Right understanding consists in the discovery and adherence to truth, and that in the perception of the visible or probable agreement or disagreement of ideas, as they are affirmed and denied one of another. From whence it is evident that the right use and conduct of the understanding, whose business is purely truth and nothing else, is, that the mind should be kept in a perfect indifferency, not inclining to either side, any farther than evidence settles it by knowledge, or the overbalance of probability gives it the turn of assent and belief; but yet it is very hard to meet with any discourse, wherein one may not perceive the author not only maintain (for that is reasonable and fit) but inclined and biassed to one side of the question, with marks of a desire that that should be true. If it be asked me, how authors who have such a bias and lean to it may be discovered, I answer, by observing how, in their writings or arguings, they are often led by their inclinations to change the ideas of the question, either by changing the terms, or by adding and joining others to them, whereby the ideas under consideration are so varied as to be more serviceable to their purpose, and to be thereby OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Qf brought to an easier and nearer agreement or more visible and remoter disagreement one with another. This is plain and direct sophistry; but I am far from thinking that, wherever it is found, it is made use of with design to deceive and mislead the readers. It is visible that men's prejudices and inclinations by this way impose often upon themselves; and their affections for truth, under their prepossession in favour of one side, is the very thing that leads them from it. Inclination suggests and slides into their discourse favourable terms, which introduce favourable ideas, till at last, by this means, that is concluded clear and evident, thus dressed up, which taken in its native state, by making use of none but the precise determined ideas, would find no admittance at all. The putting these glosses on what they affirm, these, as they are thought, handsome, easy, and graceful explications of what they are discoursing on, is so much the character of what is called and esteemed writing well, that it is very hard to think that authors will ever be persuaded to leave what serves so well to propagate their opinions and procure themselves credit in the world, for a more jejune and dry way of writing, by keeping to the same terms precisely annexed to the same ideas, a sour and blunt stiffness tolerable in mathematicians only, who force their way and make truth prevail by irresistible demonstration.
But yet if authors cannot be prevailed with to quit the looser, though more insinuating, ways of writing, if they will not think fit to keep close to truth and instruction by unvaried terms and plain unsophisticated arguments, yet it concerns readers not to be imposed on by fallacies and the prevailing ways of insinuation. To do this, the surest and most effectual remedy is, to 9Z OF THE CONDUCT fix in the mind the clear and distinct ideas of the question stripped of words; and so Ukewise, in the train of argumentation, to take up the author's ideas, neglecting his words, observing how they connect or separate those in the question. He that does this will be able to cast off all that is superfluous; he will see what is pertinent, what coherent, what is direct to, what slides by the question. This will readily shew him all the foreign ideas in the discourse, and where they were brought in; and though they perhaps dazzled the writer, yet he will perceive that they give no light nor strength to his reasonings.
This, though it be the shortest and easiest way of reading books with profit, and keeping one's self from being misled by great names or plausible discourses, yet, it being hard and tedious to those who have not accustomed themselves to it, it is not to be expected that every one (amongst those few who really pursue truth) should this way guard his understanding from being imposed on by the wilful or, at least, undesigned sophistry, which creeps into most of the books of argument. They that write against their conviction, or that next to them are resolved to maintain the tenets of a party they are engaged in, cannot be supposed to reject any arms that may help to defend their cause, and therefore such should be read with the greatest caution. And they who write for opinions they are sincerely persuaded of, and believe to be true, think they may so far allow themselves to indulge their laudable affection to truth, as to permit their esteem of it to give it the best colours, and set it off with the best expressions and dress they can, thereby to gain it the easiest entrance into the minds of their readers and fix it deepest there.
One of those being the state of mind we may justly suppose most writers to be in, it is fit their readers, who apply to them for instruction, should not lay by that caution which becomes a sincere pursuit of truth and should make them always watchful against whatever might conceal or misrepresent it. If they have not the skill of representing to themselves the author's sense by pure ideas separated from sounds, and thereby divested of the false liglits and deceitful ornaments of speech, this yet they should do, they should keep the precise question steadily in their minds, carry it along with them through the whole discourse, and suffer not the least alteration in the terms, either by addition, subtraction, or substituting any other. This every one can do who has a mind to it: and he that has not a mind to it, it is plain makes his understanding only the warehouse of other men's lumber; I mean, false and unconcluding reasonings, rather than a repository of truth for his own use, which will prove substantial and stand him in stead when he has occasion for it. And whether such an one deals fairly by his own mind, and conducts his own understanding right, I leave to his own understanding to judge.
