same degree of strength and clearness, and possibly much greater, had his understanding been so employed. But it is as true that he who can reason well today about one sort of matters cannot at all reason today about others, though perhaps a year hence he may. But wherever a man’s rational faculty fails him and will not serve him to reason, there we cannot say he is rational, how capable however he may be by time and exercise to become so.
Try in men of holy and mean education, who have never elevated their thoughts above the spade and the plough nor looked beyond the ordinary drudgery of a day-laborer. Take the thoughts of such an one, used for many years to one tract, out of that narrow compass he has been all his life confined to, you will find him no more capable of reasoning than almost a perfect natural. Some one or two rules on which their conclusions immediately depend you will find in most men have governed all their thoughts ; these, true or false, have been the maxims they have been guided by. Take these from them, and they are perfectly at a loss, their compass and polestar then are gone and their understanding is perfectly at a nonplus ; and therefore they either immediately return to their old maxims again as the foundations of all truth to them, notwithstanding all that can be said to show their weakness, or, if they give them up to their reasons, they with them give up all truth and further enquiry and think there is no such thing as certainty. For if you would enlarge their thoughts and settle them upon more remote and surer principles, they either cannot easily apprehend them, or, if they can, know not what use to make of them ; for long deductions from remote principles is what they have not been used to and cannot manage.
What then, can grown men never be improved or enlarged in their understandings ? I say not so, but this I think I may say, that it will not be done without industry and application, which will require more time and pains than grown men, settled in their course of life, will allow to it, and therefore very seldom is done. And this very capacity of attaining it by use and exercise only brings us back to that which I laid down before, that it is only practice that improves our minds as w ell as bodies, and we must expect nothing from our understandings any further than they are perfected by habits.
The Americans are not all born with worse understandings than the Europeans, though eve see none of them have such reaches in the arts and sciences. And among the children of a poor countryman the lucky chance of education and getting into the world gives one infinitely the superiority in parts over the rest, who, continuing at home, had continued also just of the same size with his brethren.
He that has to do with young scholars, especially in mathematics, may perceive how their minds open by degrees, and how it is exercise alone that opens them. Sometimes they would stick a long time at a part of a demonstration, not for want of will or application, but really for want of perceiving the connection of two ideas that, to one whose understanding is more exercised, is as visible as anything can be. The same would be with a grown man beginning to study mathematics ; the understanding, for want of use, often sticks in very plain way, and he himself that is so puzzled, when he comes to see the connection, wonders what it was he stuck at in a case so plain.
Section 07. Mathematics.
I have mentioned mathematics as a way to settle in the mind a habit of reasoning closely and in train ; not that I think it necessary that all men should be deep mathematicians, but that having got the way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge as they shall have occasion. For in all sorts of reasoning every single argument should be managed as a mathematical demonstration ; the connection and dependence of ideas should be followed till the mind is brought to the source on which it bottoms and observes the coherence all along, though in proofs of probability one such train is not enough to settle the judgment as in demonstrative knowledge.
Where a truth is made out by one demonstration, there needs no further enquiry ; but in probabilities, where there wants demonstration to establish the truth beyond doubt, there it is not enough to trace one argument to its source and observe its strength and weakness, but all the arguments, after having been so examined on both sides, must be laid in balance one against another, and upon the whole the understanding determine its assent.
This is a way of reasoning the understanding should be accustomed to, which is so different from what the illiterate are used to that even learned men oftentimes seem to have very little or no notion of it. Nor is it to be wondered, since the way of disputing in the schools leads them quite away from it by insisting on one topical argument, by the success of which the truth or falsehood of the question is to be determined and victory adjudged to the opponent or defendant ; which is all one as if one should balance an account by one sum charged and discharged, when there are a hundred others to be taken into consideration.
This therefore it would be well if men’s minds were accustomed to, and that early, that they might not erect their opinions upon one single view, when so many other are requisite to make up the account and must come into the reckoning before a man can form a right judgment. This would enlarge their minds and give a due freedom to their understandings, that they might not be led into error by presumption, laziness or precipitancy ; for I think nobody can approve such a conduct of the understanding as should mislead it from truth, though it be never so much in fashion to make use of it.
To this perhaps it will be objected that to manage the understanding as I propose would require every man to be a scholar and to be furnished with all the materials of knowledge and exercised in all the ways of reasoning. To which I answer that it is a shame for those that have time and the means to attain knowledge to want any helps or assistance for the improvement of their understandings that are to be got, and to such I would be thought here chiefly to speak. Those, methinks, who by the industry and parts of their ancestors have been set free from a constant drudgery to their backs and their bellies, should bestow some of their spare time on their heads and open their minds by some trials and essays in all the sorts and matters of reasoning. I have before mentioned mathematics, wherein algebra gives new helps and views to the understanding. If I propose these, it is not, as I said, to make every man a thorough mathematician or a deep algebraist ; but yet I think the study of them is of infinite use even to grown men. First, by experimentally convincing them that to make anyone reason well it is not enough to have parts wherewith he is satisfied and that serve him well enough in his ordinary course. A man in those studies will see that, however good he may think his understanding, yet in many things, and those very visible, it may fail him. This would take off that presumption that most men have of themselves in this part ; and they would not be so apt to think their minds wanted no helps to enlarge them, that there could be nothing added to the acuteness and penetration of their understandings.
Secondly, the study of mathematics would show them the necessity there is in reasoning to separate all the distinct ideas and see the habitudes that all those concerned in the present enquiry have to one another, and to lay by those which relate not to the proposition in hand and wholly to leave them out of the reckoning. This is that which in other subjects besides quantity is what is absolutely requisite to just reasoning, though in them it is not so easily observed nor so carefully practiced. In those parts of knowledge where it is thought demonstration has nothing to do, men reason as it were in the lump ; and if, upon a summary and confused view or upon a partial consideration, they can raise the appearance of a probability, they usually rest content, especially if it be in a dispute where every little straw is laid hold on and everything that can but be drawn in any Bay to give colour to the argument is advanced with ostentation. But that mind is not in a posture to find the truth that does not distinctly tally all the parts asunder and, omitting what is not at all to the point, draw a conclusion from the result of all the particulars which any way influence it. There is another no less useful habit to be got by an application to mathematical demonstrations, and that is of using the mind to a long train of consequences ; but having mentioned that already I shall not again here repeat it.
As to men whose fortunes and time is narrower, what may suffice them is not of that vast extent as may be imagined, and so comes not within the objection.
Nobody is under an obligation to know everything. Knowledge and science in general is the business only of those who are at ease and leisure. Those who have particular callings ought to understand them ; and it is no unreasonable proposal, nor impossible to be compassed, that they should think and reason right about what is their daily employment. This one cannot think them incapable of without leveling them with the brutes and charging them with a stupidity below the rank of rational creatures.
Section 08. Religion.
