A treatise on the conduct of the understanding

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A TREATISE

ON THE CONDUCT OF THE

UNDERSTANDING.

BY JOHN LOCKE, GENT.

TO WHICH IS NOW ADDED

A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE.

3 :tfcto lEMtfon.

BOSTON :

PUBLISHED AT THE

WATER STREET BOOKSTORH
1833.

6

12.70

Dr. H-N. Fowter

LIFE OF LOCKE.

. John Locke, one of the greatest philosophers and most
valuable writers who have adorned this countrv, was born
at Wrington, in Somersetshire, on the twenty-ninth of Au-
gust, 1032. His father, who had been bred to the law,
acted i)i the capacity of steward, or court-keeper, to colonel
Alexander Popham 5 and, upon the breaking out of the civil
war, became a captain in the service of the parliament.
He was a gentleman of strict probity and economy, and
possessed of a handsome fortune 3 but, as it came much
impaired into the hands of his son, it was probably injured
through the misfortunes of the times. However, he took
great pains in his son's education, and though while he was
a child he behaved towards him with great distance and
severity, yet as he grew up, he treated him with more
familiarity, till at length they lived together rather as friends,
than as two persons, one of whom might justly claim respect
from the other. When he was of a proper age, young
Locke was sent to Westminster school, where he continued
till the year 1651 ; when he was entered a student of
Christ church-college, in the university of Oxford. Here
he so greatly distinguished himself by his application and
proficiency, that he was considered to be the most inge-
nious young man in the college. But, though he gained such
reputation in the university, he was afterwards often heard
to complain of the little satisfaction which he had found
in the method of study which had been prescribed to him,
and of the little service which it had afforded him, in en-
lightening and enlarging his mind, or in making him more
exact in his reasonings. The first books which gave him
a relish for the study of philosophy, were the writings of
Des Cartes 5 for though he did not approve of all his notions,
yet he found that he wrote with great perspicuity. Having
taken his degree of B. A. in 1655, and that of M. A. in
1658, Mr. Locke for some time closely applied himself to
the study of physic, going through the usual courses prepar-
atory to the practice j and it is said that he got some busi-

IV LIFE OF LOCKE,

ness in that profession at Oxford. So great was the deli-
cacy of his constitution, however, that he was not capable
of a laborious application to the medical art ; and it is not
improbable that his principal motive in studying it was, that
he might be qualified, when necessary, to act as his own
physician. In the year 1664, he accepted of an offer to go
abroad, in the capacity of secretary to sir William Swan,
who was appointed envoy from king Charles II. to the
elector of Brandenburg, and some other German princes 5
but retuming to England again within less than a year, he
resumed his studies at Oxford with renewed vigour, and
applied himself particularly to natural philosophy. While
he was at Oxford in 1666, an accident introduced him to
the acquaintance of lord Ashley, afterwards earl of Shaftes-
bury, which resulted in his inviting Mr. Locke to his house ;
and, in the year 1667, he prevailed on him to take up his
residence with him atLunning-hill.

By his acquaintance with this nobleman, Mr. Locke was
introduced to the conversation of the duke of Buckingham,
the earl of Halifax, and other of the most eminent persons
of that age, who were all charmed with his conversation.
In the year 1668, at the request of the earl and countess of
Northumberland, Mr. Locke accompanied them in a tour to
France, and staid in that country with the countess, while the
earl went towards Italy, with an intention of visiting Rome.
But this nobleman dying on his journey at Turin, the countess
came back to England sooner than was at first designed, and
Mr. Locke with her, who continued to reside, as before, at
lord Ashley's. That nobleman, who was then chancellor of
the exchequer, having, in conjunction with other lords, ob-
tained a grant of Carolina, employed Mr. Locke to draw up
the fundamental constitutions of that province. In exe-
cuting this task, our author had formed articles relative to
religion, and public worship, on those liberal and enlarged
principles of toleration, which were agreeable to the senti-
ments of his enlightened mind 5 but some of the clergy,
jealous of such provisions as might prove an obstacle to
their ascendency, expressed their disapprobation of them,
and procured an additional article to be inserted, securing
the countenance and support of the state only to the exer-
cise of religion according to the discipline of the established
church. Mr. Locke still retained his student's place at
Christ-church, and made frequent visits to Oxford, for the

LIFE OF LOCKE. V

va^e of consulting books in ibe prosecution of his studies,
and for the beneht of change of air. At lord Ashley's, he
inspected the education of his lordship's only son, who was
then about sixteen years of age 5 and executed that prov-
ince with the greatest care, and to the entire satisfaction of
his noble patron. As the young lord was but of a weakly
constitution, his father thought proper to marry him early,
lest the family should become extinct by his death. And,
since he was too young, and had too little experience to
choose a wife for himself, and lord Ashley had the highest
opinion of Mr. Locke's judgment, as well as the greatest
confidence in his integrity, he desired him to make a suita-
ble choice for his son. This was a difficult and delicate
task ; for though lord Ashley did not insist on a great for-
tune for his son, yet he would have him marry a lady of
a good family, an agreeable temper, a fine person, and,
above all, of good education and good understanding,
whose conduct would be very different from that of the gen-
erality of court ladies. Notwithstanding the difficulties at-
tending such a commission, Mr. Locke undertook it, and
executed it very happily. The eldest son by this marriage,
afterwards the noble author of the Characteristics, was
committed to the care of Mr. Locke in his education, and
gave evidence to the world of the master-hand which had
directed and guided his genius.

In 1670, an din the following year, Mr. Locke began to form
the plan of his Essay on the Human Understanding, at the
earnest request of some of his friends, who were accustomed
to meet in his chamber, for the purpose of conversing on
philosophical subjects ; but the employments and avocations
which were found for him by his patron would not then suf-
fer him to make any great progress in that work. About
this time, it is supposed, he was made fellow of the Royal
Society. In 1672, lord Ashley, having been created earl
of Shaftesbury, and raised to the dignity of lord high chan-
cellor of England, appointed Mr. Locke secretary of the
presentations ; but he held that place only till the end of
the following year, when the earl was obliged to resign the
great seal. "His dismissal was followed by that of Mr.
Locke, to whom the earl had communicated his most secret
affairs t and who contributed towards the publication of
some treatises, which were intended to excite the nation to
watch the conduct of the Roman Catholics, and to oppose

VI LIFE OF LOCKE,

the arbitrary designs of the court. After this, his lordship,
who was still president of the board of trade, appointed Mr.
Locke secretary to the same, which office he retained not
long1, the commission being- dissolved in the year 1674. In
the following year, he was admitted to the degree of bache-
lor of physic ; and it appears that he continued to prosecute
this study, and to keep up his acquaintance with several of
the faculty. In what reputation he was held by some of
the most eminent of them, we may judge from the testimo-
nial that was given of him by the celebrated Dr. Sydenham,
in his book, entitled, Observationes Medicse circa Morbo-
rum Acutorum Historiam et Curationem, &c. " You know,
likewise," says he, "how much my method has been
approved of by a person who has examined it to the bottom,
and who is our common friend : I mean Mr. John Locke,
who, if we consider his genius and penetrating and exact
judgment, or the strictness of his morals, has scarcely any
superior, and few equals now living." In the summer of
1675, Mr. Locke, being apprehensive of a consumption,
travelled into France, and resided for some time at Mont-
pellier, where he became acquainted with Mr. Thomas
Herbert, afterwards earl of Pembroke, to whom he com-
municated his design of writing his Essay on Human
Understanding, From Montpellier he went to Paris, where
he contracted a friendship with M. Justel, the celebrated
civilian, whose bouse was at that time the place of resorfc
for men of letters 5 and where a familiarity commenced
between him and several other persons of eminent learning.
In 1679, the earl of Shaftesbury, being again restored to
favour at court, and made president of the council, sent to
request that Mr. Locke wouJd return to England, which he
accordingly did. Within six months, however, that noble-
man was again displaced, for refusing his concurrence with
the designs of the court, which aimed at the establishment
of popery and arbitrary power 5 and, in 1682, he was
obhged to retire to Holland, to avoid a prosecution for
high treason, on account of pretended crimes of which he
was accused. Mr. Locke remained steadily attached to
his patron, following him into Holland 3 and upon his lord-
ship's death, which happened soon afterwards, he did not
think it safe to return to England, where his intima'e con-
nexion with lord Shaftesbury had created him some
powerful and malignant enemies. Before he had been a

LIFE OF LOCKE. m Vll

year in Holland, he was accused at the English court of
being the author of certain tracts which had been published
against the government 3 and, notwithstanding that another
person was soon afterwards discovered to be the writer of
them, yet as he was observed to join in company at the
Hague with several Englishmen who were the avowed
enemies of the system of politics on which the English
court now acted, information of this circumstance was con-
veyed to the earl of Sunderland, then secretary of state.
This intelligence lord Sunderland communicated to the
king, who immediately ordered that bishop Fell, then dean
of Christ-church, should receive his express command to
eject Mr. Locke from his student's place, which the bishop
executed accordingly. After this violent procedure of the
court against him in England, he thought it prudent to
remain in Holland, where he was at the accession of king
James II. Soon after that event, William Penn, the famous
quaker, who had known Mr. Locke at the university, used
his interest with the king to procure a pardon for him 5 and
♦voulcl have obtained it had not Mr. Locke declined the
acceptance of such an offer, nobly observing, that he had
no occasion for a pardon, since he had not been guilty of
any crime.

Li the year 1685, w'ior *r-e duke of Monmouth and his
party were making preparations in Holland for his rash
and unfortunate enterprise, the English envoy at the Hague
demanded that Mr. Locke, with several others, should be
delivered up to him, on suspicion of his being engaged in
that undertaking. And though this suspicion was not only
groundless, but without even a shadow of probability, it
obliged him to lie concealed nearly twelve months, till it
was sufficiently known that he had no concern whatever in
that business, Towards the latter find of the year 1686,
he appeared again in p.iMic; and in the following year
formed a literary soriet v a< Amsterdam, of which Limborch,
Le Clerc, and other learned men, were members, who met
together weekly for conversation upon subjects of universal
learning. About the end of the year 1687, our author
finished the composition of his great work, the Essay con-
cerning Human Lnderstanding, which had been the principal
object of his attention for some years 5 and that the public
might be apprised of the outlines of his plan, he made an
abridgment of it himself, which his friend Le Clerc trans-

VlU LIFE or LOCKE.

lated into French, and inserted in one of his "Biblio*
theques." This abridgment was so highly approved of by
all thinking persons, and sincere lovers of truth, that they
expressed the strongest desire to see the whole work>
During the time of his concealment, he wrote his first
Letter concerning Toleration, in Latin, which was first
printed at Gouda, in 1689, under the title of Epistola de
JTolerantia, &c. V2mo. This excellent performance, which
has ever since been held in the highest esteem by the best
judges, was translated into Dutch and French, in the same
year, and was also printed in English, in 4to. Before this
work made its appearance, the happy Revolution in 1688,
effected by the courage and good conduct of the prince of
Orange, opened the way for Mr. Locke's return to his
native country ; whither he came in the fleet which con-
veyed the princess of Orange. After public liberty had
been restored, our author thought it proper to assert his
own private rights ; and therefore put in his claim to the
student's place in Christ-church, of which he had been
unjustly deprived. Finding, however, that the society
resisted his pretensions, on the plea that their proceedings
had been conformable to their statutes, and that they could
not be prevailed upon to dispossess the person who had
been elected in his room, he desisted from his claim. It is
true, that they made him an offer of being admitted a
supernumerary student 5 but, as his sole motive in endeav-
ouring to procure his restoration was, that such a measure
might proclaim the injustice of the mandate for his ejection,
he did not think proper to accept it. As Mr. Locke was
justly considered to be a sufferer for the principles of the
Revolution, he might without much difficulty have obtained
some very considerable post; but he contented himself
with that of commissioner of appeals, worth about £200
per annum. In July, 1689, he wrote a letter to his friend
Limborch, with whom he frequently corresponded, in which
he took occasion to speak of the act of toleration, which
had then just passed, and at which he expressed his satis-
faction 5 though he at the same time intimated, that he
considered it to be defective, and not sufficiently compre-
hensive. " I doubt not/7 says he, "but you have already
heard, that toleration is at length established among us by
law j not, however, perhaps, with that latitude which you,
and such as you, true Christians, devoid of envy and ambi-

LIFE OF LOCKE. IX

tion, would have wished. But it is somewhat to have
proceeded thus far. And I hope these beginnings are the
foundations of liberty and peace, which shall hereafter be
established in the church of Christ."