SECTION XLIII.
FUNDAMENTAL VERITIES.
The mind of man being very narrow, and so slow in making acquaintance with things and taking in new truths that no one man is capable, in a much longer life than ours, to know all truths; it becomes our prudence, in our search after knowledge, to employ our thoughts about fundamental and material questions, carefully avoiding those that are trifling, and not suffering ourselves to be diverted from our main even purpose by those that are merely incidental. How much of many young men's time is thrown away in purely logical enquiries, I need not mention. This is no better than if a man, who was to be a painter, should spend all his time in examining the threads of the several cloths he is to paint upon, and counting the hairs of each pencil and brush he intends to use in the laying on of his colours. Nay, it is much worse than for a young painter to spend his apprenticeship in such useless niceties; for he, at the end of all his pains to no purpose, finds that it is not painting, nor any help to it, and so is really to no purpose. Whereas men designed for scholars have often their heads so filled and warmed with disputes on logical questions, that they take those airy useless notions for real and substantial knowledge, and think their understandings so well furnished with science that they need not look any farther into the nature of things, or descend to the mechanical drudgery of experiment and inquiry.
This is so obvious a mismanagement of the understanding, and that in the professed way to knowledge, that it could not be passed by; to which might be joined abundance of questions, and the way of handling them in the schools. What faults in particular of this kind every man is, or may be guilty of, would be infinite to enumerate; it suffices to have shewn that superficial and slight discoveries and observations that contain nothing of moment in themselves, nor serve as clues to lead us into farther knowledge, should be lightly passed by, and never thouglit worth our searching after. There are fundamental truths that lie at the bottom, the basis upon which a great many others rest, and in which they have their consistency. These are teeming truths, rich in Store, with whicli they furnish the mind, and, like the lights of heaven, are not only beautiful and entertaining in themselves, but give light and evidence to other things thai without them could not be seen or known. Such is that admirable discovery of Mr. Newton, that all bodies gravitate to one another, which may be counted as the basis of natural philosophy; which of what use it is to the understanding of the great frame of our solar system, he has to the astonishment of the learned world shewn, and how much farther it would guide us in other things, if rightly pursued, is not yet known. Our Saviour's great rule, that we should love our neighbour as ourselves, is such a fundamental truth for the regulating human society, that I think by that alone one might without difliculty determine all the cases and doubts in social morality. These, and such as these, are the truths we should endeavour to find out and store our minds with. Which leads me to another thing in the conduct of the understanding that is no less necessarv, viz.
SECTION XLIV.
BOTTOMING.
To accustom ourselves in any question proposed to examine and find out upon what it bottoms. IMost of the difficulties that come in our way, when well considered and traced, lead us to some proposition which, known to be true, clears the doubt, and gives an easy solution of the question, whilst topical and superficial arguments, of which there is store to be found on both sides, filling the head with variety of thoughts and the mouth with copious discourse, serve only to amuse the understanding, and entertain company without coming to the bottom of the question, the only place of rest and stability for an inquisitive mind whose tendency is only to truth and knowledge.
For example, if it be demanded, whether the grand seignior can lawfully take what he will from any of his people? This question cannot be resolved without coming to a certainty, whether all men are naturally equal; for upon that it turns, and that truth, well settled in the understanding and carried in the mind through the various debates concerning the various rights of men in society, will go a great way in putting an end to them and shewing on which side the truth is.
SECTION XLV.
TRANSFERRING OF THOUGHTS.