Besides his particular calling for the support of his life, everyone has a concern in a future life which he is bound to look after. This engages his thoughts in religion ; and here it mightily lies upon him to understand and reason right. Men therefore cannot be excused from understanding the words and framing the general notions relating to religion right. The one day of seven, besides other days of rest, allows in the Christian world time enough for this (had they no other idle hours) if they would but make use of these vacancies from their daily labour and apply themselves to an improvement of knowledge with as much diligence as they often do to a great many other things that are useless, and had but those that would enter them according to their several capacities in a right way to this knowledge. The original make of their minds is like that of other men, and they would be found not to want understanding fit to receive the knowledge of religion, if they were a little encouraged and helped in it as they should be. For there are instances of very mean people who have raised their minds to a great sense and understanding of religion. And though these have not been so frequent as could be wished, yet they are enough to clear that condition of life from a necessity of gross ignorance and to show that more might be brought to be rational creatures and Christians (for they can hardly be thought really to be so who, wearing the name, know not so much as the very principles of that religion) if due care were taken of them. For, if I mistake not, the peasantry lately in France (a rank of people under a much heavier pressure of want and poverty than the day-laborers in England) of the reformed religion understood it much better and could say more for it than those of a higher condition among us.
But if it shall be concluded that the meaner sort of people must give themselves up to a brutish stupidity in the things of their nearest concernment, which I see no reason for, this excuses not those of a freer fortune and education, if they neglect their understandings and take no care to employ them as they ought and set them right in the knowledge of those things for which principally they were given them. At least those whose plentiful fortunes allow them the opportunities and helps of improvements are not so few but that it might be hoped great advancements might be made in knowledge of all kinds, especially in that of the greatest concern and largest views, if men would make a right use of their faculties and study their own understandings.
Section 09. Ideas.
Outward corporeal objects that constantly importune our senses and captivate our appetites fail not to fill our heads with lively and lasting ideas of that kind. Here the mind needs not be set upon getting greater store ; they offer themselves fast enough and are usually entertained in such plenty and lodged so carefully, that the mind wants room or attention for others that it has more use and need of. To fit the understanding therefore for such reasoning as I have been above speaking of, care should be taken to fill it with moral and more abstract ideas ; for these not offering themselves to the senses, but being to be framed to the understanding, people are generally so neglectful of a faculty they are apt to think wants nothing, that I fear most men’s minds are more unfurnished with such ideas than is imagined. They often use the words, and how can they be suspected to want the ideas ? What I have said in the third book of my essay will excuse me from any other answer to this question. But to convince people of what moment it is to their understandings to be furnished with such abstract ideas steady and settled in it, give me leave to ask how anyone shall be able to know whether he be obliged to be just, if he has not established ideas in his mind of obligation and of justice, since knowledge consists in nothing but the perceived agreement or disagreement of those ideas ; and so of all others the like which concern our lives and manners. And if men do find a difficulty to see the agreement or disagreement of two angles which lie before their eyes, unalterable in a diagram, how utterly impossible will it be to perceive it in ideas that have no other sensible objects to represent them to the mind but sounds, with which they have no manner of conformity and therefore had need to be clearly settled in the mind themselves if we would make any clear judgment about them. This, therefore, is one of the first things the mind should be employed about in the right conduct of the understanding, without which it is impossible it should be capable of reasoning right about those matters. But in these and all other ideas care must be taken that they harbor no inconsistencies, and that they have a real existence where real existence is supposed and are not mere chimeras with a supposed existence.
Section 10. Prejudice.
Everyone is forward to complain of the prejudices that mislead other men or parties, as if he were free and had none of his own. This being objected on all sides, it is agreed that it is a fault and a hindrance to knowledge. What now is the cure ? No other but this, that every man should let alone others’ prejudices and examine his own. Nobody is convinced of his by the accusation of another ; he recriminates by the same rule and is clear. The only way to remove this great cause of ignorance and error out of the world is for everyone impartially to examine himself. If others will not deal fairly faith their own minds, does that make my errors truths, or ought it to make me in love with them and willing to impose on myself ? If others love cataracts on their eyes, should that hinder me from couching of mine as soon as I could ? Everyone declares against blindness, and yet who almost is not fond of that which dims his sight and keeps the clear light out of his mind, which should lead him into truth and knowledge ? False or doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those in the dark from truth who build on them. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, etc. This is the mote which everyone sees in his brother’s eye, but never regards the beam in his own. For who is there almost that is ever brought fairly to examine his own principles and see whether they are such as will bear the trial ? But yet this should be one of the first things everyone should set about and be scrupulous in, who would rightly conduct his understanding in the search of truth and knowledge.
To those who are willing to get rid of this great hindrance of knowledge (for to such only I write), to those who would shake off this great and dangerous impostor, prejudice, who dresses up falsehood in the likeness of truth and so dexterously hoodwinks men’s minds as to keep them in the dark with a belief that they are more in the light than any that do not see with their eyes, I shall offer this one mark whereby prejudice may be known. He that is strongly of any opinion must suppose (unless he be self-condemned) that his persuasion is built upon good grounds, and that his assent is no greater than what the evidence of the truth he holds forces him to, and that they are arguments, and not inclination or fancy, that make him so confident and positive in his tenets. Now if, after all his profession, he cannot bear any opposition to his opinion, if he cannot so much as give a patient hearing, much less examine and weigh the arguments on the other side, does he not plainly confess it is prejudice governs him and it is not the evidence of truth, but some lazy anticipation, some beloved presumption that he desires to rest undisturbed in ? For if what he holds be as he give out, well fenced with evidence, and he sees it to be true, what need he fear to put it to the proof ? If his opinion be settled upon a firm foundation, if the arguments that support it and have obtained his assent be clear, good and convincing, why should he be shy to have it tried whether they be proof or not ? He whose assent goes beyond his evidence owes this excess of his adherence only to prejudice and does, in effect, own it when he refuses to hear what is offered against it, declaring thereby that it is not evidence he seeks, but the quiet enjoyment of the opinion he is fond of, with a forward condemnation of all that may stand in opposition to it, unheard and unexamined ; which, what is it but prejudice ? Qui aequum statuerit parte inaudita altera, etiamsi aequum statuerit, haud aequus fuerit. He that would acquit himself in this case as a lover of truth, not giving way to any preoccupation or bias that may mislead him, must do two things that are not very common nor very easy.
Section 11. Indifferency.
First, he must not be in love with any opinion or wish it to be true till he knows it to be so, and then he will not need to wish it. For nothing that is false can deserve our good wishes nor a desire that it should have the place and force of truth ; and yet nothing is more frequent than this. Often are fond of certain tenets upon no other evidence but respect and custom, and think they must maintain them or all is gone, though they have never examined the ground they stand on, nor have ever made them out to themselves or can make them out to others. We should contend earnestly for the truth, but we should first be sure that it is truth, or else we fight against God, who is the God of truth, and do the work of the devil, who is the father and propagator of lies ; and our zeal, though never so warm, will not excuse us ; for this is plainly prejudice.
Section 12. Examine.
