I have said above that we should keep a perfect indifferency for all opinions, not wish any of them true, or try to make them appear so; but, being indifferent, receive and embrace them according as evidence, and that alone, yG OF THE CONDUCT gives the attestation of truth. They that do thus, i.e.
keep their minds indifferent to opinions, to be determined only by evidence, will always find the understanding has perception enough to distinguish between evidence or no evidence, betwixt plain and doubtful; and if they neither give nor refuse their assent but by that measure, they will be safe in the opinions they have. Which being perhaps but few, this caution will have also this good in it, that it will put them upon considering, and teach them the necessity of examining more than they do; without which the mind is but a receptacle of inconsistences, not the storehouse of truths. They that do not keep up this indifferency in themselves for all but truth, not supposed, but evidenced in themselves, put coloured spectacles before their eyes, and look on things through false glasses, and then think themselves excused in following the false appearances, which they themselves put upon them. I do not expect that by this way the assent should in every one be proportioned to the grounds and clearness wherewith every truth is capable to be made out, or that men should be perfectly kept from error: that is more than human nature can by any means be advanced to. I aim at no such unattainable privilege. I am only speaking of what they should do who would deal fairly with their own minds, and make a right use of their faculties in the pursuit of truth. We fail them a great deal more than they fail us. It is mismanagement more than want of abilities that men have reason to complain of, and which they actually do complain of in those that differ from them. He that, by an indifferency for all but truth, suffers not his assent to go faster than his evidence, nor beyond it, will learn to examine and examine fairly instead of presuming, and no body will be at a loss or in danger for want of embracing those truths \vhich are necessary in his station and circumstances. In any other way but this, all the world are born to orthodoxy: they imbibe at first the allowed opinions of their country and party, and so, never questioning their truth, not one of a hundred ever examines. They are applauded for presuming they are in the right. He that considers is a foe to orthodoxy, because possibly he may deviate from some of the received doctrines there. And thus men, without any industry or acquisition of their own, inherit local truths (for it is not the same every where), and are inured to assent without evidence. This influences farther than is thought; for what one of a hundred of the zealous bigots in all parties ever examined the tenets he is so stiff in, or ever thought it his business or duty so to do? It is suspected of lukewarmness to suppose it necessary, and a tendency to apostacy to go about it. And if a man can bring his mind once to be positive and fierce for positions whose evidence he has never once examined, and that in matters of greatest concernment to him, what shall keep him from this short and easy way of being in the right in cases of less moment.? Thus we are taught to clothe our minds as we do our bodies after the fashion in vogue, and it is accounted fantasticalness, or something worse, not to do so. This custom (which who dares oppose?)
makes the short-sighted bigots, and the warier sceptics, as far as it prevails. And those that break from it are in danger of heresy; for, taking the whole world, how much of it doth truth and orthodoxy possess together? Though it is by the last alone (which has the good luck to be every where) that error and heresy are judged of; for argument and evidence signify nothing in the case, and excuse no where, but are sure to be borne down in all societies by the infallible orthodoxy of the place. Whether this be the way to truth and right assent, let the opinions, that take place and prescribe in the several habitable parts of the earth, declare. I never saw any reason yet why truth might not be trusted to its own evidence; I am sure, if that be not able to support it, there is no fence against error, and then truth and falsehood are but names that stand for the same things. Evidence therefore is that by which alone every man is (and should be) taught to regulate his assent, who is then and then only in the right way when he follows it.
Men deficient in knowledge, are usually in one of these three states: either wholly ignorant; or as doubting of some proposition they have either embraced formerly, or at present are inclined to; or, lastly, they do with assurance hold and profess, without ever having examined and been convinced by well grounded arguments.
The first of these are in the best state of the three, by having their minds yet in their perfect freedom and indifferency, the likelier to pursue truth the better, having no bias yet clapped on to mislead them.
SECTION XXXV.
IGNORANCE WITH INDIFFERENCY.
For ignorance with an indifferency for truth is nearer to it, than opinion with ungrounded inclination, which is the great source of error; and they are more in danger to go out of the way who are marching under the conduct of a guide, that it is a hundred to one will mislead them, than he that has not yet taken a step and is likelier to be prevailed on to enquire after the right way.