There is scarce any thing more for the improvement of knowledge, for the ease of life, and the dispatch of business, than for a man to be able to dispose of his own thoughts; and there is scarce anything harder in the whole conduct of the understanding, than to get a full mastery over it. The mind, in a waking man, has always some object that it applies itself to; which, when we are lazy or unconcerned, we can easily change, and at pleasure transfer our thoughts to another, and from thence to a third, which has no relation to either of the former. Hence men forwardly conclude, and frequently say, nothing is so free as thought, and it were well it were so; but the contrary will be found true in several instances; and there are many cases wherein there is nothing more rcsty and ungovernable than our thoughts: they will not be directed what objects to pursue, nor be taken off from those they have once fixed on, but run away with a man in pursuit of those ideas they have in view, let him do what he can.
T will not here mention again what I have above taken notice of, how hard it is to get the mind, narrowed by a custom of thirty or forty years standing to a scanty collection of obvious and common ideas, to enlarge itself to a more copious stock, and grow into an acquaintance with those that would afford more abundant matter of useful contemplation; it is not of this I am here speaking. The inconvenience I would here represent and find a remedy for, is the difficulty there is sometimes to transfer our minds from one subject to another, in cases where the ideas are equally familiar to us.
Matters that are recommended to our thoughts by any of our passions take possession of our minds with a kind of authority, and will not be kept out or dislodged, but, as if the passion that rules were, for the time, the sheriff of the place, and came with all the posse, the understanding is seized and taken with the object it introduces, as if it had a legal right to be alone considered there. There is scarce any body, I think, of so calm a temper who hath not sometime found this tyranny on his understanding, and suffered under the inconvenience of it. Who is there almost whose mind, at some time or other, love or anger, fear or grief, has not so fastened to some clog, that it could not turn itself to any other object? I call it a clog, for it hangs upon the mind so as to hinder its vigour and activity in the pursuit of other contemplations, and advances itself little or not [at] all in the knowledge of the thing which it so closely hugs and constantly pores on.
H Men thus possessed are sometimes as if they were so in the worst sense, and lay under the power of an enchantment. They see not what passes before their eyes; hear not the audible discourse of the company; and when by any strong application to them they are roused a little, they are Hke men brought to themselves from some remote region; whereas in truth they come no farther than their secret cabinet within, where they have been wholly taken up with the puppet, which is for that time appointed for their entertainment. The shame that such dumps cause to well-bred people, when it carries them away from the company, where they should bear a part in the conversation, is a sufficient argument that it is a fault in the conduct of our understanding, not to have that power over it as to make use of it to those purposes and on those occasions wherein we have need of its assistance. The mind should be always free and ready to turn itself to the variety of objects that occur, and allow them as much consideration as shall for that time be thought fit.
To be engrossed so by one object, as not to be prevailed on to leave it for another that we judge fitter for our contemplation, is to make it of no use to us. Did this state of mind remsun always so, every one would, without scruple, give it the name of perfect madness; and whilst it does last, at whatever intervals it returns, such a rotation of thoughts about the same object no more carries us forwards towards the attainment of knowledge, than getting upon a mill-horse whilst he jogs on in his circular track would carry a man a journey.
I grant something must be allowed to legitimate passions and to natural inclinations. Every man, besides occasional affections, has beloved studies, and those the mind will more closely stick to; but yet it is best that it should be always at liberty, and under the free disposal of the man, to act how and upon what he directs. This we should endeavour to obtain, unless we would be content with such a flaw in our understandings, that sometimes we should be as it were without it; for it is very little better than so in cases where we cannot make use of it to those purposes we would and which stand in present need of it.
But before fit remedies can be thought on for this disease, we must know the several causes of it, and thereby regulate th^ cure, if we will hope to labour with success.
One we have already instanced in, whereof all men that reflect have so general a knowledge, and so often an experience in themselves, that no body doubts of it. A prevailing passion so pins down our thoughts to the object and concern of it, that a man passionately in love cannot bring himself to think of his ordinary affairs, or a kind mother, drooping under the loss of a child, is not able to bear a part as she was wont in the discourse of the company or conversation of her friends.
But though passion be the most obvious and general, yet it is not the only cause that binds up the understanding, and confines it for the time to one object from which it will not be taken off.
Besides this, we may often find that the understanding, when it has a while employed itself upon a subject which either chance, or some slight accident, offered to it without the interest or recommendation of any passion, works itself into a warmth, and by degrees gets into a career, wherein, like a bowl down a hill, it increases its motion by going, and will not be stopped or diverted, though, when the heat is over, it sees all this earnest application lOO OF THE CONDUCT was about a trifle not worth a thought, and all the pains employed about it lost labour.