Secondly, he must do that which he will find himself very averse to, as judging the thing unnecessary or himself incapable of doing it. He must try whether his principles be certainly true or not, and how far he may safely rely upon them. This, whether fewer have the heart or the skill to do, I shall not determine ; but this I am sure, this is that which everyone ought to do who professes to love truth and would not impose upon himself (…) which is a surer way to be made a fool of than by being exposed to the sophistry of others. The disposition to put any cheat upon ourselves works constantly and we are pleased with it, but are impatient of being bantered or misled by others. The inability I here speak of is not any natural defect that makes men incapable of examining their own principles. To such, rules of conducting their understandings are useless, and that is the case of very few. The great number is of those whom the ill habit of never exerting their thoughts has disabled ; the powers of their minds are starved by disuse and have lost that reach and strength which nature fitted them to receive from exercise. Those who are in a condition to learn the first rules of plain arithmetic and could be brought to cast up an ordinary sum are capable of this, if they had but accustomed their minds to reasoning ; but they that have wholly neglected the exercise of their understandings in this way will be very far at first from being able to do it and as unfit for it as one unpracticed in figures to cast up a shop-book, and perhaps think it as strange to be set about it. And yet it must nevertheless be confessed to be a wrong use of our understandings to build our tenets (in things where we are concerned to hold the truth) upon principles that may lead us into error. We take our principles at haphazard upon trust and without ever having examined them, and then believe a whole system upon a presumption that they are true and solid. And what is all this but childish, shameful, senseless credulity ?
In these two things, viz., an equal indifference for all truth (I mean the receiving it in the love of it as truth, but not loving it for any other reason before we know it to be true) and in the examination of our principles and not receiving any for such nor building on them till we are fully convinced, as rational creatures, of their solidity, truth and certainty, consists that freedom of the understanding which is necessary to a rational creature and without which it is not truly an understanding. It is conceit, fancy, extravagance, anything rather than understanding, if it must be under the constraint of receiving and holding opinions by the authority of anything but their own, not fancied but perceived, evidence. This was rightly called imposition, and is of all other the worst and most dangerous sort of it. For we impose upon ourselves, which is the strongest imposition of all others, and we impose upon ourselves in that part which ought with the greatest care to be kept free from all imposition. The world is apt to cast great blame on those who have an indifferency for opinions, especially in religion. I fear this is the foundation of great error and worse consequences. To be indifferent which of two opinions is true is the right temper of the mind that preserves it from being imposed on and disposes it to examine with that indifference till it has done its best to find the truth ;and this is the only direct and safe way to it. But to be indifferent whether we embrace falsehood for truth or no is the great road to error. Those who are not indifferent which opinion is true are guilty of this ; they suppose, without examining, that what they hold is true and then think they ought to be zealous for it. Those, it is plain by their warmth and eagerness, are not indifferent for their own opinions, but methinks are very indifferent whether they be true or false, since they cannot endure to have any doubts raised or objections made against them ; and it is visible they never have made any themselves, and so, never having examined them, know not nor are concerned, as they should be, to know whether they be true or false.
These are the common and most general miscarriages which I think men should avoid or rectify in a right conduct of their understandings, and should be particularly taken care of in education. The business whereof in respect of knowledge is not, as I think, to perfect a learner in all or any one of the sciences, but to give his mind that freedom, that disposition and those habits that may enable him to attain any part of knowledge he shall apply himself to or stand in need of in the future course of his life. This and this only is well principling, and not the instilling a reverence and veneration for certain dogmas under the specious title of principles, which are often so remote from that truth and evidence which belongs to principles, that they ought to be rejected as false and erroneous ; and is often the cause to men so educated, when they come abroad into the world and find they cannot maintain the principles so taken up and rested in, to cast off all principles and turn perfect skeptics, regardless of knowledge and virtue.
There are several weaknesses and defects in the understanding, either from the natural temper of the mind or ill habits taken up, which hinder it in its progress to knowledge. Of these there are as many possibly to be found, if the mind were thoroughly studied, as there are diseases of the body, each whereof clogs and disables the understanding to some degree and therefore deserves to be looked after and cured. I shall set down some few to excite men, especially those who make knowledge their business, to look into themselves and observe whether they do not indulge some weakness, allow some miscarriages in the management of their intellectual faculty, which is prejudicial to them in the search for truth.
Section 13. Observation.
Particular matters of fact are the undoubted foundations on which our civil and natural knowledge is built ; the benefit the understanding makes of them is to draw from them conclusions which may be as standing rules of knowledge and consequently of practice. The mind often makes not that benefit it should of the information it receives from the accounts of civil or natural historians, in being too forward or too slow in making observations on the particular facts recorded in them. There are those who are very assiduous in reading and yet do not much advance their knowledge by it. They are delighted with the stories that are told and perhaps can tell them again, for they make all they read nothing but history to themselves ; but not reflecting on it, not making to themselves observations from what they read, they are very little improved by all that crowd of particulars that either pass through or lodge themselves in their understandings. They dream on in a constant course of reading and cramming themselves ; but, not digesting anything, it produces nothing but a heap of crudities. If their memories retain well, one may say they have the materials of knowledge, but, like those for building, they are of no advantage if there be no other use made of them but to let them lie heaped up together. Opposite to these there are others who lose the improvement they should make of matters of fact by a quite contrary conduct. They are apt to draw general conclusions and raise axioms from every particular they meet with. These make as little true benefit of history as the other, nay, being of forward and active spirits receive more harm by it ; it being of worse consequence to steer one’s thoughts by a wrong rule than to have none at all, error doing to busy men much more harm than ignorance to the slow and sluggish. Between these, those seem to do best who, taking material and useful hints, sometimes from single matters of fact, carry them in their minds to be judged of by what they shall find in history to confirm or reverse these imperfect observations ; which may be established into rules fit to be relied on when they are justified by a sufficient and wary induction of particulars. He that makes no such reflections on what he reads only loads his mind with a rhapsody of tales fit in winter nights for the entertainment of others ; and he that will improve every matter of fact into a maxim will abound in contrary observations that can be of no other use but to perplex and pudder him if he compares them ; or else to misguide him, if he gives himself up to the authority of that which, for its novelty or for some other fancy, best pleases him.
Section 14. Bias.
Next to these we may place those who suffer their own natural tempers and passions they are possessed with to influence their judgments, especially of men and things that may any way relate to their present circumstances and interest. Truth is all simple, all pure, will bear no mixture of anything else with it. It is rigid and inflexible to any by-interests ; and so should the understanding be, whose use and excellency lies in conforming itself to it. To think of everything just as it is in itself is the proper business of the understanding, though it be not that which men always employ it to. This all men, at first hearing, allow is the right use everyone should make of his understanding. Nobody will be at such an open defiance with common sense as to profess that we should not endeavor to know and think of things as they are in themselves, and yet there is nothing more frequent than to do the contrary ; and men are apt to excuse themselves, and think they have reason to do so, if they have but a pretense that it is for God or a good cause, that is, in effect, for themselves, their own persuasion or party ; for those in their turns the several sects of men, especially in matters of religion, entitle God and a good cause. But God requires not men to wrong or misuse their faculties for him, nor to lie to others or themselves for his sake ; which they purposely do who will not suffer their understandings to have right conceptions of the things proposed to them and designedly restrain themselves from having just thoughts of everything, as far as they are concerned to enquire. And as for a good cause, that needs not such ill helps ; if it be good, truth will support it and it has no need of fallacy or falsehood.