About this time, Mr. Locke had an offer to go abroad in
a public character 3 and it was left to his choice whether
he would be envoy at the court of the emperor, the elector
of Brandenburg, or any other, where he thought that the
air would best agree with him ; but he declined it on
account of the infirm state of his health. In the year 1690,
he published his celebrated Essay concerning Human Un-
derstanding, in folio; a work which has made the author's
name immortal, and does honour to our country 3 which an
eminent and learned writer has styled, " one of the noblest,
the usefulest, the most original books the world ever saw.'7
But, notwithstanding its extraordinary merit, it gave great
offence to many people at the first publication, and was
attacked by various writers, most of whose names are now
forgotten. It was even proposed, at a meeting of the
heads of houses of the university of Oxford, to censure and
discourage the reading of it 3 and, after various debates
among themselves, it was concluded, that each head of a
house should endeavour to prevent it from being- read in
his college. They were afraid of the light which it poured
in upon the minds of men. But all their efforts were in
vain 3 as were also the attacks of its various opponents on
the reputation either of the work or its author, which con-
tinued daily to increase in every part of Europe. It was
translated into French and Latin 3 and the fourth in English,
with alterations and additions, was printed in the year
1700 3 since which time it has past through a vast number of
editions. In the year 1690, Mr. Locke published his Two
Treatises on Government, 8vo. — Those valuable treatises,
which are some of the best extant on the subject, in any
language, are employed in refuting and overturning sir
Robert Filmeris false principles, and in pointing out the
true origin, extent, and end of civil government. About
this time, the coin of the kingdom was in a very bad state,
owing to its having been so much clipped, that it wanted
above a third of the standard weight. The magnitude of
this evil, and the mischiefs which it threatened, having
engaged the serious consideration of parliament, Mr. Locke.
with the view of assisting those who were at the head of

X LIFE OF LOCKE.

affairs to form a right understanding of this matter, and to
excite them to rectify such shameiul abuse, printed Some
Considerations of the Consequences of lowering the Interest,
and raising the Value of Money, 1691, 8vo. Afterwards
he published some other small pieces on the same subject ;
by which he convinced the world, that he was as able to rea-
son on trade and business, as on the most abstract parts of
science. These writings occasioned his being frequently
consulted by the ministry, relative to the new coinage of
silver, and other topics. With the earl of Pembroke, then
lord keeper of the privy seal, he was for some time accus-
tomed to hold weekly conferences j and when the air of
London began to affect his lungs, he sometimes went to the
earl of Peterborough's seat, near Fulham, where he always
met with the most friendly reception. He was afterwards,
however, obliged to quit London entirely, at least during
the winter season, and to remove to some place at a greater
distance. He had frequently paid visits to sir Francis
Masham, at Oates, in Essex, about twenty miles from
London, where he found that the air agreed admirably well
with his constitution, and where he also enjoj^ed the most
delightful society. We may imagine, therefore, that he
was persuaded, without much difficulty, to accept of an
offer which sir Francis made, to give him apartments in his
house, where he might settle during the remainder of his
life. Here he was received upon his own terms, that he
might have his entire liberty, and look upon himself as at
his own house j and here he chiefly pursued his future
studies, being seldom absent, because the air of London
grew more and more troublesome to him.

In 1693, Mr. Locke published his Thoughts concerning
Education, 8vo. which he greatly improved in subsequent
editions. In 1695, king William, who knew how to appre-
ciate his abilities for serving the public, appointed him one
of the commissioners of trade and plantations} which
obliged him to reside more in London than he had done
for some time past. In the same year, he published his
excellent treatise, entitled The Reasonableness of Chris-
tianity, as delivered in the Scriptures, 8vo. which was
written, it is said, in order to promote the scheme which
king William had so much at heart, of a compromise with
the dissenters.

The asthmatic complaint, to which Mr. Locke had been

LIFE OF LOCKE. XI

long subject, increasing with his years, began now to subdue
his constitution, and rendered him very infirm. He, there-
fore, determined to resign his post of commissioner of trade
and plantations ; but he acquainted none of his friends with
his design, till he had given up his commission into the
king's own hand. His majesty was very unwilling to
receive it, and told our author, that he would be well
pleased with his continuance in that office, though he should
give little or no attendance 5 for that he did not desire him
to stay in town one day to the injury of his health. But
Mr. Locke told the king, that he could not in conscience
hold a place to which a considerable salary was annexed,
without discharging the duties of it 3 upon which the king
reluctantly accepted his resignation. Mr. Locke's behaviour
in this instance discovered such a degree of integrity and
virtue, as reflects more honour on his character than his
extraordinary intellectual endowments. His majesty enter
tained a great esteem for him, and would sometimes desire
his attendance, in order to consult with him on public affairs
and to know his sentiments of things. From this time, Mr.
Locke continued altogether at Oates, in which agreeable
retirement he applied himself wholly to the study of the
sacred Scriptures. In this employment he found so much
pleasure, that he regretted his not having devoted more of
his time to it in the former part of his life. And his great
regard for the sacred writings appears from his answer to a
relation, who had inquired of him what was the shortest and
surest way for a young gentleman to attain a true knowl-
edge of the Christian religion. " Let him study," said
Mr. Locke, " the holy Scripture, especially in the New
Testament. Therein are contained the words of eternal
life. It has God for its author; salvation for its end; and
truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. ;; Mr.
Locke now found his asthmatic disorder growing extremely
troublesome, though it did not prevent him from enjoying
great cheerfulness of mind. In this situation, his sufferings
were greatly alleviated by the kind attention and agreeable
conversation of the accomplished lady Masham, who was
the daughter of the learned Dr. Cudworth ; as this lady
and Mr. Locke had a great esteem and friendship for each
other. At the commencement of the summer of the year
1703, a season which, in former years, had always restored
him some degrees of strength, he perceived that it had

Xll LIFE OF LOCKE.

begun to fail him more remarkably than ever. This con-
vinced him that his dissolution was at no great distance,
and he often spoke of it himself, but always with great com-
posure ; while he omitted none of the precautions which,
from his skill in physic, he knew had a tendency to prolong
his life. At length his legs began to swell 3 and that
swelling increasing every day, his strength visibly dimin-
ished. He therefore prepared to take leave of the world,
deeply impressed with a sense of God;s manifold blessings
to him, which he took delight in recounting to his friends,
and full of a sincere resignation to the divine will, and of
firm hopes in the promises of future life. As he had been
incapable for a considerable time of going to church, he
thought proper to receive the sacrament at home 5 and two
of his friends communicating with him, as soon as the
ceremony was finished, he told the minister, "that he was
in perfect charity with all men, and in a sincere communion
with the church of Christ, by what name soever it might be
distinguished.77 He lived some months after this 5 which
time he spent in acts of piety and devotion. On the day
before his death, lady Masham being alone with him, and
sitting by his bed-side, he exhorted her to regard this world
only as a state of preparation for a better 5 adding " that
he had lived long enough, and that he thanked God he had
enjoyed a happy life 5 but that, after all, he looked upon
this life to be nothing but vanity.77 He had no rest that
night, and resolved to try to rise on the following morning,
which he did, and was carried into his study, where he was
placed in an easy chair, and slept for a considerable time.
Seeming a little refreshed, he would be dressed as he used
to be, and observing lady Masham reading to herself in the
Psalms while he was dressing, he requested her to read
aloud. She did so, and he appeared very attentive, till,
feeling the approach of death, he desired her to break off,
and in a few minutes expired, on the twenty-eighth of
October, 1704, in the seventy- third year of his age. He
was interred in the church of Oates, where there is a doce©4
monument erected to his memory, with a rr.odni i&dX£^JkM
m Latin, written by himself.

X1U

CONTENTS.

Introduction, 3

Parts, 6

Reasoning1, 7

Practice and Habits, 16

Ideas, 19

Principles, 20

Mathematics, 29

Religion, 34

Ideas, 36

IndifFerency, 41

Examine, 41

Observations, 46

Bias, 48

Arguments, 49

Haste, 51

Desultory, 53

Smattering, 54

Universality, 54

Reading, « 58

Intermediate Principles, 61

Partiality, 62

Theology, 63

Partiality, 65

Haste, 75

Anticipation, 78

Resignation 79

XIV CONTENTS.

Practice, 80

Words, 83

Wandering*, .... , 85

Distinction, 87

Similes, 93

Assent, 95

Indifferency, 97

Question, 104

Perseverance, 104

Presumptioi), • 105

Despondency, 106

Analogy, 110

Association, Ill

Fallacies, 115

Fundamental Verities, 120

Bottoming, 122

Transferring of Thoughts, 123

OF THE

CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

Quid tarn teinerariu.m tamque indignum sapientis gravi-
tate atque constant! a, quam aut falstim sentire. aut quod noil
satis explorate perceptum sit et cognitum sine uHa dubitatione
defendere ? Cic. de i\atura Deomm, lib. 1.

§ 1. 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 who is the agent determines himself to
this or that voluntary action, upon some pre-
cedent knowledge, or appearance of knowl-
edge in the understanding. No man ever
sets himself about any thing 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 hfe
operative powers are directed. The will it-
self, how absolute and uncontrollable soever it
may be thought, never fails in its obedience
to the dictates of the understanding. Tern-

4 OF THE CONDUCT

pies 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 in-
visible 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 judg-
ments 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 ap-
plause of what was, because it was ; but en-
larged his mind to what it might be. In his
preface to his Novum Organum concerning lo-
gic, he pronounces thus : Qui summas dialecticaz

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 6

partes tribuerunt, at que hide Jidissima scientiis
prcesidia comparari putarunt, verissime et optime
viderunt intellectual humanum sibi pefndsswn me-
tito suspecium esse debere. Verum injirmior om-
nino est malo medicina ; nee ipsa mali expers.
Siquidem dialeciica, quce recepta est, licet ad civi-
lia et arieSy quce in sermone et opinione positce
sunt, reciissime adhibeaiur ; natures tamen sub-
llliialem longo iniervallo -non attingit, et pren-
sando quod noncapit, ad errores potius slabilien-
dos et quasi jigendos, quam ad viam ventati
aperiendam valuii.

u They, says he, who attributed so much to
logic, perceived very well and truly, that it
was not safe to trust the understanding; to it-
self, 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 opin-
ion ; yet comes very far short of subtilty in
the real performances of nature, and catch-
ing 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 perfecter use and employ-
ment of the mind and understanding should
be introduced." " Necessario requireiur ut me-
lior et perfectior mentis et intellectus humani use*
et adoperatio intrcducalur."
b2

6 OF THE CONDUCT

§ 2. 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 na-
tures 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 na-
tural 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 endeavour to point out proper reme-
dies for in the following discourse.

