how far they agree or disagree one with another, he will 40 OF THE CONDUCT 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 learn- ing arguments by heart, he will be but a retainer to others; and when any one questions the foundations they are built upon, he will be at a nonplus, and be fain to give up his implicit knowledge.
SECTION XVI.
HASTE.
Labour for labour['s] 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 inquiry. But this whether laziness or haste often mis- leads 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 argu- ment, and rests satisfied with that, as it were a demonstra- tion; 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 inquiries, 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, OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 4I ihe nature and manner of the proof it is capable of should first be considered to make our inquiry 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 multiply- ins; variety of arguments, especially frivolous ones, such as are all that are merely verbal, is not only lost labour, but cumbers 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 con- clusion. \ This is a short way to fancy and conceit, and (if firmly embraced) to opiniatrity, but is certainly the farthest 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 skipt over what he should have examined, he must begin and go over all again, or else he will never come to knowledge. | SECTION XVII.
DESULTORY.
Another fault of as ill consequence as this, which pro- ceeds also from laziness with a mixture of vanity, is the skipping from one sort of knowledge to another. Some 42 OF THE CONDUCT men's tempers are quickly weary of any one thing. Con- stancy 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 XVIII.
SMATTERING.
— Others, that they may seem universally knowing, get a little smattering in every thing. Both these may fill their heads with superficial notions of things, but are very much out of the way of attaining truth or knowledge.
SECTION XIX.
UNIVERSALITY.
I do not here speak against the taking a taste of every sort of knowledge; it is certainly very useful and neces- sary 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 stored a magazine, that nothing could be proposed which he was not master of and was readily furnished to entertain any one 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 OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 43 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 lousiness 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 farther 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 inquiry and reasoning, which the most skilful 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 indifterency before the mind is possessed with any one in particular and grown into love and admiration of what is made its darling, will prevent another evil very commonly to be observed in those who ha\'e 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, antl that will become every thing. The mind will take such a tincture from a familiarity with that 44 OF THE CONDUCT object, that every thing else, how remote soever, will be brought under the same view. A metaphysician will bring plowing and gardening immediately to abstract notions; the history of nature shall signify nothing to him. An alchymist, on the contrary, shall reduce divinity to the maxims of his laboratory, explain morality by Sal, Sul- phur, and INIercury, and allegorize the scripture itself, and the sacred mysteries 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 practised 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 to look into all sorts of knowledge, and exercise their under- standings in so wide a variety and slock of knowledge. But 1 do not propose it as a variety and slock of know- OF THE UNDERSTANDTXG. 45 ledge, 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 XX.
RE.\niNG.
This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of every thing are tliought to understand every thing too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with ma- terials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ou/s. ^Ve are of the ruminating kind, and ii 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 visible instances of deep thoughts, 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 medi- tation, 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 foimd in them. ySuch a knowlcdge'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 46 OF THE CONDUCT 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 favour and sup- port the tenets of it. Such men wilfully exclude them- selves from truth and from all true benefit to be received by reading. Others of more indifferency 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 mizmaze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in, and shewed the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers to it will 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 argu- ment and follow it step by step up to its original.
I answer, this is a good objection, and ought to weigli with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. But OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 47 1 am here inquiring into the conduct of the understand- ing 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 Uiat points right, will sooner be at his journey's end, than he that runs after every one he meets, though he gallop all day full speed.
To which let me add, that this way of thinking on and profiling by what we read will be a clog and rub to any one only in the beginning; when custom and exercise has made it familiar, it will be dispatched in most occa- sions, 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 XXI.
INTERMEDIATE PRINCIPLES.
As an help to this, I thhik 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 pro- vide itself several stages; that is to say, intermediate principles, which it might have recourse to in the ex- amining 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 unques- 48 OF THE CONDUCT tionable 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 view than remote and general maxims. These may serve as landmarks to shew what lies in the direct way of truth, or is quite besides it. And thus mathe- maticians 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 setding 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, &c. 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, false- hood, and error.
SECTION XXII.
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 OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 49 which men are particularly versed in they are apt to value and extol, as if that part of knowledge which every one 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 every one 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 chymistry, 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 possibly, and more fruitful than that which it had till then laboured in; wherein it might find, besides new knowledge, ways or hints whereby it might be enabled the better to cultivate its own.
SECTION XXIII.
THEOLOGY.
There is indeed one science (as they are now dis- tinguished) 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, £ 50 OF THE CONDUCT which, containing the knowledge of God and His crea- tures, our duty to him and our fellow-creatures, and a view of our present and future state, is the comprehen- sion of all other knowledge directed to its true end, i. e. I the honour and veneration of the Creator and the happi- f ness of mankind. This is that noble study which is every man's duty, and every one that can be called a , rational creature is capable of The works of nature I and the words of revelation display it to mankind in I characters so large and visible, that those who are not I quite blind may in them read and see the first principles f and most necessary parts of it; and from thence, as they t 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, every where 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 impo- sitions. 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 XXIV.
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 OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 5 1 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 study of divinity or politic 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 notions of chymistry. 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 mix- tures, and not by a fondness for what 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 adminislrari; it is no less certain, res nolunt male inielligi. Things themselves are to be considered as they are in themselves, and then they will shew 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 un- alterable relations of things, and not endeavour 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 satyrs. 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 52 OF THE CONDUCT 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 dis- coveries, 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 mould and rottenness. Men, I think, have been much the same for natural endowments in all times. Fashion, discipline, and education have put emi- nent 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 any one now receives with veneration for its antiquity; nor was it the worse for appearing as a novelty, and that which is now em-