Section 15. Arguments.
Very much of kin to this is the hunting after arguments to make good one side of a question and wholly to neglect and refuse those which favor the other side. What is this but wilfully to misguide the understanding (and is so far from giving truth its due value that it wholly debases it), [to] espouse opinions that best comport with their porter, profit or credit and then seek arguments to support them ? Truth lighted upon this way is of no more avail to us than error ; for what is so taken up by us may be false as well as true, and he has not done his duty who has thus stumbled upon truth in his way to preferment.
There is another but more innocent way of collecting arguments, very familiar among bookish men, which is to furnish themselves with the arguments they meet with pro and con in the questions they study. This helps them not to judge right nor argue strongly, but only to talk copiously on either side, without being steady and settled in their own judgments ; for such arguments gathered from other men’s thoughts, floating only in the memory, are there ready indeed to supply copious talk with some appearance of reason, but are far from helping us to judge right. Such variety of arguments only distract the understanding that relies on them, unless it has gone further than such a superficial way of examining ; this is to quit truth for appearance, only to serve our vanity. The sure and only way to get true knowledge is to form in our minds clear settled notions of things, with names annexed to those determined ideas. These we are to consider, and with their several relations and habitudes, and not to amuse ourselves with floating names and words of indetermined signification, which we can use in several senses to serve a turn. It is in the perception of the habitudes and respects our ideas have one to another that real knowledge consists ; and when a man once perceives how far they agree or disagree one with another, he will be able to judge of what other people say and will not need to be led by the arguments of others, which are many of them nothing but plausible sophistry. This will teach him to state the question right and see whereon it turns ; and thus he will stand upon his own legs and know by his own understanding. Whereas by collecting and learning arguments by heart he will be but a retainer to others ; and when anyone questions the foundations they are built upon, he will be at a nonplus and be fain to give up his implicit knowledge.
Section 16. Haste.
Labour for labour sake is against nature. The understanding, as well as all the other faculties, chooses always the shortest way to its end, would presently obtain the knowledge it is about and then set upon some new enquiry. But this whether laziness or haste often misleads it and makes it content itself with improper ways of search and such as will not serve the turn. Sometimes it rests upon testimony, when testimony of right has nothing to do, because it is easier to believe than to be scientifically instructed. Sometimes it contents itself with one argument and rests satisfied with that, as it were a demonstration ; whereas the thing under proof is not capable of demonstration and therefore must be submitted to the trial of probabilities, and all the material arguments pro and con be examined and brought to a balance. In some cases the mind is determined by probable topics in enquiries where demonstration may be had. All these and several others, which laziness, impatience, custom and want of use and attention lead men into, are misapplications of the understanding in the search of truth. In every question the nature and manner of the proof it is capable of should first be considered to make our enquiry such as it should be. This would save a great deal of frequently misemployed pains and lead us sooner to that discovery and possession of truth we are capable of. The multiplying variety of arguments, especially frivolous ones, such as are all that are merely verbal, is not only lost labour, but Numbers the memory to no purpose and serves only to hinder it from seizing and holding of the truth in all those cases which are capable of demonstration. In such a way of proof the truth and certainty is seen and the mind fully possesses itself of it ; when in the other way of assent it only hovers about it, is amused with uncertainties. In this superficial way indeed the mind is capable of more variety of plausible talk, but is not enlarged as it should be in its knowledge. It is to this same haste and impatience of the mind also that a not due tracing of the arguments to their true foundation is owing ; men see a little, presume a great deal, and so jump to the conclusion. This is a short way to fancy and conceit and (if firmly embraced) to opiniatrety, but is certainly the furthest way about to knowledge. For he that will know must, by the connection of the proofs, see the truth and the ground it stands on ; and therefore, if he has for haste skipped over what he should have examined, he must begin and go over all again, or else he will never come to knowledge.
Section 17. Desultory.
Another fault of as ill consequence as this, which proceeds also from laziness with a mixture of vanity, is the skipping from one sort of knowledge to another. Some men’s tempers are quickly weary of any one thing. Constancy and assiduity is what they cannot bear ; the same study long continued in is as intolerable to them as the appearing long in the same clothes or fashion is to a Court lady.
Section 18. Smattering.
Others, that they may seem universally knowing, get a little smattering in everything. Both these may fill their heads faith superficial notions of things, but are very much out of the way of attaining truth or knowledge.
Section 19. Universality.
I do not here speak against the taking a taste of every sort of knowledge ; it is certainly very useful and necessary to form the mind, but then it must be done in a different way and to a different end (…) not for talk and vanity to fill the head with shreds of all kinds, that he who is possessed of such a frippery may be able to match the discourses of all he shall meet with, as if nothing could come amiss to him and his head was so well a stored magazine that nothing could be proposed which he was not master of and was readily furnished to entertain anyone on. This is an excellency indeed, and a great one too, to have a real and true knowledge in all or most of the objects of contemplation. But it is what the mind of one and the same man can hardly attain unto ; and the instances are so few of those who have in any measure approached towards it, that I know not whether they are to be proposed as examples in the ordinary conduct of the understanding. For a man to understand fully the business of his particular calling in the commonwealth and of religion, which is his calling as he is a man in the world, is usually enough to take up his whole time ; and there are few that inform themselves in these, which is every man’s proper and peculiar business, so to the bottom as they should do. But though this be so, and there are very few men that extend their thoughts towards universal knowledge, yet I do not doubt but, if the right way were taken and the methods of enquiry were ordered as they should be, men of little business and great leisure might go a great deal further in it than is usually done. To return to the business in hand, the end and use of a little insight in those parts of knowledge which are not a man’s proper business is to accustom our minds to all sorts of ideas and the proper ways of examining their habitudes and relations. This gives the mind a freedom, and the exercising the understanding in the several ways of enquiry and reasoning which the most skillful have made use of teaches the mind sagacity and wariness and a suppleness to apply itself more closely and dexterously to the bents and turns of the matter in all its researches. Besides, this universal taste of all the sciences with an indifferency, before the mind is possessed with any one in particular and grown into love and admiration of what is made its darling, still prevent another evil very commonly to be observed in those who have from the beginning been seasoned only by one part of knowledge. Let a man be given up to the contemplation of one sort of knowledge, and that will become everything. The mind will take such a tincture from a familiarity with that object, that everything else, hole remote however, will be brought under the same view. A metaphysician will bring ploughing and gardening immediately to abstract notions ; the history of nature shall signify nothing to him. An alchemist, on the contrary, shall reduce divinity to the maxims of his laboratory, explain morality by sag sulfur and mercury and allegorize the Scripture itself and the sacred masteries thereof into the philosopher’s stone. And I heard once a man who had a more than ordinary excellency in music seriously accommodate Moses’ seven days of the first week to the notes of music, as if from thence had been taken the measure and method of the creation. It is of no small consequence to keep the mind from such a possession, which I think is best done by giving it a fair and equal view of the whole intellectual world, wherein it may see the order, rank and beauty of the whole, and give a just allowance to the distinct provinces of the several sciences in the due order and usefulness of each of them.