Of THE UNDERSTANDING. 7

§ 3. 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.

1. The first is of those who seldom reason
at all, but do and think according: to the ex-
ample of others, whether parents, neighbours,
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 them-
selves.

2. 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 farther 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 unbiassed indifferency to, they

8 OF THE CONDUCT

want not abilities to talk and hear reason>
where they have no secret inclination that
hinders them from being tractable to it.

3. The third sort is of those who readily
and sincerely follow reason, but for want of
having that which one may call large, sound,
round-about sense, have not a full view of all
that relates to the question, and may be of
moment to decide it. We are all short-
sighted, 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 de-
fect I think no man is free. We see but in
part, and we know but in part, and there-
fore 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 come short of him in
capacity, quickness and penetration : for,
since no one sees all, and we generally have
different prospects of the same thing, accord-
ing 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 conse-
quences from what it builds on are evident

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 9

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 in-
finite advantage that angels and separate
spirits may have over us ; who, in their sever-
al degrees of elevation above us, may be
endowed with more comprehensive faculties,
and some of them perhaps having 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 rela&ons.
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 defec-
tive, and they are very often mistaken in
their judgments : the reason whereof is, ihey
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

10 OF THF CONDUCT

shines, and as they conclude, day blesses
them ; but the rest of that vast expansum
they give up to night and darkness, and
so avoid coming near it. They have a pretty
traffic with known correspondents in some
little creek ; within that they confine them-
selves, 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 survey the riches that nature hath 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 what-
soever is good in the universe. Those who
live thus mewed up within their own con-
tracted territories, and will not look abroad
beyond the boundaries that chance, conceit,
or laziness has set to their inquires, but live
separate from the notions, discourses, and at-
tainments of the rest of mankind, may not
amiss be represented by the inhabitants of
the Marian islands ; who being separated hy
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 convenien-
ces of life amongst them had never reached
so far as to the use of fire, till the Span-
iards, not many years since, in their voyages

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 11

from Acapalco to Manilla, brought it amongst
them : yet in the want and ignorance of al-
most 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 hap-
piest and wisest people of the universe. But
for all that, nobody, I think, will imagine
them deep naturalists, or solid metaphysi-
cians ; nobody will deem the quickest-sighted
among them to have very enlarged views in
ethics or politics, nor can any one 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 neighbouring islands within his com-
merce ; but far enough from that comprehen-
sive enlargement of mind which adorns a
soul devoted to truth, assisted with letters,
and a free generation of the several views
and sentiments of thinking men of all sides.
Let not men, there 'ore, that would have
a sight of what every one 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 tbat they study, or the books
that they read. To prejudge other men's
notions before we have looked into them, is

12 OF THF CONDUCT

not to show their darkness, but to put out our
own eyes. Try all things, hold fast that which
is goody is a divine rule, coming from the Fa-
ther of light and truth 5 and it is hard to
know what other way men can 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 rub
bish 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 sub-
stantial 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 assuming
prejudices, over-weening presumption, and
narrowing our minds. The want of exercis-
ing it in the full extent of things intelligible,
is that which weakens and extinguishes this
noble faculty in us. Trace it, and see whe-
ther it be not so. The day-labourer 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 employ-
ment : the low mechanic of a country town

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 13

does somewhat outdo him ; porters and coblers
of great cities surpass them. A country gen-
tleman who, leaving Latin and learning in the
university, removes thence to his mansion-
house, and associates with neighbours 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 we 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 gleaner 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 farther 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 every thing unexception-
able. These divisions and systems were made
by men, and carry the mark of fallible on
c

14 OP THE CONDUCT

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 differ-
ent scope that has been given to their under-
standings to range in, for the gathering up of
information, and furnishing their heads with
ideas and notions and observations, whereon
to employ their mind and form their under-
standings.

It will possibly be objected, u who is suffi-
cient for all this ?" I answer, more than can
be imagined. Every one 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 answrer 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,

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 15

and survey the land every where, as if he
were going to make a purchase ; but yet every
one must allow that he shall know a country
better, that makes often sallies into it, and
traverses up and down, than he that, like
a mill-horse, goes still round in the same
track, or keeps within the narrow bounds of a
field or two that delight him. He that will
inquire out the best books in every science,
and inform himself of the most material au-
thors of the several sects of philosophy and
religion, will not find it an infinite work to
acquaint himself with the sentiments of man-
kind, concerning the most weighty and com-
prehensive 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 facul-
ties improved ; and the light, which the remote
and scattered parts of truth will give to one
another, will so assist his judgment, that he
will seldom be widely out, or miss giving proof
of a clear head and a comprehensive know-
ledge. 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 dis-
tinguish 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 inquiries
into all parts after truth, must be sure to settle

16 OF THE CONDUCT

in his head determined ideas of all that he
employs his thoughts about, and never fail to
judge himself, and judge unbiassedly, of all
that he receives from others, either in their
writings or discourses. Reverence or prejudice
must not be suffered to give beauty or de-
formity to any of their opinions.

§ 4. Of Practice and Habits.

We are born with faculties and powers
capable almost of any thing, such at least as
would carry us farther than can easily be ima-
gined : but it is only the exercise of those
powers which gives us ability and skill in any
thing, 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 propor-
tioned, 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 endeavour 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 incredi-
ble and astonishing actions do we find rope-
dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to !

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 17

Not but that sundry, 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 conception of unpractised specta-
tors, are nothing but the mere effects of use
and industry in men, whose bodies have noth-
ing 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 excellencies, which are looked on as
natural endowments, will be found, when ex-
amined into more narrowly, to be the produci
of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch only
by repeated actions. Some men are remarked
for pleasantness in raillery ; others for apo-
logues 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 per-
ceiving how ; and that is attributed wholly to
nature, which was much more the effect of
c2

18 OF THE CONDUCT

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 any thing for wrant 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 under-
standings 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 hed-
ger, at past fifty. And he will not have much
better success, who shall endeavour, 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 oratory.
Nobody is made any thing by hearing of
rules, or laying them up in his memory ;

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 19

practice must settle the habit of doing with-
out 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 a strict reasoner, by a set of rules,
showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
This being so, that defects and weakness
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 want of parts, when
the fault lies in want of a due improvement
of them. We see men frequently dexter*
ous and sharp enough in making a bargain,
who, if you reason with them about matters
of religion, appear perfectly stupid.

§ 5. Ideas.

I will not here, in what relates to the right
conduct and improvement of the under-
standing, 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 with others in discoursing
about it. — Those hinderances of our under-
standings in the pursuit of knowledge I have

20 iF THE CONDUCT

sufficiently enlarged upon in another place ,
so that nothing more needs here to be said
of those matters.

6. 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 as true. It is not unusual
to see men rest their opinions upon founda-
tions that have no more certainty and solidity
than the propositions built on them, and em-
braced for their sake. Such foundations are
these and the like, viz. The founders or lead-
ers 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 hath
been long received in the world, therefore
it is true ; or it is new, and therefore false.

These, and many 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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 21

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 ac-
knowledge 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
understandings, 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 em-
brace 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 proposi-

22 OF THE CONDUCT

tion, but it presently hastens to some hy-
pothesis to bottom it on, till then it is un-
quiet and unsettled. — So much do our own
very tempers dispose us to a right use of
our understandings, if we would follow as
wc should the inclinations of our nature.

In some matters of concernment, especial-
ly 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 con-
tradiction too heavy for any one's mind to
lie constantly under, for him to pretend seri-
ously to be persuaded of the truth of any
religion, and yet not be able to give any rea-
son of his belief, or to say any thing for his
preference of this to any other opinion ; and
therefore they must make use of some prin-
ciples 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 al-
lege that they are not misled when we com-
plain they are.

If this be so, it will be urged, why then do
they not 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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 23

not make use of better and surer principles,
is because they cannot : but this inability
proceeds not from want of natural parts (for
those few whose case that is are to be ex*
cused) but for want of use and exercise.
Few men are from their youth accustomed
to strict reasoning, and to trace tiie depen-
dence of any truth in a long train of conse-
quences to its remotest principles, and to ob*
serve its connection ; and he that by frequent
practice has not been used to this employ-
ment of his understanding, it is no more won-
der 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 practised either
of them.

Nay, the most of men are so wholly strangers
to this, that they do not so much as perceive
their want of it ; they despatch the ordinary
business of their callings by rote, as we say,
as they have learned it ; and if at any time
they miss success, they impute it to any thing
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 recom-
mended to their thoughts, their reasoning
about it is still after their own fashion ; be it
better or worse, it serves their turns, and

24 OF THE CONDUCT

is the best they are acquainted with ; and
therefore when they are led by it into mis-
takes, and their business succeeds according-
ly, 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. What-
soever made his business to miscarry, it was
not want of right thought and judgment in
himself : he sees no such defect in himself,
but is satisfied *hat 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 con-
tent 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 foun-
dations, 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 many different and opposite deduc-
tions must be examined and laid together,
before a man can come to make a right
judgment of the point in question. What

OP THE UNDERSTANDING. 25

then can be expected from men that neither
see the want of any such kind of reasoning as
this : nor, if they do, know 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 ever
so much vigour 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
connexion of ideas, and following them in
train. Nothing does this better than mathe-
matics, which, therefore, I think should be
taught all those who have the time and oppor-
tunity ; not so much to make them mathema-
ticians, as to make them reasonable creatures ;
for though we all call ourselves so, because

26 OF THE CONDUCT

we are bom to it, if we please ; yet we may 4
truly say, nature gives us but the seeds of it :
we are born to be, if we please, rational crea-
tures ; but it is use and exercise only that
make us so, and we are, indeed, so no farther
than industry and application have 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, be-
cause every one, 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 to say otherwise is thought so unjust an af-
front, 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 em-
ployed. But it is as true that he who can
reason well to-day about one sort of matters,
cannot at all reason to-day 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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 27

cannot say he is rational, how capable soev-
er he may be, by time and exercise, to be-
come so.

Try in men of low and mean education, who
have never elevated their thoughts above the
spade and the plough, nor looked beyond the
ordinary drudgery of a day-labourer. Take
the thoughts of such an one, used for many
years to one track, out of that narrow com-
pass, 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 imme-
diately depend, you will find in most men have
governed ail 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 pole-
star 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 a.l that can be said to show
their weakness ; o * if they give them up to
their reasons, they, with them, give up all
truth and farther inquiry, 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 ©f them ; for

28 OP THE COXDUCT

long deductions from remote principles are
what they have not been used to, and cannot
manage.

What then, can grown men never be im-
proved, or enlarged in their understandings ?
I say not so ; but this I think I may say, that
kt will not be done without industry and appli-
cation, which will require more time and
pains than grown men, settled in their course
of life, will allow to it, and therefore very sel-
dom is done. And this very capacity of at-
taining 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 ajs
well as bodies, and we must expect nothing
from our understandings, any farther than they
are perfected by habits.