The last of the three sorts are in the worst condition of all; for if a man can be persuaded and fully assured of any thing for a truth, without having examined, what is there that he may not embrace for truth? And if he has given himself up to believe a lie, what means is there left to recover one who can be assured without examining? To the other two this I crave leave to say, that as he that is ignorant is in the best state of the two, so he should pursue truth in a method suitable to that state, i.e. by enquiring directly into the nature of the thing itself, without minding the opinions of others, or troubling himself with their questions or disputes about it, but to see what he himself can, sincerely searching after truth, find out. He that proceeds upon other principles in his enquiry into any sciences, though he be resolved to examine them and judge of them freely, does yet at least put himself on that side, and post himself in a parly which he will not quit till he be beaten out; by which the mind is insensibly engaged to make what defence it can, and so is unawares biassed. I do not say but a man should embrace some opinion when he has examined, else he examines to no purpose; but the surest and safest way is to have no opinion at all till he has examined, and that without any the least regard to the opinions or systems of other men about it. For example, were it my business to understand physic, would not the safer and readier way be to consult nature herself, and inform myself in the history of diseases and their cures, than espousing the principles of the dogmatists, methodists, or chymists, engage in all the disputes concerning either of those systems, and suppose it to be true, till I have tried what they can say to beat me out of it. Or, supposing that Hippocrates, or any other book.
8o OF THE CONDUCT infallibly contains the whole art of physic, would not the direct way be to study, read and consider that book, weigh and compare the parts of it to find the truth, rather than espouse the doctrines of any party, who, though they acknowledge his authority, have already interpreted and wiredrawn all his text to their own sense; the tincture whereof when I have imbibed, I am more in danger to misunderstand his true meaning, than if I had come to him with a mind unprepossessed by doctors and commentators of my sect, whose reasonings, interpretation, and language, which I have been used to, will of course make all chime that way, and make another and perhaps the genuine meaning of the author seem harsh, ' strained, and uncouth to me. For words, having naturally none of their own, carry that signification to the hearer, that he is used to put upon them, whatever be the sense of him that uses them. This, I think, is visibly so; and if it be, he that begins to have any doubt of any of his tenets, which he received without examination, ought, as much as he can, to put himself wholly into this state of ignorance in reference to that question, and throwing wholly by all his former notions, and the opinions of others, examine, with a perfect indifferency, the question in its source, without any inclination to either side, or any regard to his or others' unexamined opinions. This I own is no easy thing to do, but I am not enquiring the easy way to opinion, but the right way to truth; which they must follow who will deal fairly with their own understandings and their own souls.
SECTION XXXVI.
QUESTION.
The indiflferency that I here propose will also enable them to state the question right, which they are in doubt about, without which they can never come to a fair and t lear decision of it.
SECTION XXXVII.
PERSEVERANCE.
Another fruit from this indifferency and the considering things in themselves, abstract from our own opinions and other men's notions and discourses on them, will be that each man will pursue his thoughts in that method which will be most agreeable to the nature of the thing and to his apprehension of what it suggests to him; in which he ought to proceed with regularity and constancy, until he come to a well-grounded resolution wherein he may acquiesce. If it be objected that this will require every man to be a scholar, and quit all his other business, and betake himself wholly to study; I answer, I propose no more to any one than he has time for. Some men's state and condition requires no great extent of knowledge; the necessary provision for life swallows the greatest part of their time. But one man's want of leisure is no excuse for the oscitancy and ignorance of those who have time to spare; and every one has enough to get as much knowledge as is required and expected of him, and he that does not that is in love with ignorance, and is accountable for it.
G 8a OF THE CONDUCT SECTION XXXVIII.
PRESUMPTION.
The variety of distempers in men's minds is as great as of those in their bodies; some are epidemic, few escape them, and every one too, if he would look into himself, would find some defect of his particular genius. There is scarce any one without some idiosyncrasy that he suflfers by. This man presumes upon his parts, that they will not fail him at time of need, and so thinks it superfluous labour to make any provision before hand. His understanding is to him like Fortunatus's purse, which is always to furnish him without ever putting any thing into it before-hand; and so he sits still satisfied, without endeavouring to store his understanding with knowledge. It is the spontaneous product of the country, and what need of labour in tillage? Such men may spread their native riches before the ignorant; but they were best not come to stress and trial with the skilful. We are born ignorant of every thing. The superficies of things that surround them make impressions on the negligent, but no body penetrates into the inside without labour, attention, and industry. Stones and timber grow of themselves, but yet there is no uniform pile with symmetry and convenience to lodge in without toil and pains. God has made the intellectual world harmonious and beautiful without us; but it will never come into our heads all at once; we must bring it home piecemeal, and there set it up by our own industry, or else we shall have nothing but darkness and a chaos within, whatever order and light there be in things without us.
SECTION XXXIX.
DESPONDENCY.