If this be that which old men will not think necessary nor be easily brought to, it is fit at least that it should be practiced in the breeding of the young. The business of education, as I have already observed, is not, as I think, to make them perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them capable of any, when they shall apply themselves to it. If men are for a long time accustomed only to one sort or method of thoughts, their minds grow stiff in it and do not readily turn to another. It is therefore to give them this freedom that I think they should be made look into all sorts of knowledge and exercise their understandings in so wide a variety and stock of knowledge. But I do not propose it as a variety and stock of knowledge, but a variety and freedom of thinking, as an increase of the powers and activity of the mind, not as an enlargement of its possessions.
Section 20. Reading.
This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of everything are thought to understand everything too ; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge ; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. There are indeed in some writers risible instances of deep thought, close and acute reasoning and ideas well pursued. The light these would give would be of great use, if their readers would observe and imitate them ; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned into knowledge ; but that can be done only by our own meditation and examining the reach, force and coherence of what is said ; and then, as far as we apprehend and see the connection of ideas, so far it is ours ; without that it is but so much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be stored, but the judgment is little better and the stock of knowledge not increased by being able to repeat what others have said or produce the arguments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is not built upon true foundations nor always rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be built on. Such an examen as is requisite to discover that, every reader’s mind is not forward to make, especially in those who have given themselves up to a party and only hunt for what they can scrape together that may favor and support the tenets of it. Such men willfully exclude themselves from truth and from all true benefit to be received by reading. Others of more indifference often want attention and industry. The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original and to see upon what basis it stands and how firmly ; but yet it is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in reading. The mind should by severe rules be tied down to this at first uneasy task ; use and exercise will give it facility, so that those who are accustomed to it, readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the argument and presently in most cases see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books and the clue to lead them through the maze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in and showed the use of, that they might profit by their reading .Those who are strangers to it still be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men’s studies, and they will suspect they shall make but small progress if, in the books they read, they must stand to examine and unravel every argument and follow it step by step up to its original.
I answer, this is a good objection and ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. But I am here enquiring into the conduct of the understanding in its progress towards knowledge ; and to those who aim at that I may say that he who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course that points right will sooner be at his journey’s end than he that runs after everyone he meets, though he gallop all day full speed.
To which let me add that this way of thinking on and profiting by what we read will be a clog and rub to anyone only in the beginning ; when custom and exercise has made it familiar, it will be dispatched in most occasions without resting or interruption in the course of our reading. The motions and views of a mind exercised that way are wonderfully quick ; and a man used to such sort of reflections sees as much at one glimpse as would require a long discourse to lay before another and make out in an entire and gradual deduction. Besides that, when the first difficulties are over, the delight and sensible advantage it brings mightily encourages and enlivens the mind in reading, which without this is very improperly called study.
Section 21. Intermediate principles.
As a help to this I think it may be proposed that, for the saving the long progression of the thoughts to remote and first principles in every case, the mind should provide itself several stages, that is to say, intermediate principles, which it might have recourse to in the examining those positions that come in its way. These, though they are not self-evident principles, yet, if they have been made out from them by a wary and unquestionable deduction, may be depended on as certain and infallible truths and serve as unquestionable truths to prove other points depending on them by a nearer and shorter views than remote and general maxims. These may serve as landmarks to show what lies in the direct way of truth or is quite besides it. And thus mathematicians do, who do not in every new problem run it back to the first axioms through all the whole train of intermediate propositions. Certain theorems that they have settled to themselves upon sure demonstration serve to resolve to them multitudes of propositions which depend on them and are as firmly made out from thence as if the mind went afresh over every link of the Whole chain that ties them to first self-evident principles. Only in other sciences great care is to be taken that they establish those intermediate principles with as much caution, exactness and indifferency as mathematicians use in the settling any of their great theorems. When this is not done, but men take up the principles in this or that science upon credit, inclination, interest, etc., in haste without due examination and most unquestionable proof, they lay a trap for themselves and as much as in them lies captivate their understandings to mistake, falsehood and error.
Section 22. Partiality.
As there is a partiality to opinions, which, as we have already observed, is apt to mislead the understanding, so there is often a partiality to studies, which is prejudicial also to knowledge and improvement. Those sciences which men are particularly versed in they are apt to value and extol, as if that part of knowledge which everyone has acquainted himself with were that alone which was worth the having, and all the rest were idle and empty amusements, comparatively of no use or importance. This is the effect of ignorance and not knowledge, the being vainly puffed up with a flatulency arising from a weak and narrow comprehension. It is not amiss that everyone should relish the science that he has made his peculiar study ; a view of its beauties and a sense of its usefulness carries a man on with the more delight and warmth in the pursuit and improvement of it. But the contempt of all other knowledge, as if it were nothing in comparison of law or physic, of astronomy or chemistry, or perhaps some yet meaner part of knowledge wherein I have got some smattering or am somewhat advanced, is not only the mark of a vain or little mind, but does this prejudice in the conduct of the understanding, that it coops it up within narrow bounds and hinders it from looking abroad into other provinces of the intellectual world, more beautiful possible and more fruitful than that which it had till then labored in ; wherein it might find, besides new knowledge, ways or hints whereby it might be enabled the better to cultivate its own.
Section 23. Theology.
There is indeed one science (as they are now distinguished) incomparably above all the rest, where it is not by corruption narrowed into a trade or faction for mean or ill ends and secular interests ; I mean theology, which, containing the knowledge of God and his creatures, our duty to him and our fellow creatures and a view of our present and future state, is the comprehension of all other knowledge directed to its true end, i.e., the honor and veneration of the Creator and the happiness of mankind. This is that noble study which is every man’s duty and everyone that can be called a rational creature is capable of. The works of nature and the words of revelation display it to mankind in characters so large and visible, that those who are not quite blind may in them read and see the first principles and most necessary parts of it and from thence, as they have time and industry, may be enabled to go on to the more abstruse parts of it and penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This is that science which would truly enlarge men’s minds, were it studied or permitted to be studied everywhere with that freedom, love of truth and charity which it teaches, and were not made, contrary to its nature, the occasion of strife, faction, malignity and narrow impositions. I shall say no more here of this, but that it is undoubtedly a wrong use of my understanding to make it the rule and measure of another man’s, a use which it is neither fit for nor capable of.
Section 24. Partiality.
This partiality, where it is not permitted an authority to render all other studies insignificant or contemptible, is often indulged so far as to be relied upon and made use of in other parts of knowledge to which it does not at all belong and wherewith it has no manner of affinity. Some men have so used their heads to mathematical figures that, giving a preference to the methods of that science, they introduce lines and diagrams into their studies of divinity or politic[al] enquiries, as if nothing could be known without them ; and others, accustomed to retired speculations, run natural philosophy into metaphysical notions and the abstract generalities of logic ; and how often may one meet with religion and morality treated of in the terms of the laboratory and thought to be improved by the methods and notations of chemistry. But he that will take care of the conduct of his understanding to direct it right to the knowledge of things must avoid those undue mixtures and not, by a fondness for Chat he has found useful and necessary in one, transfer it to another science where it serves only to perplex and confound the understanding. It is a certain truth that res nolunt male administrari ; it is no less certain res nolunt male intelligi. Things themselves are to be considered as they are in themselves, and then they still show us in what way they are to be understood. For to have right conceptions about them we must bring our understandings to the inflexible natures and unalterable relations of things, and not endeavor to bring things to any preconceived notions of our own.