The Americans are not all born with worse
understandings than the Europeans, though we
see none of them have such reaches in the arts
and sciences. And, among the children of a
poor countryman, the lucky chance of educa-
tion, and getting into the world, gives one in-
finitely 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 ex-
ercise alone that opens them. Sometimes they
will stick a long time at a part of demonstra-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING; 29

tion, not for want of will and application, but
really for want of perceiving the connexion of
two ideas, that, to one whose understanding is
more exercised, is as visible as any thing can
be. The same would be with a grown man
beginning to study mathematics ; the under-
standing, for want of use, often sticks in eve-
ry plain way, and he himself that is so puz-
zled, when he comes to see the connexion,
wonders what it was he stuck at, in a case so
plain.

§ 7. 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 occa-
sion. For, in all sorts of reasoning, every sin-
gle argument should be managed as a mathe-
matical demonstration : the connexion and de-
pendence of ideas should be followed, till the
mind is brought to the source on which it bot-
toms, and observes the coherence all along,
though in proofs of probability one such train
is not enough to settle the judgment, as in de-
monstrative knowledge.
d2

SO OF THE COxNTDUCT

Where a truth is made out by one demon-
stration, there needs no farther inquiry ; but
in probabilities where there wants demonstra-
tion 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 bal-
ance one against another, and, upon the whole,
the understanding determine its assent.

This is a way of reasoning the understand-
ing should be accustomed to, which is so dif-
ferent 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 lalsehood of the
question is to be determined, and victory ad-
judged to the opponent or defendant ; which
is all one as if one should ba!ance an account
by one sum, charged and discharged, when
there are an hundred others to be taken into
consideration.

This, therefore, it would be well if mens'
minds were accustomed to, and that early ;
that they might not erect their opinions upon
one single view, when so many other are requi-
site to make up the account, and must come
into the reckoning, before a man can form a

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 31

right judgment. This would enlarge their
minds, and give a due freedom to their under-
standings, that they might not be led into er-
ror by presumption, laziness, or precipitancy ;
for I think nobody can approve such a con-
duct of the understanding as should mislead it
from truth, though it be ever so much in fash-
ion 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 me-
thinks, 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 upon their minds, by some
trials and essays, in all the sorts and matters
of reasoning. I have before mentioned ma-
thematics, 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 algebra-
ist ; but yet I think the study of them is of

32 OF THE CONDUCT

infinite use, even to grown men ; first, by ex-
perimentally convincing them, that to make
any one 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 understand-
ings.

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 pres-
ent inquiry 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 sub-
jects, besides quantity, is what is absolutely
requisite to just reasoning, though in them it
is not so easily observed, nor so carefully
practised. In those parts of knowledge where
it is thought demonstration has nothing to do,
men reason as it were in the lump ; and it
upon a summary and confused view, or upon
a partial consideration, they can raise the ap-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 33

pcarance of a probability, they usually rest
content ; especially if it be in a dispute where
every little straw is laid hold on, and every
thing that can but be drawn in any way 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 take
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 te got by an application to
mathematical demonstrations, and that is, of
using the mind to a long train of consequen-
ces ; but having mentioned that already, I
shall not again here repeat it.

As to men whose fortunes and time are
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
every thing. Knowledge and science in gen-
eral is the business onlv 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 wrhat is their daily employ-
ment. This one cannot think them incapable
of, without levelling them with the brutes,

34 OF THE CONDUCT

and charging them with a stupidity below the
rank of rational creatures.

5) 8. Religion.

Besides his particular calling for the support
of this life, every one has a concern in a fu-
ture 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 reli-
gion, 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 improvemnt of knowl-
edge 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 ac-
cording 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 understand-
ing 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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 35

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 princi-
ples of that religion) if due care were taken
of them. For, If I mistake not, the peas-
antry lately in France (a rank of people un-
der a much heavier pressure of want and
poverty than the day-labourers 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 mean-
er sort of people must give themselves up to
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 understand-
ings, and take no care to employ them as
they ought, and set them right in the knowl-
edge 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 advance-
ments might be made in knowledge of all
kinds, especially in that of the greatest con-

36 OF THE CONDUCT

cern and largest views, if men would make
a right use of their faculties, and study their
own understandings.

§ 9. Ideas.

Outward corporeal objects, that constantly
importune our senses, and captivate our ap-
petites, fail not to fill our heads with lively
and lasting ideas of that kind. Here the
mind needs not to be set upon getting greater
store ; they offer themselves fast enough, and
are usually entertained in such plenty, arid
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
speakirg 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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 37

such abstract ideas steady and settled in
them, give me leave to ask how any one 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 knowl-
edge 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 disagree-
ment 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 repre-
sent 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 harbour
no inconsistencies, and that they have a real
existence where real existence is supposed,
and are not mere chimeras with a supposed
existence.

E

38 OF THE CONDUCT

§ 10. Prejudice.

Every one 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 an hinderance to knowl-
edge. What now is the cure ? No other but
this, that every man should let alone other's
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 every one impartially to ex-
amine himself. If others will not deal fairly
with 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 in their eyes, should
that hinder me from couching mine as soon
as I can ? Every one declares against blind-
ness, 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 max-
ims, keep those in the dark from truth who
build on them. Such are usually the preju-
dices imbibed from education, party, rever-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 39

ence, fashion, interest, &c. This is the mote
which every one 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 whe-
ther they are such as will bear the trial ? But
yet this should be one of the first things every
one 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 hinderance 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 opin-
ion, must suppose (unless he be self-con-
demned) 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

40 OF THE CONDUCT

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 n. For if what he holds be,
as he gives 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 sup-
port 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 eviuence,
owes this excess of his adherence only to pre-
judice, 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 etand in opposition to it, un-
heard and unexamined ; which, what is it but
prejudice ? Qui cequum statuerit parte inaudila
altera eliamsi cequum statuerit, haud cequus fuer-
it. 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.

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 41

§ 11. Indifferency.

First, he must not be in love with any opin-
ion, 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. Men 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 them-
selves, 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 ever so warm, will not excuse us, for
this is plainly prejudice.

§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
e2

4$ OF THE CONDUCT

have the heart or the skill to do, I shall not
determine ; but this, I am sure, is that which
every one 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 ban-
tered or misled by others. The inability i here
speak of is not any natural defect that makes
men incapable of examining their own princi-
ples. 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 rea-
soning : 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 un-
practised 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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 43

confessed to be a wrong use of our understand-
ings, to build our tenets (in things where we
are concerned to hold the truth) upon prin-
ciples that may lead us into error. We take
our principles at hap-hazard, 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 cre-
dulity ?

In these two things, viz. an equal in-
differ ency for all truth ; I mean the receiving
it, the love of it, as truth, but not loving it
for any other reason, before wre know it to
be true ; and in the examination of our prin-
ciples, and not receiving any for such, nor
building on thern, till we are fully convinced,
as rational creatures, of their so idity, 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, ex-
travagance, any thing rather than under-
standing, if it must be under the constraint
of receiving and holding opinions by the
authority of any thing 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

44 OF THE CONDUCT

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 indifferen-
cy 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 in-
differency, 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 or truth, is the great road to error.
Those who are not indifferent which opinion
is true, are guilty of this ; they suppose with-
out examining, that what they hold is true,
and they 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, 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 under-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 45

standings, 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 prin-
ciples, that they ought to be rejected, as false
and erroneous ; and often cause men so edu-
cated, when they come abroad into the world,
and find they cannot maintain the principles
so taken up and rested in, to cast oft* all prin-
cip'es, 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 t shall set down some few

46 OP THE CONDUCT

to excite men, especially those who make
knowledge their business, to look into them-
selves, and observe whether they do not in-
dulge some weaknesses, allow some miscar-
riages in the management of their intellect-
ual faculty, which is prejudicial to them in
the search of truth.

§13. Observations

Particular matters of fact are the un-
doubted foundations on which our civfl and
natural knowledge is built : the benefit the
understanding makes of them is to draw from
them conclusions, whicn 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 histo-
rians, by 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 them-
selves observations from what they read, they
are very little improved by all that crowd of

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 47

particulars, that either pass through, or lodge
themselves in, their understandings. They
dream on in a constant course of reading and
cramping themselves, but not digesting any
thing, it produces nothing but a heap of cru-
dities.

If their memories retain well, one may say
they have the materials of knowledge, but
like those for building, they are of no advan-
tage, if there be no other use made of them
but to let them lie heaped up together. — Op-
posite 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 ax-
ioms from every particular they may 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 into
their minds to be judged of, by what they
shall find in history to confirm or reverse these
imperfect observations ; which may be estab-
lished into rules fit to be relied on, when they
are justified by a sufficient and wary induction

48 OF THE CONDUCT

of particulars. He that makes no such re-
flections 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
wrill improve every matter of fact into a max-
im, 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.

§ 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, es-
pecially of men and things that may any way
relate to their present circumstances and in-
terest. Truth is all simple, all pure, will bear
no mixture of any thing else with it. It is
rigid and inflexible to any bye interests ; and
so should the understanding be, whose use aad
excellency lies in conforming itself to it. To
think of every thing just as it is in itself, is
the proper business of the understanding,
though it be not that which men always em-
ploy it to. This all men, at first hearing, al-
low is the right use every one should make of
his understanding. Nobody will be at such an
open defiance with common sense, as to pro-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 49

fess that we should not endeavour 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 ex-
cuse themselves, and think they have reason to
do so, if they have but a pretence that it is
for God, or a good cause ; that is, in effect for
themselves, their own persuasion or party ; for
to 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 design-
edly restrain themselves from having just
thoughts of every thing, as far as they are
concerned to inquire. And as fcr 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.

§ 15. Arguments.

Very muoh of kin to this is the hunting: after
arguments to make good one side of a ques-
tion, and wholly to neglect and refuse those
which favour the other side. What is this
but wilfully to misguide the understanding,
and is so far from giving truth its due value,

F

50 OF THE CONDUCT

that it wholly debases it : espouse opinions
that best comport with their power, profit, or
credit, and then seek arguments to support
them ? Truth lit upon this way is of no
more avail to us than error ; for what is so ta-
ken up by us may be false as well as true, and
he has not done his duty who has thus stum-
bled 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 me-
mory, are there ready indeed to supply copi-
ous talk with some appearance of reason, but
are far from helping us to judge right. Such
variety of arguments only distract the under-
standing that relies on them, unless it has gone
farther than such a superficial way of examin-
ing : 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 an-
nexed to those determined ideas. These we
are to consider, with their several relations
and habitudes, and not amuse ourselves with

* OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 51

floating names, and words of indetermined
signification, which we can use in several
senses to serve a turn. It is in tne 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 any one questions the foundations
they are built upon, he will be at a nonplus,
and be fain to give up his implicit knowledge.

§ 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 in-
quiry. 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

52 OF THE CONDUCT

upon testimony, when testimony of right hps
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 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 ex-
amined and brought to a balance. In some
cases the mind is determined by probable
topics in inquiries, where demonstration may
be had. AJ1 these and several others, which
laziness, impatience, custom, and want of use
and attention lead men into, are misapplica-
tions of the understanding in the search of
truth. In every question the nature and man-
ner of the proof it is capable of should be con-
sidered, to make our inquiry such as it should
be. This would save a great deal of frequent-
ly misemployed pains, and lead us sooner to
that discovery and possession of truth we are
capable of. The multiplying variety of ar-
guments, especially frivolous ones, such as are
all that are merely verbal, is not only lost la-
bour, but cumbers the memory to no pur-
pose, and serves only to hinder it from siez-
ing 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 ;

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 63

when iii 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 im-
patience of the mind also, that a not due
tracing of the arguments to their true foun-
dation 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 opinionatry, but is
certainly the farthest way about to knowl-
edge. For he that will know, must by the
connexion 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 knowl-
edge.