On the other side, there are others that depress their own minds, despond at the first difficulty, and conclude that the getting an insight in any of the sciences or making any progress in knowledge, farther than serves their ordinary business, is above their capacities. These sit still, because they think they have not legs to go; as the others I last mentioned do, because they think they have wings to fly, and can soar on high when they please. To these latter one may for answer apply the proverb. Use legs and have legs. No body knows what strength of parts he has till he has tried them. And of the understanding one may most truly say, that its force is greater generally than it thinks, till it is put to it. Viresqtie acquirit ewido.
And therefore the proper remedy here is but to set the mind to work, and apply the thoughts vigorously to the business; for it holds in the struggles of the mind, as in those of war, Dum putaitt se vincere, vicere; a persuasion that we shall overcome any difficulties that we meet with in the sciences seldom fails to carry us through them. No body knows the strength of his mind and the force of steady and regular application, till he has tried. This is certain, he that sets out upon weak legs will not only go farther, but grow stronger too than one who, with a vigorous constitution and firm limbs, only sits still.
Something of kin to this men may observe in themselves, when the mind frights itself (as it often does) with any thing reflected on in gross, and transiently viewed confusedly and at a distance. Things, thus offered to the mind, carry the shew of nothing but difficulty in them, and are thought to be wrapped up in impenetrable obscurity. But the truth is, these are nothing but spectres that the understanding raises to itself to flatter its own laziness. It sees nothing distinctly in things remote and in a huddle, and therefore concludes too faintly that there is nothing more clear to be discovered in them. It is but to approach nearer, and that mist of our own raising that enveloped them will remove; and those that in that mist appeared hideous giants, not to be grappled with, will be found to be of the ordinary and natural size and shape. Things that in a remote and confused view seem very obscure, must be approached by gentle and regular steps; and what is most visible, easy, and obvious in them first considered. Reduce them into their distinct parts; and then in their due order bring all that should be known concerning every one of those parts into plain and simple questions; and then what was thought obscure, perplexed, and too hard for our weak parts, will lay itself open to the understanding in a fair view, and let the mind into that which before it was awed with and kept at a distance from, as wholly mysterious. I appeal to my reader's experience, whether this has never happened to him, especially when, busy on one thing, he has occasionally reflected on another. I ask him, whether he has never thus been scared with a sudden opinion of mighty difficulties, which yet have vanished, when he has seriously and methodically applied himself to the consideration of this seeming terrible subject; and there has been no other matter of astonishment left, but that he amused himself with so discouraging a prospect of his own rais- OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 85* ing about a matter, which in the handling was found to have nothing in it more strange nor intricate than several other things which he had long since and with ease mastered? Tiiis experience should teach us how to deal with such bugbears another time, which should rather serve to excite our vigour than enervate our industry. The surest way for a learner, in this as in all other cases, is not to advance by jumps and large strides; let that which he sets himself to learn next be indeed the next, i. e. as nearly conjoined with what he knows already as is possible; let it be distinct but not remote from it; let it be new and what he did not know before, that the understanding may advance; but let it be as little at once as may be, that its advances may be clear and sure.
All the ground that it gets this way it will hold. This distinct gradual growth in knowledge is firm and sure, it carries its own light with it in every step of its progression in an easy and orderly train, than which there is nothing of more use to the understanding. And thougli this perhaps may seem a very slow and Imgering way to knowledge, yet I dare confidently affirm tliat whoever will try it in himself, or any one he will teach, shall find the advances greater in this method, than they would in the same space of time have been in any other he could have taken. The greatest part of true knowledge lies in a distinct perception of things in themselves distinct. And some men give more clear light and knowledge by the bare distinct stating of a question, than others by talking of it in gross whole hours together. In this, they who so state a question do no more but separate and disentangle the parts of it one from another, and lay them, when so disentangled, in their due order. This often, without any more ado, resolves the doubt, and shews the mind where the truth lies. The agreement or disagreement of the ideas in question, when they are once separated and distinctly considered, is, in many cases, presently perceived, and thereby clear and lasting knowledge gained; whereas things in gross taken up together, and so lying together in confusion, can produce in the mind but a confused, which in effect is no knowledge, or at least, when it comes to be examined and made use of, will prove little better than none. I therefore take the liberty to repeat here again what I have said elsewhere, that, in learning any thing, as little should be proposed to the mind at once as is possible; and, that being understood and fully mastered, to proceed to the next adjoining part yet unknown, simple, unperplexed proposition belonging to the matter in hand, and tending to the clearing what is principally designed.
SECTION XL.
ANALOGY.