There is a third sort, if I mistake not, yet lower than this; it is a sort of childishness, if I may so say, of the understanding, wherein, during the fit, it plays with and dandles some insignificant puppet to no end, nor with any design at all, and yet cannot easily be got off from it. Thus some trivial sentence, or a scrap of poetry, will sometimes get into men's heads, and make such a chiming there, that there is no stilUng of it; no peace ' to be obtained, nor attention to any thing else, but this impertinent guest will take up the mind and possess the thoughts in spite of all endeavours to get rid of it.
Whether every one hath experimented in themselves this troublesome intrusion of some striking ideas which thus importune the understanding, and hinder it from being better employed, I know not. But persons of very good parts, and those more than one, I have heard speak and complain of it themselves. The reason I have to make this doubt is from what I have known in a case something of kin to this, though much odder, and that is of a sort of visions that some people have lying quiet but perfectly awake in the dark, or with their eyes shut. It is a great variety of faces, most commonly very odd ones, that appear to them in a train one after another; so that having had just the sight of the one, it immediately passes away to give place to another, that the same instant succeeds and has as quick an exit as its leader, and so they march on in a constant succession; nor can any one of them by any endeavour be stopped or retained beyond the instant of its appearance, but is thrust out by its follower, which will have its turn. Concerning this fantastical phenomenon I have talked with several people, OF THE UNDERSTANDING. lOI whereof some have been perfectly acquainted with it, and others have been so wholly strangers to it, that they could hardly be brought to conceive or believe it. I knew a lady of excellent parts, who had got past thirty without having ever had the least notice of any such thing; she was so great a stranger to it that, when she heard me and another talking of it, [she] could scarce forbear thinking we bantered her; but sometime after, drinking a large dose of dilute tea (as she was ordered by a physician) going to bed, she told us at next meeting, that she had now experimented what our discourse had much ado to persuade her of. She had seen a great variety of faces in a long train, succeeding one another, as we had described; they were all strangers and intruders, such as she had no acquaintance with before, nor sought after then, and as they came of themselves they went too; none of them stayed a moment, nor could be detained by all the endeavours she could use, but went on in their solemn procession, just appeared and then vanished. This odd phenomenon seems to have a mechanical cause, and to depend upon the matter and motion of the blood or animal spirits.
When the fancy is bound by passion, I know no way to set the mind free and at liberty to prosecute what thoughts the man would make choice of, but to allay the present passion, or counterbalance it with another, which is an art to be got by study and acquaintance with the passions.
Those who find themselves apt to be carried away with the spontaneous current of their own thoughts, not excited by any passion or interest, must be very wary and careful in all the instances of it to stop it, and never humour their minds in being thus triflingly busy. Men know the lOZ OF THE CONDUCT value of their corporal liberty, and therefore suffer not willingly fetters and chains to be put upon them. To have the mind captivated is, for the time, certainly the greater evil of the two, and deserves our utmost care and endeavours to preserve the freedom of our better part.
In this case our pains will not be lost; striving and struggling will prevail, if we constantly, in all such occasions, make use of it. We must never indulge these trivial attentions of thought; as soon as we find the mind makes itself a business of nothing, we should immediately disturb and check it, introduce new and more serious considerations, and not leave till we have beaten it off from the pursuit it was upon. This, at first, if we have let the contrary practice grow to a habit, will perhaps be diflficult; but constant endeavours will by degrees prevail, and at last make it easy. And when a man is pretty well advanced, and can command his mind off at pleasure from incidental and undesigned pursuits, it may not be amiss for him to go on farther, and make attempts upon meditations of greater moment, that at the last he may have a full power over his own mind, and be so fully master of his own thoughts, as to be able to transfer them from one subject to another with the same ease that he can lay by any thing he has in his hand and take something else that he has a mind to in the room of it. This liberty of mind is of great use both in business and study, and he that has got it will have no small advantage of ease and despatch in all that is the chosen and useful employment of his understanding.