§ 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.
f2

64 OF THE CONDUCT

the same clothes, or fashion, is to a court-
lady.

§ 18. 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.

§ 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
stored a magazi e, that nothing could be pro-
posed which he was not master of, and was
readily furnished to entertain any one. —
This is an excellency, indeed, and a great
one too, to have a real and true knowledge \a
all, or most of the objects of contemplatlm.
But it is what the mind of one and the same

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 55

man can hardly attain unto ; and the instan-
ces are so few of those who have, in any
measure, approached towards it, that I know
not whether they are to be proposed as ex-
amples in the ordinary conduct of the under-
standing. For a man to understand fully the
business of his particular calling in the com-
monwealth, and of religion, which is his call-
ing as he is a man in the world, is usually
enongh 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 toward
universal knowledge ; yet I do not doubt, but
if the right way weie taken, and the methods
of inquiry 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
and a suppleness to apply itself

56 OF THE CONDUCT

more closely and dexterously to the bents
and trrns of the matter in all its researches
Besides, this universal taste of all the scien-
ces, 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, will 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 knowl-
edge, and that will become every thing. The
mind will take such a tincture from a famili-
arity with that object, that every thing else,
how remote soever, will be brought under
the same view. A metaphysician will bring
ploughing and gardening immediately to ab-
stract 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, sulphur, and mercury ; 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 ac-
commodate Moses's 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.

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 57

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 useful-
ness 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 understandings in so wide a
variety and stock of knowledge. But I do
not propose it as a variety and stock of knowl-
edge, but a variety and freedom of think-
ing, as an increase of the powers and activi-
ty of the mind, not as an enlargement of its
possessions.

58 OFvTHE CONDUCT

5} 20. Reading.

This is that which I think great readers are
apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read
of every thing, are thought to understand
every thing too ; but it is not always so.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materi-
als 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, in-
deed, 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 reader 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, ar>d coherence of what is said ; and
then, as far as ayc apprehend and see the
connexion 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 pro-
duce the arguments we have found in them
Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 59

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 foun-
dations, 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
support the tenets of it. Such men wilfully
exclude themselves from truth, and from all
true benefit to be received by reading. Others
of more mdifferency 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, un-
easy task ; use and exercise will give it facili-
ty. 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 t®
lead them through the mizmaze of variety
of opinions and authors to truth and certain-

60 OF THE CONDUCT

ty. This young beginners should be entered
in, and showed the us3 of, that they may
profit by their reading. Those who are stran-
gers 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 pro-
gress, 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 answrer, 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 inquiring into the conduct of the under-
standing 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
every one 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 any one only in
the beginning : when custom and exercise
have made it familiar it will be despatched,
on most occasions, without resting or inter-
ruption 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 see as much at

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 61

one glimpse as would require a long discourse
to lay before another, and make out in an en-
tire and gradual deduction. Besides, that
when the first difficulties are over, the delight
and sensible advantage it brings, mightily en-
courages and enlivens the mind in reading,
which without this is very improperly called
study.

{5 21. Intermediate principles.

As an 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 its sever-
al stages ; that is to say, intermediate princi-
ples, which it might have recourse to in the
examining those positions that come in its
way. These, though they are not self-evi-
dent 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 unquestion-
able truths to prove other points depending on
them by a nearer and shorter view than re-
mole and general maxims. These may serve
as land-marks 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

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62 OF THE CONDUCT

propositions. Certain theorems, that they
have settled to themselves upon sure demon-
stration, 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 prin-
ciples. Only in other sciences great care is
to be taken that they establish those interme-
diate principles with as much caution, exact-
ness, and indiiferency, 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, &x. 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.

§ 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 partial-
ity 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 know-
ledge, which every one has acquainted him-
self with, were that alone which was worth

OP THE UNDERSTANDING. 63

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 pec Jiar study : a view of its beau-
ties, 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 as-
tronomy or chemistry, or perhaps some yet
meaner part of knowledge, wherein I have
got some smattering, or am somewhat advan-
ced, 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 with-
in narrow bounds, and hinders it from looking
abroad into other provinces of the intellectu-
al world, more beautiful possibly, and more
fruitful than that which it had till then labour-
ed in ; wherein it might find, besides new
knowledge, ways or hints whereby it might be
enabled the better to cultivate its own.

§ 23. Theology.

There is indeed one science (as they are now
distinguished) incomparably above all the rest,

64 OF THE CONDUCT

where it is not by corruption narrowed into a
trade of 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 fu-
ture state, is the comprehension of all other
knowledge directed to its true end ; i. e. the
honour and veneration of the Creator, and
the happiness 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, 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 sci-
ence which would truly enlarge men's minds,
were it studied, or permitted to be studied ev-
ery 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 imposi-
tions. I shall say no more here of this, but
that it is undoubtedly a wrong use of my un-
derstanding, to make it the rule and measure

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 65

of another man's ; a use which it is neither
fit for, nor capable of.

§ 24. Partiality.

This partiality, where it is not permitted an
authority to render all other studies insignifi-
cant or contemptible, is often indulged so far
as to be xelied 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 prefer-
ence to the methods of that science, they in-
troduce lines and diagrams into their study of
divinity, or politic inquiries, as if nothing
could be known without them ; and others,
accustomed to retired speculations, run natu-
ral philosophy into metaphysical notions, ami
the abstract generalities of logic ; and how
often may one meet with religion and morali-
ty treated of in the terms of the laboratory,
and thought to be improved by the methods
and notions o£ chemistry ? But he, that will
take care of the conduct of his understand-
ing to direct it right to the knowledge of
things, must avoid those undue mixtures, 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

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66 OF THE CONDUCT

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 will show as in
what way they are to be understood. For to
have right conceptions about them, we must
bring our understandings to the inflexible na-
tures, and unalterable relations of things, and
not endeavour to bring things to any precon-
ceived notions of our own.

There is another partiality very commonly
observable in men of study, no less prejudi-
cial nor ridiculous than the formei ; and that
is a fantastical and wild-attributing all know-
ledge to the ancients alone, or to the moderns
This raving upon antiquity in matter of poe-
try, Horace has wittily described and exposed
in one of his satires. The same sort of mad-
ness may be found in reference to all the
other sciences. Some will not admit an opin-
ion not authorised 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 al-
low 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

or THE UNDERSTANDING. 67

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 educa-
tion, 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 any one 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 new-
ness will to posterity be old, but not thereby
be less true or less genuine. There is no occa-
sion, 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 ming-
led in them

68 OP THE CONDUCT

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 can-
not be deceived ; and, therefore, will net ven-
ture to look beyond the received notions of
the place and age, nor have so presumptuous
a thought as to be wiser than their neighbours.
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 where ever God de-
livered 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 will know the
truth of things must leave the common and
beaten track, which none but weak and ser-
vile minds are satisfied to trudge along con-
tinually in. Such nice palates relish nothing
but strange notions quite out of the way :
whatever is commonly received, has the mark
of the beast on it ; and they think it a lessen-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 69

ing 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 inquiries. 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 follow-
ed 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 counten-
anced. 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 conven-
iences 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 doth 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 re-

TO OF THE CONDUCT

commended by rarity, is nothing but igno-
rance, or something worse.

Another sort of partiality there is, whereby
men impose upon themselves, and by it make
their reading little useful to themselves : I
mean the making use of the opinions of wri-
ters, and laying stress upon their authorities,
wherever they find them to favour 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 honour. 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 learn-
ing ; to which perhaps some may add a dis~

OP THE UNDERSTANDING. 71

tinct 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 they made such sounds
the marks of such ideas.

Under reasonings I comprehend all the .dis-
coveries of general truths made by human
reason, whether found by intuition, demon-
stration or probable deductions. And this is
that which is, if not alone knowledge, (be-
cause the truth or probability of particular
propositions may be known too) yet is, as
may be supposed, most properly, the busi-
ness of those who pretend to improve their
understandings, and make themselves know-
ing by reading.

Books and reading are looked upon to be
the great helps of the understanding, and in-
struments of knowledge, as it must be allowed
that they are ; and yet I beg leave to ques-
tion whether these do not prove a hinderance
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 employ-
ments of our time, and bring but small ad
ditions to our knowledge.

72 OF THE CONDUCT

There is not seldom to be found, even
among those who aim at knowledge, who 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,
yet make no great advances in real knowl-
edge, though there be no defect in their
intellectual faculties, to which their little pro-
gress can be imputed. The mistake here is,
that it is usually supposed that by reading, the
author's knowledge is transfused into the
readers's understanding ; and so it is, but not
hy bare reading, but by reading and under-
standing what he writ. Whereby I mean,
not barely comprehending what is affirmed or
denied in each proposition (though that great
readers do not always think themselves con-
cerned precisely to do,) but to see and follow
the train of reasonings, observe the streLgth
and clearness of their connexion, 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 jet ac-
quire not one jot of his knowledge ; which
consisting only in the perceived, certain, or
probable connexion of the ideas made use of
in his reasonings, the reader's knowledge is
no farther increased than he perceives that ;
so much as he sees of this connexion^ so much

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 73

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 beino* 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 borrow-
ed it, were in the right in that opinion which
they took from him ; wrhich indeed is no know-
ledge at all. Writers of this or former ages 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
farther than this, it cannot at all affect the
truth and falsehood of opinions, which have
no other sort of trial but 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 proba-
bility of their conclusions ; and for this we
owe them great acknowledgements for saving
us the pains in searching those proofs which
they have collected for us, and which possi-

74 . OP THE CONDUCT

bly, after ail our pains, we might not have
found, nor been able to have set them in so
good a light as that which they left them us
in. — Upon this account we are mightily be-
holden to judicious writers of all ages, for
those discoveries and discourses they have left
behind them for our instruction, if vv e know how
to make a right use of them ; which is not to
rur them over in a hasty perusal, and perhaps
lodge their opinions, or some remarkable pas-
sages 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 au-
thor, but by the evidence he produces, and
the conviction he affords us, drawn from things
tnemselves. Knowing is seeing, and if it be
so, it is madness to persuade ourselves that we
do so by another man's eyes, let him use ever
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 un-
derstandings, 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 whoever shall read over their
writings without perceiving the connexion of
their proofs^ and seeing what they show, though

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 75

he may understand all their words, yet he is
not the more knowing : he may believe in-
deed, but does not know what they say, and
so is not advanced one jot in mathematical
knowledge by all his reading of those approv-
ed mathematicians.

§ 25. Haste.

The eagerness and strong bent of the mind af-
ter knowledge, if not warily regulated, is of-
ten an hindrance to it. It still presses into
farther discoveries and new objects, and catch-
es at the variety of knowledge, and therefore
often stays not long enough on Avhat is before
it, to look into it as it should, for haste to pur-
sue 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 de-
scription of here a mountain, and there a
plain, here a morass, and there a river ; wood-
land in one part, and savannahs 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, mifet necessarily
escape him ; and it is seldom men ever dis-
cover the rich mines, without some digging.