Analogy is of great use to the mind in many cases, especially in natural philosophy, and that part of it chiefly which consists in happy and successful experiments. But here we must take care that we keep ourselves within that wherein the analogy consists. For example, the acid oil of vitriol is found to be good in such a case, therefore the spirit of nitre or vinegar may be used in the like case. If the good eff^ect of it be owing wholly to the acidity of it, the trial may be justified; but if there be something else besides the acidity in the oil of vitriol, which produces the good we desire in the case, we mistake that lor analogy, which is not, and suffer our understanding to be misguided by a wrong supposition of analogy where there is none.
SECTION XLI.
ASSOCIATION'.
Though I have, in the second book of my Essay coni crning Human Understanding, treated of the association of ideas; yet having done it there historically, as givinga view of the understanding in this as well as its several other ways of operating, rather than designing there to enquire into the remedies [that] ought to be applied to it: it will, under this latter consideration, afford other matter of thought to those who have a mind to instruct themselves thoroughly in the right way of conducting their understandings; and that the rather, because this, if I mistake not, is as frequent a cause of mistake and error in us as perhaps any thing else that can be named, and is a disease of the mind as hard to be cured as any; it being a very hard thing to convince any one that things are not so, and naturally so, as they constantly appear to him.
By this one easy and unheeded miscarriage of the understanding, sandy and loose foundations become infallible principles, and will not suffer themselves to be touched or questioned: such unnatural connections become by custom as natural to the mind, as sun and light. Fire and warmth go together, and so seem to carry with tliem as natural an evidence as self-evident truths themselves. And where then shall one with hopes of success begin the cure '^ INIany men firmly embrace fiilsehood for truth; not only because they never thought otherwise, but also because, thus blinded as they have been from the beginning, they never could think otherwise; at least without a vigour of mind able to contest the empire of habit, and look into its own principles, a freedom which few men have the notion of in themselves, and fewer are allowed the practice of by others; it being the great art and business of the teachers and guides in most sects, to suppress, as much as they can, this fundamental duty which every man owes himself, and [which] is the first steady step towards right and truth in the whole train of his actions and opinions. This would give one reason to suspect that such teachers are conscious to themselves of the falsehood or w-eakness of the tenets they profess, since they will not suffer the grounds whereon they are built to be examined; whereas those who seek truth only, and desire to own and propagate nothing else, freely expose their principles to the test, are pleased to have them examined, give men leave to reject them if they can, and, if there be any thing weak and unsound in them, are willing to have it detected, that they themselves, as well as others, may not lay any stress upon any received proposition beyond what the evidence of its truth will warrant and allow.
There is, I know% a great fault among all sorts of people of principHng their children and scholars; which at last, when looked into, amounts to no more, but making them imbibe their teachers' notions and tenets by an implicit faith, and firmly to adhere to them whether true or false. What colours may be given to this, or of what use it may be when practised upon the vulgar, destined to labour and given up to the service of their bellies, I will not here enquire. But as to the ingenuous part of mankind, whose condition allows them leisure, and letters, and enquiry after truth, I can sec no other right way of principling them, but to take heed, as much as may be, that, in their tender years, ideas that have no natural cohesion come not to be united in their heads, and that this rule be often inculcated to them to be their guide in the whole course of their lives and studies, viz. that they never suflfer any ideas to be joined in their understandings in any other or stronger combination than what their own nature and correspondence give them; and that they often examine those that they find linked together in their minds, whether this association of ideas be from the visible agreement that is in the ideas themselves, or from the habitual and prevailing custom of the mind joining them thus together in thinking.
This is for caution against this evil, before it be thoroughly riveted by custom in the understanding; but he that would cure it, when habit has established it, must nicely observe the very quick and almost imperceptible motions of the mind in its habitual actions. What I have said in another place about the change of the ideas of sense into those of judgment may be proof of this. Let any one not skilled in painting be told when he sees botdes and tobacco pipes, and other things so painted, as they are in some places shewn, that he does not see protuberances, and you will not convince him but by the touch: he will not believe that, by an instantaneous legerdemain of his own thoughts, one idea is substituted for the other. How frequent instances may one meet with of this in the arguings of the learned, who not seldom, in two ideas that they have been accustomed to join in their minds, substitute one for the other; and, I am apt to think, often without perceiving it themselves. This, whilst they are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of 90 OF THE coy DUCT conviction, and they applaud themselves as zealous champions for truth, when indeed they are contending for error. And the confusion of two different ideas, which a customary connection of them in their minds hath made to them almost one, fills their heads with false views, and their reasonings with false consequences.
SECTION XLII.
FALLACIES.