There is another partiality very commonly observable in men of study, no less prejudicial nor ridiculous than the former, and that is a fantastical and wild attributing all knowledge to the ancients alone or to the moderns. This raving upon antiquity in matter of poetry Horace has wittily described and exposed in one of his satires. The same sort of madness may be found in reference to all the other sciences. Some will not admit an opinion not authorized by men of old, who were then all giants in knowledge ; nothing is to be put into the treasury of truth or knowledge which has not the stamp of Greece or Rome upon it ; and since their days will scarce allow that men have been able to see, think or write. Others, with a like extravagancy, contemn all that the ancients have left us and, being taken with the modern inventions and discoveries, lay by all that went before, as if whatever is called old must have the decay of time upon it and truth too were liable to mold and rottenness. Men, I think, have been much the same for natural endowments in all times. Fashion, discipline and education have put eminent differences in the ages of several countries and made one generation much differ from another in arts and sciences ; but truth is always the same ; time alters it not, nor is it the better or worse for being of ancient or modern tradition. Many were eminent in former ages of the world for their discovery and delivery of it ; but though the knowledge they have left us be worth our study, yet they exhausted not all its treasure ; they left a great deal for the industry and sagacity of after ages, and so shall we. That was once new to them which anyone now receives with veneration for its antiquity ; nor was it the worse for appearing as a novelty, and that Which is now embraced for its newness will, to posterity, be old but not thereby be less true or less genuine. There is no occasion on this account to oppose the ancients and the moderns to one another or to be squeamish on either side. He that wisely conducts his mind in the pursuit of knowledge will gather what lights and get what helps he can from either of them, from whom they are best to be had, without adoring the errors or rejecting the truths which he may find mingled in them.
Another partiality may be observed, in some to vulgar, in others to heterodox tenets. Some are apt to conclude that what is the common opinion cannot but be true ; so many men’s eyes, they think, cannot but see right ; so many men’s understandings of all sorts cannot be deceived ; and therefore [they] will not venture to look beyond the received notions of the place and age nor have so presumptuous a thought as to be wiser than their neighbors. They are content to go with the crowd, and so go easily, which they think is going right or at least serves them as well. But however Vox populi vox Dei has prevailed as a maxim, yet I do not remember wherever God delivered his oracles by the multitude or nature truths by the herd. On the other side, some fly all common opinions as either false or frivolous. The title of many-headed beast is a sufficient reason to them to conclude that no truths of weight or consequence can be lodged there. vulgar opinions are suited to vulgar capacities and adapted to the ends of those that govern. He that is ill know the truth of things must leave the common and beaten tract, which none but weak and servile minds are satisfied to trudge along continually in. Such nice palates relish nothing but strange notions quite out of the flay ; whatever is commonly received has the marl ; of the beast on it, and they think it a lessening to them to hearken to it or receive it ; their mind runs only after paradoxes ; these they seek, these they embrace, these alone they vent, and so, as they think, distinguish themselves from the vulgar. But common or uncommon are not the marks to distinguish truth or falsehood and therefore should not be any bias to us in our enquiries. We should not judge of things by men’s opinions, but of opinions by things. The multitude reason but ill, and therefore may be well suspected and cannot be relied on nor should be followed as a sure guide ; but philosophers who have quitted the orthodoxy of the community and the popular doctrines of their countries have fallen into as extravagant and as absurd opinions as ever common reception countenanced. It would be madness to refuse to breathe the common air or quench one’s thirst with water because the rabble use them to these purposes ; and if there are conveniences of life which common use reaches not. it is not reason to reject them because they are not grown into the ordinary fashion of the country and every villager does not know them.
Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge and the business of the understanding ; whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by consent or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance or something worse.
Another sort of partiality there is whereby men impose upon themselves and by it made their reading little useful to themselves ; I mean the making use of the opinions of writers and laying stress upon their authorities wherever they find them to favor their own opinions. There is nothing almost has done more harm to men dedicated to letters than giving the name of study to reading and making a man of great reading to be the same with a man of great knowledge. or at least to be a title of honor. All that can be recorded in writing are only facts or reasonings. Facts are of three sorts :
1. Merely of natural agents. observable in the ordinary operations of bodies one upon another, whether in the visible course of things left to themselves, or in experiments made by men applying agents and patients to one another after a peculiar and artificial manner. 2. Of voluntary agents, more especially the actions of men in society, which makes civil and moral history. 3. Of opinions
In these three consists. as it seems to me, that which commonly has the name of learning ; to which perhaps some may add a distinct head of critical writings, which indeed at bottom is nothing but matter of fact and resolves itself into this, that such a man or set of men used such a word or phrase in such a sense, i.e. that this made such sounds the marks of such ideas. Under reasonings I comprehend all the discoveries of general truths made be human reason, whether found by intuition, demonstration or probable deductions. And this is that which is, if not alone knowledge (because the truth or probability of particular propositions may be known too), suet is, as may be supposed, most properly the business of those who pretend to improve their understandings and make themselves knotting by reading.
Books and reading are looked upon to be the great helps of the understanding and instruments of knowledge, as it must be allotted that they are ; and yet I beg leave to question whether these do not prove a hindrance to many and keep several bookish men from attaining to solid and true knowledge. This, I think, I may be permitted to say, that there is no part wherein the understanding needs a more careful and wary conduct than in the use of books ; without which they will prove rather innocent amusements than profitable employments of our time, and bring but small additions to our knowledge.
There is not seldom to be found, even amongst those who aim at knowledge, [those] Echo with an unwearied industry employ their whole time in books, who scarce allow themselves time to eat or sleep, but read and read and read on, but yet make no great advances in real knowledge, though there be no defect in their intellectual faculties, to which their little progress can be imputed. The mistake here is, that it is usually supposed that, by reading, the author’s knowledge is transfused into the reader’s understanding ; and so it is, but not by bare reading, but by reading and understanding what he writ. Thereby I mean, not barely comprehending what is affirmed or denied in each proposition (though that great readers do not always think themselves concerned precisely to do), but to see and follows the train of his reasonings, observe the strength and clearness of their connection and examine upon What they bottom. Without this a man may read the discourses of a very rational author, writ in a language and in propositions that he very well understands, and yet acquire not one jot of his knowledge ; which consisting only in the perceived, certain or probable connection of the ideas made use of in his reasonings, the reader’s knowledge is no further increased than he perceives that, so much as he sees of this connection, so much he knows of the truth or probability of that author’s opinions.