76 OF THE CONDUCT

Nature commonly lodges her treasures 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 diffi-
culty, 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 tri-
vial question or scruple that he may raise.
He that will stand to pick up and examine ev-
ery pebble that comes in his way, is as unlike-
ly to return enriched and laden with jewels, as
the other that travelled full speed. Truths
are not the better nor the worse for their ob-
viousness 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 farther and use-
ful 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 natu-
rally 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

THE UNDERSTANDING. 77

too fast into general observations and conclu-
sions, without a due examination of particu-
lars enough whereon to found those general
axioms. This seems to enlarge their stock,
but it is of fancies, not realities ; such the-
ories 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 know-
ledge, when they come to examine their hastily
assumed maxims themselves,ortohave therrfrat-
tacked by others. General observations drawn
from particulars, are the jewels of knowledge,
comprehending great store m a little room ;
but they are therefore to be made with the
greater care and caution, lest if we take coun-
terfeit 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 inquiry, and they do well to take
those hints ; but if they turn them into con-
clusions, and make them presently general
rules, they are forward indeed, but it is only
to impose on themselves by propositions as-
sumed for truths without sufficient warrant
To make such observations, is, as has been
already remarked, to make the head a maga-
zine of materials, which can hardly oe called
h 2

78 OF THE CONDUCT

knowledge, or at least it is but like a collec-
tion of lumber not reduced to use or order ;
and he that makes every thing 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.

§26. udnticipaiion.

Whether it be a love of that which brings the
first light and information to their minds, and
want of vigour and industry to inquire ; or else
that men content themselves with any appear-
ance 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 sub-
mission to prejudice. It is an unreasonable
homage paid to prepossession, whereby we

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 19

show a reverence not to (what we pretend to
seek) truth, but what by hap-hazard we chance
to light on, be it what it will. This is visibly
a preposterous use of our faculties, and is a
downright prostituting of the mind to resigp 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 in the objects
without) can by its own opinionatry 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 the habitudes,
correspondences, and relations, keep the same
to one another.

§ 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 cameleon-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 pre-

80 OP THE CONDUCT

ference. First or last in this case, is the ef-
fect of chance, and not the measure of truth
or falsehood. This every one 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
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-weigh-
ed reasons are to determine the judgment ;
thos-e the mind should be always ready to
hearken and submit to, and by their testimo-
ny and suffrage, entertain or reject any tenet
indifferently, whether it be a perfect stranger,
or an old acquaintance.

§ 28. Practice.

Though the faculties of the mind are improv-
ed 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 every one's understanding who has
a desire not only to perform well, but to keep
up the vigour of his faculties, and not to basdk
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 unaptness or an

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 81

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 cau-
tion 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 re-
quires thought and meditation. The under-
standing 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 pro-
gress will never reach the extent of some sci-
ences.— It is not to be imagined how far con-
stancy 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 him-
self, as not be able to lift up 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,

82 OF TH£ CONDUCT

and then it may go on roundly. Every ab-
struse 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 or-
dinary and obvious things, that demand no
thought or application. This debases and en-
ervates the understanding, makes it weak and
unfit for labour. This is a sort of hovering
about the surface of things, without any in-
sight into them or penetration ; and when the
mind has been cnoe habituated to this laxy re-
cumbency and satisfaction on the obvious sur-
face 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 rea-
son to fear he shall never reconcile himself to
the fatigue of turning and tumbling of 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 sci-
ences, should influence them all their lives,
and be settled in their minds by an over-ru-
ling reverence, especially if they be such as

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 83

universal use has established. Learners must
at first be believers, and their master's rules
having been once 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
track.

^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 yet, if he that reads
cannot frame arty distinct idea uf that being,
it is certainly 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 them-
selves ^ith a little articulated air, should lay
down this as a fundamental rule, not to take

84 OF THE CONDUCT

words for things, nor suppose that names in
books signify real entities in nature, till they
can frame clear and distinct ideas of those en-
tities. It will not perhaps be allowed, if I
should set down "substantial forms" and "in-
tentional 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 what 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 ail 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 systems, where their under-
standings could not furnish them with concep-
tions from things. But yet I believe the sup-
posing of some realities in nature, answering
those and the like words, have much perplex-
ed some, and quite misled others in the study
of nature. That which in any discourse sig
nifies, " I know not what," should be consi-
dered " I know not when." Where men
have any conceptions, they can, if they are
ever 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 can-
not give us the ideas their words stand for, it

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 85

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 any thing by his use of
it, let us beat our heads about it ever so
long. Whether we are able to comprehend
all the operations of nature, and the manners
of them, it matters not to inquire ; but this is
certain, that we can comprehend no more of
them than we can distinctly conceive ; and
therefore to obtrude terms where we have
no distinct conceptions, as if they did con-
tain 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
which they conceal is nothing but the igno-
rauce, error, or sophistry of the taJker ; for
there is, in truth, nothing else under them.

§ 30. Wandering.

That there is a constant succession and flux
of ideas in our minds, I have observed in the
former part of this Essay ; and every one
may take notice of it in himself. This, I
suppose, may deserve some part of our care

86 OF THE CONDUCT

in the conduct of our understandings ; and
I think it may be of great advantage, if we
can by use get that power over our minds, as
to be able to direct that train of ideas, that
so, since there will 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 in view but such as are
pertinent to our present inquiry, 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 pur-
suit, and hinder them from running away with
our thoughts quite from the subject in hand.
This is not, 1 suspect, so easy to be done as
perhaps may be imagined ; and yet, for aught
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 wander-
ing of thoughts I would be glad to find. He
thni shall propose such an one, would do great
service to the studious and contemplative
part of mankind, and perhaps help unthink-
ing men to become thinking. I must ac-
knowledge that hitherto I have discovered no
other way to keep our thoughts close to their
business, but the endeavouring as much as we

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 87

can, and by frequent attention and applica-
tion, getting the habit of attention and appli-
cation. He that will observe children will find,
that even when they endeavour their utmost,
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 wrould sooner reconcile and inure
them to attention than all those rougher me-
thods which more distract their thought, aud5
hindering the application they would promote^
introduce a contrary habit.

§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

88 OF THE CONDUCT

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 understand-
ing 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 dis-
tinct classes under every such difference.
This will run us, if followed, into particulars
(for every individual has something that
differences it from another,) and we shall
be able to establish no general truths, or
else at least shall be apt to perplex the mind
about them. The collection of several
things into several classes, gives the mind more
general and larger views ; but we must take
care to unite them only in that, and so far as
they do agree ; for so far they may be uni-
ted under the consideration : for entity itself,
that comprehends all things, as general as it
is, may afford us clear and rational concep-
tions. If we would weigh and keep in our
minds what it is we are considering, that would
best instruct us when we should, or should not
branch into farther distinctions, which are to
be taken only from a due contemplation of
things ; to which there is nothing more oppo-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 89

site than the art of verbal distinctions, made
at pleasure in learned and arbitrarily invented
terms, to be applied at a venture, without
comprehending or conveying any distinct no-
tions, and so altogether fitted to artificial talk,
or empty noise in dispute, without any clear-
ing of difficulties, or advance in knowledge,
Whatsoever subject we examine and would
get knowledge in, we should, I think, make
as general and as large as it will bear ; nor
can there be any danger of this, if the idea of
it be settled and determined : for if that be so,
we shall easily distinguish it from any other
idea, though comprehended under the same
name. For it is to fence against the entan-
glements of equivocal words, and the great
art of sophistry which lies in them, that dis-
tinctions have been multiplied, and their use
thought so necessary. But had every distinct
abstract idea a distinct known name, there
would be little need of these multiplied scho-
lastic distinctions, though there would be nev-
ertheless as much need still of the mind's ob-
serving the differences that are in things, and
discriminating them thereby one from anoth-
er. It is not, therefore, the right way to
knowledge, to hunt after, and fill the head
with abundance of artificial and scholastic
distinctions, wherewith learned men's writings
are often filled ; we sometimes find what they
treat of so divided and subdivided, that the
i 2

BO OF THE CONDUCT

mind of the most attentive reader loses the
sight of it, as it is more than probable the
writer himself did ; for in thirds crumbled in-
to dust, it is in vain to affect or pretend order>
or expect clearness. To avoid confusion by
too few or too many divisions, is a great skill
in thinking as well as writing, which is but the
copying our thoughts ; but what are the boun-
daries of the mean between the two vicious
excesses on both hands, I think is hard to set
down in words : clear and distinct ideas is all
that I yet know able to regulate it. But as to
verbal distinctions received and applied to
common terms, i. e. equivocal words ; they
are more properly, I think, the business of
criticisms and dictionaries than of real know-
ledge and philosophy, since they, for the most
part, explain the meaning of words, and give
us their several significations. The dexterous
management of terms, and being able to fend
and prove with them, I know has, and does pass
in the world for a great part of learning ; but
it is learning distinct from knowledge ; for
knowledge consists only in perceiving the hab-
itudes and relations of ideas one to another,
which is done without words ; the interven-
tion of a sound helps nothing to it. And hence
we see that there is least use of distinctions
where there is most knowledge ; I mean \ti
mathematics, where men have determined
ideas without known names to them ; and so

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 91

there being no room for equivocations, there
is no need of distinctions. In arguing, the
opponent uses as comprehensive and equivocal
terms as he can to involve his adversary in
the doubtfulness of his expressions : this is ex-
pected, and therefore the answer on his side
makes it his play to distinguish as much as he
can, and thinks he can never do it too much ;
nor can he indeed in that way wherein victo-
ry may be had without truth and without
knowledge. This seems to me to be the art
of disputing. Use your words as captiously
as you can in your arguing on one side, and
apply distinctions as much as you can on the
other side to every term, to nonplus your op-
ponent ; so that in this sort of scholarship,
there being no bounds set to distinguishing,
some men have thought all acuteness to have
Iain in it : and therefore in all they have read
or thought on, their great business has been
to amuse themselves with distinctions, and
multiply to themselves divisions, at least, more
than the nature of the thing required. There
seems to me, as I said, to be no other rule for
this, but a due and right consideration of things
as they are in themselves. He that has set-
tled in his mind determined ideas, with names
affixed to them, will be able both to discern
their differences one from another, which
is really distinguishing ; and, where the penu-
ry of words affords not terms answering every

92 OF THE CONDUCT

distinct idea, will be able to apply proper dis-
tinguishing terms to the comprehensive and
equivocal names he is forced to make use of.
This is all the need I know of distinguishing
terms ; and in such verbal distinctions, each
term of the distinction, joined to that whose
signification it distinguishes, is but a distinct
name for a distinct idea. Where they are so,
and men have clear und distinct conceptions
that answer their verbal distinctions, they are
right, and are pertinent as far as they serve
to clear any thing in the subject under con-
sideration. And this is that which seems to
me the proper and only measure of distinc-
tions and divisions ; which he that will con-
duct his understanding right, must not look
for in the acuteness of invention, nor the au-
thority of writers, but will find only in the
consideration of things themselves, whether he
is led into it by his own meditations, or the
information of books.

An aptness to jumble things together, where-
in can be found any likeness, is a fault in the
understanding on the other side, which will
not fail to mislead it, and by thus lumping of
things, hinder the mind from distinct and ac-
curate conceptions of them.

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 93

§ 32. Similes.