The third and last way which I mentioned the mind to be sometimes taken up with, I mean the chiming of some particular words or sentence in the memory, and, as it were, making a noise in the head, and the lik^ seldom OF THE UNDERSTANDING. I03 happens but when the mind is lazy or very loosely and negligently employed. It were better indeed be without such impertinent and useless repetitions; any obvious idea, when it is roving causelessly at a venture, being of more use and apter to suggest something worth consideration, than the insignificant buzz of purely empty sounds. But since the rousing of the mind, and setting the understanding on work with some degrees of vigour, does for the most part presently set it free from these idle companions; it may not be amiss, whenever we find ourselves troubled with them, to make use of so profitable a remedy that is always at hand.
NOTES.
SECTION I.
NOTES.
SECTION I.
Page 3. operative powers are directed. Cp. Essay on the Human Understanding, Bk. II, ch. 21, § 29: 'The Will is nothing but a power in the Mind to direct the operative faculties of a man to motion or rest. To the question. What is it determines the Will? the true and proper answer is, The Mind. For that which determines the general power of directing to this or that particular direction, is nothing but the agent itself exercising the power it has that particular way. If this answer satisfies not, 'tis plain the meaning of the question. What determines the Will? is this, ^^'hat moves the Mind, in every particular instance, to determine its general power of directing to this or that particular motion or rest? And to this I answer, The motive for continuing in the same state or action, is only the present Satisfaction in it: the motive to change is always some Uneasiness; nothing setting us upon the change of state, or upon any new action, but some Uneasiness. This is the great motive that works on the Mind to put it upon action, which for shortness sake we will call determining of the Will.' Locke's theory of volition seems, in brief, to be this: something, suggested by desire in the first instance, is regarded, on reflection, by the understanding as desirable; this motive, as it may be called, produces uneasiness; the imeasiness determines the will, and the will, thus directed, results in action.
Page 4. two or three thousand years. The date of Aristotle, from whom the scholastic logic was, with certain additions and modifications, derived, is the fourth century before Christ. He was born not earlier than 392 B.C., nor later than 3S4 b.c. He died in 322 B.C. But many traces of his logical doctrine are already to be Io6 NOTES, SECTION I.
found in Plato, and some may be carried back even as far as Zeno the Eleatic, who is said to have been born about 488 B.C.
Lord Vcridani's, that is, Francis Bacon, b. 1 560-1, d. 1626, who was created Baron Verulam, and subsequently Viscount St. Alban. He is commonly, but inaccurately, called Lord Bacon.
preface to his Novum Orgamim. This passage is to be found, not in the preface to the Novum Organum, but in that to the Instauratio Magna generally, of which great, but unfinished, undertaking the Novum Organum was designed to be the second part. This preface, with other small pieces, was, however, published along with the Novum Organum. The sentences quoted will be found in my edition of the Novum Organum, p. 161, or in Ellis and Spedding's Edition, vol. i, p. 129.
but became a part of it, literally, ' nor is it without evil itself.'
which took place, literally, -which is received,' that is, which is in common use.
subtilty. This "or subtility is the old way of spelling subtlety, which is derived from the Latin word subtilitas.
SECTION III.
Page 8. of one sort of notions. Cp. Bacon, Novum Organum, Bk. i, Aph. 54: ' Adamant homines scientias et contemplationes particulares; aut quia auctores et inventores se earum credunt; aut quia plurimum in illis operae posuerunt, iisque maxime assueverunt. Hujusmodi vero homines, si ad philosophiam et contemplationes universales se contulerint, illas ex prioribus phantasiis detorquent et corrumpunt.' He then goes on to exemplify this ' idol of the den ' in Aristotle, ' qui naturalem suam philosophiam logicae suae prorsus mancipavit,' in the Alchemists, and in Gilbert, who is charged with having subordinated the whole of his system to magnetism.