All that he relies on without this perception he takes upon trust upon the author’s credit without any knowledge of it at all. This makes me not at all wonder to see some men so abound in citations and build so much upon authorities, it being the sole foundation on which they bottom most of their own tenets : so that in effect they have but a second hand or implicit knowledge, i.e. are in the right if such an one from whom they borrowed it were in the right in that opinion which they took from him, Which indeed is no knowledge at all. Writers of this or former arts may be good witnesses of matters of fact which they deliver, which we may do well to take upon their authority ; but their credit can go no further than this ; it cannot at all affect the truth and falsehood of opinions, which have another sort of trial by reason and proof, which they themselves made use of to make themselves knowing, and so must others too that will partake in their knowledge. Indeed it is an advantage that they have been at the pains to find out the proofs and lay them in that order that may show the truth or probability of their conclusions ; and for this we owe them great acknowledgments for saving us the pains in searching out those proofs which they have collected for us and which possibly, after all our pains, we might not have found nor been able to set them in so good a light as that which they left them us in. Upon this account we are mightily beholding to judicious writers of all ages for those discoveries and discourses they have left behind them for our instruction, if we know how to make a right use of them ; which is not to run them over in a hasty perusal and perhaps lodge their opinions or some remarkable passages in our memories, but to enter into their reasonings, examine their proofs, and then judge of the truth or falsehood, probability or improbability of what they advance, not by any opinion we have entertained of the author, but by the evidence he produces and the conviction he affords us drawn from things themselves. Knowing is seeing, and, if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves that we do so be another man’s eyes, let him use never so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any learned author as much as we will.
Euclid and Archimedes are allowed to be knowing and to have demonstrated what they say ; and yet whosoever shall read over their writings without perceiving the connection of their proofs and seeing what they knew, though he may understand all their words, yet he is not the more knowing ; he may believe indeed but does not know what they say, and so is not advanced one jot in mathematical knowledge by all his reading of those approved mathematicians.
Section 25. Haste.
The eagerness and strong bent of the mind after knowledge, if not warily regulated, is often a hindrance to it. It still presses into further discoveries and new objects and catches at the variety of knowledge, and therefore often stays not long enough on what is before it to look into it as it should, for haste to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that rides post through a country may be able from the transient view to tell how in general the parts lie, and may be able to give some loose description of here a mountain and there a plain, here a morass and there a river, woodland in one part and savannas in another. Such superficial ideas and observations as these he may collect in galloping over it. But the more useful observations of the soil, plants, animals and inhabitants with their several sorts and properties must necessarily escape him ; and it is seldom men ever discover the rich mines without some digging. Nature commonly lodges her treasure and jewels in rocky ground. If the matter be knotty and the sense lies deep, the mind must stop and buckle to it and stick upon it with labour and thought and close contemplation, and not leave it till it has mastered the difficulty and got possession of truth. But here care must be taken to avoid the other extreme : a man must not stick at every useless nicety and expect mysteries of science in every trivial question or scruple that he may raise. He that Mill stand to pick up and examine every pebble that comes in his way is as unlikely to return enriched and loaded with jewels as the other that traveled full speed. Truths are not the better nor the Worse for their obviousness or difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency. Insignificant observations should not take up any of our minutes, and those that enlarge our view and give light towards further and useful discoveries should not be neglected, though they stop our course and spend some of our time in a fixed attention.
There is another haste that does often and will mislead the mind, if it be left to itself and its own conduct. The understanding is naturally forward, not only to learn its knowledge by variety (which makes it skip over one to get speedily to another part of knowledge), but also eager to enlarge its views by running too fast into general observations and conclusions without a due examination of particulars enough whereon to found those general axioms. This seems to enlarge their stock, but it is of fancies not realities ; such theories built upon narrow foundations stand but weakly, and, if they fall not of themselves, are at least very hardly to be supported against the assaults of opposition. And thus men, being too hasty to erect to themselves general notions and ill grounded theories, find themselves deceived in their stock of knowledge when they come to examine their hastily assumed maxims themselves or to have them attacked by others. General observations drawn from particulars are the jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little room ; but they are therefore to be made with the greater care and caution, lest, if we take counterfeit for true, our loss and shame be the greater when our stock comes to a severe scrutiny. One or two particulars may suggest hints of enquiry, and they do well who take those hints ; but if they turn them into conclusions and make them presently general rules, they are forward indeed, but it is only to impose on themselves by propositions assumed for truths without sufficient warrant. To make such observations is, as has been already remarked, to make the head a magazine of materials which can hardly be called knowledge, or at least it is but like a collection of lumber not reduced to use or order ; and he that makes everything an observation has the same useless plenty and much more falsehood mixed with it. The extremes on both sides are to be avoided, and he will be able to give the best account of his studies who keeps his understanding in the right mean between them.
Section 26. Anticipation.
Whether it be a love of that which brings the first light and information to their minds and want of vigor and industry to enquire, or else that men content themselves with any appearance of knowledge, right or wrong, which when they have once got they will hold fast, this is visible, that many men give themselves up to the first anticipations of their minds and are very tenacious of the opinions that first possess them. They are often as fond of their first conceptions as of their first born, and will by no means recede from the judgment they have once made or any conjecture or conceit which they have once entertained. This is a fault in the conduct of the understanding, since this firmness or rather stiffness of the mind is not from an adherence to truth but a submission to prejudice. It is an unreasonable homage paid to prepossession, whereby we show a reverence not to (what we pretend to seek) truth, but what by haphazard we chance to light one be it what it will. This is visibly a preposterous use of our faculties and is a downright prostituting of the mind to resign it thus and put it under the power of the first comer. This can never be allowed or ought to be followed as a right way to knowledge, till the understanding (whose business it is to conform itself to what it finds on the objects without) can by its own opiniatrety change that and make the unalterable nature of things comply with its own hasty determinations, which will never be. Whatever we fancy, things keep their course, and their habitudes, correspondences and relations keep the same to one another.
Section 27. Resignation.
Contrary to these, but by a like dangerous excess on the other side, are those who always resign their judgment to the last man they heard or read. Truth never sinks into these men’s minds nor gives any tincture to them, but, chameleon-like, they take the colour of what is laid before them and as soon lose and resign it to the next that happens to come in their way. The order wherein opinions are proposed or received by us is no rule of their rectitude nor ought to be a cause of their preference. First or last in this case is the effect of chance and not the measure of truth or falsehood. This everyone must confess and therefore should in the pursuit of truth keep his mind free from the influence of any such accidents. A man may as reasonably draw cuts for his tenets, regulate his persuasion by the cast of a die, as take it up for its novelty or retain it because it had his first assent and he was never of another mind. Well weighed reasons are to determine the judgment ; those the mind should be always ready to hearken and submit to and by their testimony and suffrage entertain or reject any tenet indifferently, whether it be a perfect stranger or an old acquaintance.
Section 28. Practice.