To which let me here add another near of kin
to this, at least in name, and that is letting the
mind upon the suggestion of any new notion,
run immediately after similes to make it the
clearer to itself ; which, though it may be a
good way, and useful in the explaining our
thoughts to others ; yet it is by no means a
right method to settle true notions of any
thing in ourselves, because similes always fail
in some part, and come short of that exact-
ness wrhich our conceptions should have to
things, if we would think aright. This in-
deed makes men plausible talkers ; for those
are always most acceptable in discourse who
have the wray to let their thoughts into other
men's minds with the greatest ease and facili-
ty ; whether those thoughts are well formed
and correspond with things, matters not ; few
men care to be instructed but at an easy rate.
They, who in their discourse strike the fancy,
and take the hearer's conceptions along with
them as fast as their words flow, are the ap-
plauded talkers, and go for the only men of
clear thoughts. Nothing contributes so much
to this as similes, whereby men think they
themselves understand better, because they
are the better understood. But it is one thing
to think right, and another thing to know the

94 OF THE CONDUCT

right way to lay our thoughts before others
with advantage and clearness, be they right
or wrong. Well chosen similes, metaphors,
and allegories, with method and order, do this
the best of any thing, because being taken
from objects already known, and familiar to
the understanding, they are conceived as fast
as spoken ; and the correspondence being
concluded, the thing they are brought to ex-
plain and elucidate is thought to be under-
stood too. Thus fancy passes for knowledge,
and what is prettily said is mistaken for sol-
id. I say not this to decry metaphor, or
with design to take away that ornament of
speech ; my business here is not with rheto-
ricians and orators, but with philosophers and
lovers of truth ; to whom T would beg leave
to give this one rule whereby to try whether,
in the application of their thoughts to any
thing for the improvement of their knowledge,
they do in truth comprehend the matter be-
fore them really such as it is in itself. The
way to discover this is to observe, whether in
the laying it before themselves or others, they
make use only of borrowed representations
and ideas foreign to the things which are ap-
plied to it by way of accommodation, as
bearing some proportion or imagined likeness
to the subject under consideration. Figured
and metaphorical expressions do well to illus-
trate more abstruse and unfamiliar ideas which

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 95

the mind is not yet thoroughly accustomed to :
but then they must be made use of to illus-
trate ideas that we already have, not to paint
to us those which we yet have not. Such bor-
rowed and allusive ideas may follow real and
solid truth, to set it off wi-en found, but must
by no means be set in its place, and taken
for it. If all our search has yet reached no
farther than simile and metaphor, we may as-
sure ourselves we rather fancy than know, and
are not yet penetrated into the inside and re-
ality of the thing, be it what it will, but con-
tent ourselves with what our imaginations, not
things themselves, furnish us with.

§ 33, Assent.

In the whole conduct of the understanding,
there is nothing of more moment than to know
when and where, and how far to give assent,
and possibly there is nothing harder. It is very
easily said and nobody questions it, that giving
and with-holding our assent, and the degrees
of it, should be regulated by the evidence
which things carry with them ; and yet we see
men are not the better for this rule ; some
firmly embrace doctrines upon slight grounds,
some upon no grounds, and some contrary to
appearance : some admit of certainty, and are
not to be moved in what they hold : others
waver in every thing, and there want not

96 OF THE CONDUCT

those that reject all as uncertain. What then
shall a novice, an inquirer, a stranger do in
the case ? I answer, use his eyes. There is
a correspondence in things, and agreement and
disagreement in ideas, discernible in very dif-
ferent degrees, and there are eyes in men to
see them if they please, only their eyes may
be dimmed or dazzled, and the discerning
sight in them impaired or lost. Interest and
passion dazzles ; the custom of arguing on
any side, even against our persuasions, dims
the understanding, and makes it by degrees
lose the faculty of discerning clearly between
truth and falsehood, and so of adhering to the
right side. —It is not safe to play with error,
and dress it up to ourselves or others in the
shape of truth. The mind by degrees loses
its natural relish of real solid truth, is recon-
ciled insensibly to any thing that can be dres-
sed up into any faint appearance of it ; and
if the fancy be allowed the place of judgment
at first in sport, it afterwards comes by use to
usurp it, and what is recommended by this flat-
terer (that studies but to please) is received for
good. There are so many ways of fallacy, such
arts of giving colours, appearances, and resem-
blances by this court-dresser, the fancy, that
he who is not wary to admit nothing but truth
itself, very careful not to make his mind sub-
servient to anything else, cannot but be caught.
He that has a mind to believe, has half assent-

OP THE UNDERSTANDING. 97

ed already ; and he that, "by often arguing
against his own sense, imposes falsehood on
others, is not far from believing himself. This
takes away the great distance there is betwixt
truth and falsehood ; it brings them almost to-
gether, and makes it no great odds, in things
that approach so near, which you take ; and
when things are brought to that pass, passion
or interest, &c. easily and without being per~
ceived, determine which shall be the right,

§ 34. Indifferency.

I have said above, that we should keep a
perfect inditferency for all opinions, not wish
any of them true, or try to make them appear
so ; but being indifferent, receive and em-
brace them according as evidence, and that
alone gives the attestation of truth. They
that do thusy i. e. keep their minds indifferent
to opinions, to be determined only by evi-
dence, will always find the understanding has
perception enough to distinguish between
evidence and no evidence, betwixt plain
and doubtful ; and if they neither give nor re-
fuse 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

K

93 OF THE CONDUCT

the mind is but a receptacle of inconsistencies,
not the store-house 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 com-
plain of in those that differ from them. He
that by an indifferency for all but truth suf-
fers not his assent to go faster than his evi-
dence, nor beyond it, will learn to examine,
and examine fairly, instead of presuming, and
nobody will be at a loss, or in danger for want
of embracing those truths which are necessa-
ry in his station and circumstances. In any

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 99

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 possi-
bly he may deviate from some of the received
doctrines there. And thus men, without any
industry or acquisition of their own, inherit lo-
cal 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 luke-warm-
ness 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 great-
est concernment to him ; what shall keep him
from this short and easy way of being in the
right in cases of le.s 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
skeptics, as far as it prevails : and those that

100 OF THE CONDUCT

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 evi-
dence signify nothing in the case, and excuse
nowhere, 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 on 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 there-
fore 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 igno-
rant, or as doubting of some proposition they
have either embraced formerly or at present
are inclined to ; or lastly, they do with assu-
rance hold and profess without ever having ex-
amined, and being convinced by well-grounded
arguments.

The first of these are in the best state of

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 101

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

§,36.

For ignorance, with an indifferency for truth,
isnearertoitthan opinion with ungrounded in-
clination, 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 inquire af-
ter 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 be-
heve 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 inquiring di-
rectly into the nature of the thing itself, with-
out minding the opinions of others, or troub-
ling himself with their questions or disputes
about it 5 but to see what he himself can, sin-
e2

102 OF THE CONDUCT

cerely searching for truth, find out* He that
proceeds on other principles in his inquiry in-
to any sciences, though he be resolved to ex-
amine them and judge of them freely, does yet
at least put himself on that side, and post him-
self in a party which he will not quit till he
be beaten out ; hy 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 ex-
amined, else he examines to no purpose ; but
the surest and safest way is to have no opin-
ion at all till he has examined, and that with*
oat any the least regard to the opinions or sys-
tems of other men about it. For example,
were it my business to understand physic,
would not the safe and readier way be to con-
sult nature herself, and inform myself in the
history of diseases and their cures, than es-
pousing the principles of the dogmatists, meth-
odists, or chymists, to engage in all the dis-
putes 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 sup-
posing that Hippocrates, or any other book,
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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 103

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 unpreposseosed 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 per-
haps the genuine meaning of the author seem
harsh, strained, and uncouth to me. For
words having naturally none of their own, car-
ry that signification to the hearer that he is
used to put upon them, whatever be the sense
of h'm that uses them. This, I think, is visi-
bly 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 ig-
norance in reference to that question ; and
throwing wholly by all his former notions, and
the opinions of others, examine, with a per-
fect 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 understand-
ings and their own souls.

104 OF THE CONDUCT

§ 36. Question.

The indifferency that I here propose will
also enable them to state the question rightj
which they are in doubt about, without which
they can never come to a fair and clear de-
cision of it.

§ 37. Perseverance,

Another fruit from this indifferency, and
the considering things in themselves abstract
from our own opinions and other men's no-
tions 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, un-
til he come to a well-grounded resolution
wherein he may acquiesce. If it be objected
that this will require every man to be a schol-
ar, 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 ositancy and ignorance of
thoȣ wrho have time to spare ; and every one

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 105

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.

§ 38. 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 suffers 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 beforehand. His under-
standing 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 ig-
norant ; but they were best not come to stress
and trial with the skilful. We are born ig-
norant of every thing. The superficies of
tilings that surround them make impressions
on the negligent, but nobody penetrates into
the inside without labour, attention, and indus-

106 OF THE CONDUCT

try. Stones and timber grow of themselves^
but jet there is no uniform pile with symme-
try 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 peice-meal, 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.

§ 39. Despondency.

On the other side, there are others that de-
press their own minds, despond at the first
difficulty, and conclude that the getting an in-
sight in any of the sciences, or making any
progress in knowledge farther than serves
their ordinary buisiness, is above their capa-
cities. 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."
Nobody knows what strength of parts he lias
till he has tried them. And of the under-
standing one may most truly say, that its
force is greater generally than it thinks, till
it is put to it. Viresque acquirit eundo.

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 107

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, " Dnm putant se vincere vicere ;" a
persuasion that we shall overcome any diffi-
culties that we meet with in the sciences, sel-
dom fails to carry us through them. Nobody
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 show of nothing but difficulty
in them, and are thought to be wrapt up in
impenetrable obscurity. But the truth is,
these are nothing but spectres that the under-
standing raises to itself to flatter its own lazi-
n- s. It sees nothing distinctly in things re-
mote, and in a huddle 5 and therefore con-
cludes too faintly, that there is nothing more
clear to be discovered in them. It is but to ap-
proach nearer, and that mist of our own rais-
ing that enveloped them will remove ; and
those that in that mist appeared hideous giants

108 OF THE CONDUCT

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 a?.id regular steps ; and what is most
visible, easy, and obvious in them first con-
sidered. 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, perplex-
ed, 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 serious-
ly and methodically applied himself to the
consideration of this seeming terrible subject;
and there has been no other matter of aston-
ishment left, but that he amused himself with
w discouraging a prospect, of his own raising,
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 ? This

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 109

experience would teach us how to deal with such
bugbears another time, which should rather
serve to excite cur 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 him-
self 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 ad-
vance ; 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 knowl-
edge 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 though this perhaps may seem a very
slow and lingering way to knowledge, yet I
dare confidently affirm, that 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 dis-
tinct perception of things in themselves dis-
tinct. And some men give more clear light
and knowledge by the bare distinct stating of a

L

110 OF THE CONDUCT

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 disagree-
ment 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 knowl-
edge ; or at least, when it comes to be exam-
ined 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 un-
known, simple, unperplexed proposition be-
longing to the matter in hand, and tending to
the clearing what is principally designed.

§ 40. Analogy

Analogy is of great use to the mind m many
cases, especially in natural philosophy • and

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Ill

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 ex-
ample, the acid oil of vitriol is found to be
good in such a case, therefore the spirit of ni-
tre or vinegar may he used in the like case.
If the good effect 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 for analo-
gy, which is not, and suffer our understacd-
ing to be misguided by a wrong supposition of
analogy where there is none

§ 41. Association.