Matian Islands. Properly the Marianne or Ladrone Islands. These, to the number of about twenty, lie in the North Pacific Ocean, between the 13th and 21st degrees of N. lat. and the 144th and 146th of E. long. They were originally discovered in i.'i2i, by Magellan, who called them Las Islas de las Ladrones, or the Isles of Thieves, on account of the thievish propensities of their inhabitants. They were subsequently called the Mariana or Mariar.ne Islands from Mary Ann of Austria, queen of Spain, at whose ex- NOTES, SECTION IF. 107 pense Christian missionaries were sent over for their conversion. The statements made by Locke will be found in Martiniere's Dictionnaire Geographique et Critique. When Magellan set fire, as a punishment, to some of their huts and trees, the islanders are said to have ta'<en the fire for an animal, devouring its prey.
Page 9. hold fast that which is good, i Thess. v. 21. In the English Version "■ prove all things.' The Greek word is Soietfia^frt. The Apostle does not use these expressions in the same general sense as that in which Locke applies them, but is referring specially to x'^'^p'^of^O''''''^) spiritual gifts, real or assumed.
hid treasure. See Proverbs ii. 4.
Page 11. errant. Now spelt arrant, as when we speak of ' an arrant', that is, a thorough, 'fool.'
SECTION IV.
Page 14. to their fcrfection. This is a very common topic with moralists and psychologists. The readers of Aristotle will be reminded of several places in Eth. Nic. Bk. II, especially ch. i.
Page 15. wherein right reasoning consists. Both here and in the Thoughts concerning Education, Locke undoubtedly under^•alues the importance of rhetorical and logical rules, as offering guidance for effective speaking or correct reasoning, and contributing to protect the mind from the influence of sophisms. The passage (§ 188) in the Thoughts concerning Education may be compared with that in the text. ' Rhetoric and Logic, being the arts that in the ordinary method usually follow immediately after grammar, it may perhaps be wondered that I have said so little of them. The reason is, because of the little advantage young people receive by them. For I have seldom or never observed any one to get the skill of reasoning well or speaking handsomely, by studying those rules which pretend to teach it. And therefore I would have a young gentleman take a view of them in the shortest systems could be found, without dwelling long on the contemplation and study of those formalities. Right Reasoning is founded on something else than the Predicaments and Predicables, and does not consist in talking in Mode and Figure itself. But it is besides my present business to enlarge upon this speculation. To come therefore to what we have in hand: if you would have your son reason well, let him read Chillingworth; and if you would have him speak well, let him be Io8 NOTES, SECTION IV.
conversant in Tully, to give him the true idea of eloquence; and let him read those things that are well writ in English, to perfect his style in the purity of our language.'
To teach children or youths a number of mere abstract rules, without constant application and illustration, is the most senseless mode of education that could be devised. And it will always be a question whether, instead of beginning with the rule, we ought not to begin with the concrete instance, and, by analysis of the sentence or argument, shew the meaning or establish the validity of the rule. Thus, to listen to the best speakers may be the best way of learning to speak with effect; to read the best writers of learning to write in a clear, forcible, and interesting manner; to follow, through its various connections, a complicated piece of reasoning the surest rnethod of learning to discriminate between true and false arguments. But, in all these cases, the principles which underlie the art of the successful speaker or the demonstrations of the convincing reasoner ought to be pointed out to the pupil. Wherever we begin, the abstract rule and the concrete illustration ought never to be divorced in the practical work of teaching.
The question of the desirability or utility of teaching rules of rhetoric differs widely from the same question, when considered in reference to logic. So far as the rules of rhetoric aim at mere persuasion, apart from lucid order, agreeable utterance and the like, they may be regarded as devices for enabling a speaker, by manipulating arguments and exciting the passions and affections, to convince his auditors irrespectively of the soundness of the reasoning. But the sole object of the rules of logic is, or ought to be, to preserve the student from imposing by false reasoning upon himself, and to enable him to detect the fallacious reasonings of others. Hence, while the aim of logic is always a desirable one, that of rhetoric is often very questionable. Moreover, when the various rhetorical devices for setting off or detracting from the just force of an argument have once become known to the reader or auditor, he is put on his guard and they cease to have the designed effect; whereas the observance of the rules of logic is to the common interest of all persons, whether speakers or auditors, writers or readers, whose object is the ascertainment of truth and the avoidance of error.
The reader who wishes to see a defence of logical rules against the attacks of Locke and others may consult Mill's Logic, Intro- A'OTES, SECTION IV. 109