Though the faculties of the mind are improved by exercise, yet they must not be put to a stress beyond their strength. Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent must be made the measure of everyone’s understanding who has a desire not only to perform well but to keep up the vigor of his faculties and not to balk his understanding by what is too hard for it. The mind, by being engaged in a task beyond its strength, like the body strained by lifting at a weight too heavy, has often its force broken and thereby gets an ineptness or an aversion to any vigorous attempt ever after. A sinew cracked seldom recovers its former strength, or at least the tenderness of the sprain remains a good while after and the memory of it longer, and leaves a lasting caution in the man not to put the part quickly again to any robust employment. So it fares in the mind once jaded by an attempt above its power ; it either is disabled for the future or else checks at any vigorous undertaking ever after, at least is very hardly brought to exert its force again on any subject that requires thought and meditation. The understanding should be brought to the difficult and knotty parts of knowledge, that try the strength of thought, and a full bent of the mind by insensible degrees ; and in such a gradual proceeding nothing is too hard for it. Nor let it be objected that such a slow progress will never reach the extent of some sciences. It is not to be imagined how far constancy will carry a man ; however, it is better walking slowly in a rugged way than to break a leg and be a cripple. He that begins with the calf may carry the ox ; but he that will at first go to take up an ox may so disable himself as not be able to lift a calf after that. When the mind by insensible degrees has brought itself to attention and close thinking, it will be able to cope with difficulties and master them without any prejudice to itself, and then it may go on roundly. Every abstruse problem, every intricate question will not baffle, discourage or break it. But though putting the mind unprepared upon an unusual stress that may discourage or damp it for the future ought to be avoided, yet this must not run it, by an over great shyness of difficulties, into a lazy sauntering about ordinary and obvious things that demand no thought or application. This debases and enervates the understanding, makes it weak and unfit for labour. This is a sort of hovering about the surface of things without any insight into them or penetration ; and when the mind has been once habituated to this lazy recumbency and satisfaction on the obvious surface of things, it is in danger to rest satisfied there and go no deeper, since it cannot do it without pains and digging. He that has for some time accustomed himself to take up with what easily offers itself at first view, has reason to fear he shall never reconcile himself to the fatigue of turning and tumbling things in his mind to discover their more retired and more valuable secrets.
It is not strange that methods of learning which scholars have been accustomed to in their beginning and entrance upon the sciences should influence them all their lives and be settled in their minds by an over-ruling reverence, especially if they be such as universal use has established. Learners must at first be believers, and, their master’s rules having once been made axioms to them, it is no wonder they should keep that dignity and by the authority they have once got mislead those who think it sufficient to excuse them if they go out of their way in a well beaten tract.
Section 29. Words.
I have copiously enough spoken of the abuse of words in another place and therefore shall upon this reflection, that the sciences are full of them, warn those that would conduct their understandings right not to take any term, howsoever authorized by the language of the schools, to stand for any thing till they have an idea of it. A word may be of frequent use and great credit with several authors and be by them made use of as if it stood for some real being ; but Met, if he that reads cannot frame any distinct idea of that being, it is certain[ly] to him a mere empty sound without a meaning, and he learns no more by all that is said of it or attributed to it than if it were affirmed only of that bare empty sound. They who would advance in knowledge and not deceive and swell themselves with a little articulated air should lay dolor this as a fundamental rule, not to take words for things nor suppose that names in boozes signify real entities in nature till they can frame clear and distinct ideas of those entities. It will not perhaps be allowed if I should set down « substantial forms » and « intentional species » as such that may justly be suspected to be of this kind of insignificant terms. But this I am sure, to one that can form no determined ideas of Chat they stand for they signify nothing at all ; and all that he thinks he knows about them is to him so much knowledge about nothing and amounts at most but to a learned ignorance. It is not without all reason supposed that there are many such empty terms to be found in some learned writers, to which they had recourse to etch out their so stems where their understandings could not furnish them with conceptions from things. But yet I believe the supposing of some realities in nature answering those and the like words have much perplexed some and quite misled others in the study of nature. That which in any discourse signifies « I know not what » should be considered « I know not when. » Where men have any conceptions, they can, if they are never so abstruse or abstracted, explain them and the terms they use for them. For our conceptions being nothing but ideas, which are all made up of simple ones, if they cannot give us the ideas their words stand for, it is plain they have none. To what purpose can it be to hunt after his conceptions who has none or none distinct ? He that knew not what he himself meant by a learned term cannot make us know anything by his use of it, let us beat our heads about it never so long. Whether we are able to comprehend all the operations of nature and the manners of them, it matters not to enquire ; but this is certain, that we can comprehend no more of them than we can distinctly conceive ; and therefore to obtrude terms where Me have no distinct conceptions, as if they did contain or rather conceal something, is but an artifice of learned vanity to cover a defect in a hypothesis or our understandings. Words are not made to conceal, but to declare and show something ; where they are, by those who pretend to instruct, otherwise used, they conceal indeed something ; but that they conceal is nothing but the ignorance, error or sophistry of the talker, for there is, in truth, nothing else under them.
Section 30. Wandering.
That there is constant succession and flux of ideas in our minds I have observed in the former part of this essay and everyone may take notice of it in himself. This I suppose may deserve some part of our care in the conduct of our understandings ; and I think it may be of great advantage if ate can by use get that power over our minds as to be able to direct that train of ideas, that so, since there Mill new ones perpetually come into our thoughts by a constant succession, we may be able by choice so to direct them, that none may come into view but such as are pertinent to our present enquiry, and in such order as may be most useful to the discovery we are upon ; or at least, if some foreign and unsought ideas will offer themselves, that yet we might be able to reject them and keep them from taking off our minds from its present pursuit and hinder them from running away with our thoughts quite from the subject in hand. This is not, I suspect, so easy to be done as perhaps may be imagined ; and yet, for ought I know, this may be, if not the chief, yet one of the great differences that carry some men in their reasoning so far beyond others, where they seem to be naturally of equal parts. A proper and effectual remedy for this wandering of thoughts I would be glad to find. He that shall propose such a one would do great service to the studious and contemplative part of mankind and perhaps help unthinking men to become thinking. I must acknowledge that hitherto I have discovered no other way to keep our thoughts close to their business but the endeavoring as much as we can and by frequent attention and application getting the habit of attention and application. He that will observe children will find that, even when they endeavor their uttermost, they cannot keep their minds from straggling. The way to cure it, I am satisfied, is not angry chiding or beating for that presently fills their heads with all the ideas that fear, dread, or confusion can offer to them. To bring back gently their wandering thoughts by leading them into the path and going before them in the train they should pursue, without any rebuke or so much as taking notice (where it can be avoided) of their roving, I suppose would sooner reconcile and inure them to attention than all those rougher methods which more distract their thought and, hindering the application they would promote, introduce a contrary habit.
Section 31. Distinction.
Distinction and division are (if I mistake not the import of the words) very different things, the one being the perception of a difference that nature has placed in things, the other our making a division where there is yet none. At least, if I may be permitted to consider them in this sense, I think I may say of them that one of them is the most necessary and conducive to true knowledge that can be, the other, when too much made use of, serves only to puzzle and confound the understanding. To observe every the least difference that is in things argues a quick and clear sight, and this keeps the understanding steady and right in its way to knowledge. But though it be useful to discern every variety [that] is to be found in nature, yet it is not convenient to consider every difference that is in things and divide them into distinct classes under every such difference. This will run us, if followed, into particulars (for every individual has something that differences it from an