Though I have, in the second book of my Es-
say concerning Human Understanding, treated
of the association of ideas ; yet having done
it there historically, as givipg a view of the
understanding in this as well as its several
other ways of operating, rather than designing
there to inquire 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 them-
selves thoroughly in the right way of con-
ducting their understandings ; and that the
rather, because this, if I mistake not, is as

112 OF THE CONDUCT

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 founda-
tions become infallible principles, and will not
suffer themselves to be touched or questioned:
such unnatural connexions become by custom
as natural to the mind as sun and light, fire
and warmth go together, and so seem to carry
with them as natural an evidence as self-evi-
dent truths themselves. And where then shall
one with hopes of success begin the cure ?
Many men firmly embrace falsehood 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 andbusiness of the teach-
ers and guides in most sects to suppress, as much
as they can, this fundamental duty which every
man owes himself, and is the first steady step
towards right and truth in the whole train of
bis actions and opinions. This would give one

0± THE UNDERSTANDING. 113

reason to suspect that such teachers are con-
scious to themselves of the falsehood or weak-
ness 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 be-
yond what the evidence of its truths will war-
rant and allow.

There is, I know, a great fault among all
sorts of people of principling their children
and scholars, which at last, when looked into,
amounts to no more but making them imbibe
their teacher's notions and tenets by an im
plicit faith, a>d firmly to adhere to them
whether true or false. What colours maybe
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
wrill not here inquire. But as to the ingenu-
ous part of mankind, whose condition allows
them leisure, and letters, and inquiry after
truth, I can see no other right way of princi-
ling them but to take heed, as much as may
be; that in their tender years ideas that have

114 OF THE CONDUCT

no natural cohesion come not to be united in
their heads ; and that this rule be often incul-
cated to them to be their-guide in the whole
course of their lives and studies, viz. that they
never suffer any ideas to be joined in their un-
derstandings in any other or stronger combina-
tion than what their own nature and corres-
pondence give them, and that they often ex-
amine 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 rivetted by custom in the under-
standing ; but he that would cure it when
habit has established it, must nicely observe
the very quick and almost imperceptible mo-
tions cf 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
bottles, and tobacco-pipes, and other things so
painted as they are in some places shown,
that he does not see protuberances, and you
will not convince him but by the touch : he will
not believe that by an instantaneous legerde-
main of his own thoughts, one idea is substi-
tuted for another. How frequent instances

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 1 16

fciay 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 convic-
tion, 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 con-
nexion of them in their minds hath made to
them almost one, fills their head with false
views, and their reasonings with false con-
sequences.

§ 42. Fallacies,

Right understanding consists in the discovery
and adherence to truth, and that in the per-
ception 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 incli-
ning to either side, any farther than evidence
settles it by knowledge, or the over-balance of
probability gives it the turn of assent and be-
lief ; but yet it is \erv hard to meet with any

11G OF THE CONDUCT

discourse wherein one may not pereeivs
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 pur-
pose, and to be thereby brought to an easier
and nearer agreement, or more visible or re-
moter 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 mis-
lead the readers. It is visible that men's pre-
judices and inclinations by this way impose of-
ten upon themselves ; and their affection 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 intro-
duce 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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 117

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 serve so well to
propagate their opinions, and procure them-
selves 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 demonstra-
tion.

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 unva-
ried terms, and plain unsophisticated argu-
ments ; jet it concerns readers not to be im-
posed on by fallacies, and the prevailing ways
of insinuation. To do this, the surest and most
effectual remedy is to fix in the mind the clear
and distinct ideas of the question stripped of
words ; and so likewise in the train of argu-
mentation, to take up the author's ideas, neg-
lecting 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 su-
perfluous ; he will see what is pertinent, what

118 OF THE CONDUCT

coherent, what is direct to, what slides by the
question. This will readily show 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 keep-
ing one's self from being misled by great
names or plausible discourses ; yet it being
hard and tedious to those who have not accus-
tome-4 themselves to it. it is not to be expected
that e.ary one (a* those few who really

pursue truth") should this way guard his under-
standing 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 te-
nets 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 sin-
cerely persuaded of, and believe to be true,
think they may so far allow themselves to
indulge their laudable a Tection to truth, as to
permit their esteem of it to give it the best col-
ours, and set it off with the best expressions and
dress they can, thereby to gain it the easi-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 119

est 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 in-
struction, should not lay by that caution which
becomes a sincere pursuit of truth, and should
make them alway.3 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 lights
and deceitful ornaments of speech, this yet they
should do, they should keep the precise ques-
tion 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, m^kes
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 hiin instead, when he has occassion
for it. And whether such an one deals fairly
by his own mind, and conducts his own under-
standing right, I leave to his own understand-
ing to judge

V20 OF THE CONDUCT

§ 43. 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 ca-
pable, 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 inqui-
ries, 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 ni-
ceties ; 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 knowl-
edge, and think their understandings so well
furnished with science? that they need not look

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 121

any farther into the nature of things, or des-
cend to the mechanical drudgery of experi-
ment and inquiry. This is so obvious a mis-
management 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 hand-
ling of them in the schools. What faults in par-
ticular of this kind every man is, or may be
guilty of, would be infinite to enumerate ; it
suffices to have shown that superficial and
slight discoveries and observations that contain
nothing of moment in themselves, nor serve as
ernes to lead us into farther knowledge, should
not be thought 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 Lave their con-
sistency. These are teeming truths, rich in
store, with which they furnish the mind, and,
like the lights of heaven, are not only beauti-
ful and entertaining in themselves, but give
light and evidence to other things, that 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 philoso-
phy ; which of what use it is to the under-
standing of the great frame of our solar sys-
tem, he has to the astonishment of the learn-
ed world shown ; and how much farther it would

M

122 OF THE CONDUCT

guide us in other things if rightly pursued,
is not yet kjown. Our Saviour's great rule,
that " we should love our neighbour as our-
selves," is such a fundamental truth for the
regulating human society, that, I think, by
that alone, one might without difficulty deter-
mine 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
necessary, viz.

§ 44. Bottoming.

To accustom ourselves, in any question propo-
sed, to examine and find out upon what it bot-
toms. Most 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 co-
pious discourse, serve only to amuse the un-
derstanding, and entertain company, without
coming to the bottom of the question, the
only place of rest and stability for an inquisi-

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 123

tive mind, whose tendency is only to truth and
knowledge.

For example, if it be demanded, whether
the Grand Seignor can lawfully take what he
will from any of his people ? This question
cannot be resolved without coming to a cer-
tainty, 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 concer-
ning the various rights of men in society, will go
a great way in putting an end to them, and
showing on which side the truth is.

§ 45. Transfemng of thoughts.

There is scarce any thing more for the im-
provement of knowledge, for the ease of life5
and for the dispatch of business, than for a
man to be able to dispose of his own thoughts ;
and there is scarce any thing 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 kself to ; which, when we are lazy or
unconcerned, we can eas>V 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 forward-
ly conclude, and frequently say, nothing is so
free as thought, and it were well it were so ; but

124 OF THE CONDUCT

the contrary will be found true in several in-
stances ; and there are many cases wherein
there is nothing more resty and ungovernable
than our thoughts : they will not be directed
what objects to pursue, nor be taken off from
those they have once fi'xed on ; but run away
with a man in pursuit of those ideas they have
in view, let him do what he can.

I will not here mention again wrhat I have
above taken notice of, how hard it is to get the
inind, narrowed by a custom of thirty or forty
years" standing to a scanty collection of ob-
vious and common ideas, to enlarge itself to a
more copious stock, and grow into an acquain-
tance with those that would afford more abun-
dant matter of useful contemplation; it is not of
this I am here speaking. The inconveniency
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 ca-
ses where the ideas are equally familiar to us.

Matters, that are recommended to our
thoughts by any of our passions, take pos-
session 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

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 125

hath not some time found this tyranny on his
understanding, and suffered under the inconve-
nience of it. Who is there almost, whose
mind, 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 itseli
little or not at all in the knowledge of the thing
which it so closely hugs and constantly pores
on. 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 like men brought to
themselves from some remote region ; where-
as 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, 'rhen 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 occa-
sions, wherein we have need of its assistance,
M 2

Y26 OF THE CONDUCT

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 remain always so, every
one would, without scruple, give it the name of
perfect madness ; and wThilst it does last, at
whatever intervals it returns, such a rotation
of thoughts about the same object no more car-
ries us forward 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 legiti-
mate 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, and to act how and upon what he
directs. This we should endeavour to obtain,
unless we would be content with such Jt flaw in
our understanding, 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, a^d
which stand in present need of it.

But before fit remedies can be thought on

OF THE UNDERSTANDING 12?

for this disease, we must know the several
causes of it, and thereby regulate the cure, if
we will hope to labour with success.

One we have already instanced in, whereof
all men that reflect have so general a knowl-
edge, and so often an experience in themselves,
that nobody doubts of it. A prevailing pas-
sion 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 ordi-
nary 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 un-
derstanding, when it has awhile employed it-
self 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
was about a trifle not worth a thought, and all
the pains employed about it lost labour.

>28 OF THE CONDUCT

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 de-
sign 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 stilling of it ; no peace to he ob-
tained, nor attention to ^ny 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 ex-
perimented in themselves this troublesome in-
trusion of some frisking ideas which thus im-
portune the understanding, and hinder it from
being better employed, I know not. But per-
sons 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 va-
riety of faces, most commonly very odd ones,
that appear to them i:i a train one ofter ano-
ther ; so that having h;\d just the sight of the
one, it immediately passes away to give place
to another, that the same instant succeeds, and

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 129

lias 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 appear-
ance, but is thrust out by its follower, which
will have its turn. Concerning this fantastical
phenomenon I have talked with several people,
whereof some have been perfectly acquainted
with it, and others have been so wholly stran-
gers to it, that they could hardly be brought to
conceive or believe it. I knew a lady of ex-
cellent 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,
could scarce forbear thinking we bantered her;
but some time 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 wrhat 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 them-
selves they went too ; none of feeiii stayed a
moment, nor could be detained by all the en
deavours she could use, but went on in their
solemn procession, just appeared and then van-
ished This odd phenomenon seems to have

130 OF THE CONDUCT

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 lib-
erty to prosecute what thoughts the man would
make choice of, but to allay the present pas-
sion, 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 inte-
rest, must be be very wary and careful in all
the instances of it to stop it, and never hu-
mour their minds in being thus triflingly busy.
Men know the value of their coporeal 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 ut-
most 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, on all such oc-
casions, make use of it. We must never in-
dulge these trivial attentions of thought ; as
goon as we find the mind makes itself a busi-
ness of nothings we should immediately dis-
turb and check it, introduce new and more se-
rious considerations > and not leave till we

OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 13!

have beaten it off from the pursuit it was
upon. This, at first, if we have let the con-
trary practice grow to a haVit, will perhaps be
difficult ; but constant endeavours will by de-
grees prevail, and at last make it easy. And
when a man is pretty well advanced, and can
command his mind off at pleasure from inci-
dental and undesigned pursuits, it may not be
amiss for him to go on farther, and make at-
tempts upon meditations or greater moment,
that at the last he may ha^e 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 ad-
vantage of ease and despatch in all that is the
chosen and useful employment of his under-
standing.

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, ma-
king a noise in the head, and the like, seldom
happens but when the mind is lazy, or very
loosely and negligently employed. It were bet-
ter indeed to be without such impertinent and
useless repetitions : any obvious idea, when it

J 32 OF THE CONDUCT &C.

is roving carelessly at a venture, being 01
more use, and apter to suggest something
worth consideration, than the insignificant buzz
of purely empty sounds. But since the rous-
ing 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, when-
ever we find ourselves troubled with them, to
make use of so profitable a remedy that is al-
ways at hand.

6? 4 <4

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