There is another partiality very commonly obfervable in men of study, no lefs prejudicial nor ridiculous than the former; and that is a fantastical and wild-attributing all knowledge to the ancients alone, or to the moderns. This raving upon antiquity in matter of poetry, Horace has wittily defcribed and expofed in one of his fatires. The fame fort of madness may be found in reference to all the other sciences. Some will not admit an opinion 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 ftamp of Greece or Rome upon it; and, fince their days, will fcarce allow that men have been able to fee, think or write. Others with a like extravagancy, contemn all that the ancients have left us, and being taken with the modern inventions and difcoveries, lay by all that went before, as if whatever is called old must have the decay of time upon it, and truth too were liable to mould and rottennefs. Men, I think, have been much the fame for natural endowments in all times. Fashion, difcipline and education, have put eminent differences in the ages of feveral countries, and made one generation much differ from another in arts and fciences; but truth is always the fame; time alters it not, nor is it, the better or worfe 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 fagacity of after ages, and fo fhall 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 newnefs, will to pofterity be old, but not thereby be lefs true or lefs genuine. There is no occafion on this account to oppose the ancients and the moderns to one another, or to be fqueamish on either fide. He that wifely conducts his mind in the pursuit of knowledge, will gather what lights, and get what helps he can from either of them, from whom they are

best to be had, without adoring the errors, or rejecting the truths, which he may find mingled in them.

Another partiality may be observed, in some to vulgar, in others to heterodox tenets: Some are apt to conclude, that what is the common opinion cannot but be true; fo many mens eyes they think cannot but fee right; fo many mens understandings of all forts cannot be deceived, and therefore will not venture to look beyond the received notions of the place and age, nor have fo prefumptuous a thought as to be wifer than their neighbours: They are content to go with the crowd, and fo go eafily, which they think is going right, or at leaft ferves them as well. But however vox populi vax Dei has prevailed as a maxim, yet I do not remember wherever God delivered his oracles by the multitude, or nature truths by the herd. On the other fide, fome fly all common opinions as either falfe or frivolous. The title of many-headed beast is a fufficient reason to them to conclude, that no truths of weight or confequence can be lodged there. Vulgar opinions are fuited to vulgar capacities, and adapted to the ends of thofe that govern. He that will know the truth of things, must leave the common and beaten track, which none but weak and fervile minds are fatisfied to trudge along continually in. Such nice palates relish nothing but strange notions quite out of the way: Whatever is commonly received, has the mark of the beaft on it; and they think it a leffening to them to hearken to it, or receive it; their mind runs only after paradoxes; these they feek, these they embrace, thefe alone they vent, and fo, as they think, diftinguish themfelves from the vulgar; but common or uncommon are not the marks to diftinguifh truth or falfehood, and therefore fhould not be any bias to us in our inquiries. We should not judge of things by mens opinions, but of opinions by things. The multitude reafon but ill, and therefore may be well fufpected, and cannot be relied on, nor fhould be followed as a fure guide; but philofophers, who have quitted the orthodoxy of the community, and the popular doctrines of their countries, have fallen into as extrava

gant and as abfurd opinions as ever common reception countenanced. It would be madness to refuse to breathe the common air, or quench one's thirst with water, because the rabble use them to these purposes; and if there are conveniencies of life which common use reaches not, it is not reafon 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 bufinefs of the understanding; whatfoever is befides that, however authorised by confent, or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance, or fomething worfe.

Another fort of partiality there is, whereby men impofe upon themselves, and by it make their reading lit tle useful to themselves; I mean the making use of the opinions of writers, and laying stress upon their authorities, wherever they find them to favour their own o pinions.

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 fame 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 reafonings. Facts are of three forts:

1. Merely of natural agents, obfervable in the ordinary operations of bodies one upon another, whether in the visible courfe of things left to themfelves, 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 fociety, which makes civil and moral hiftory. 3. Of opinions.

In these three confifts, as it feems to me, that which commonly has the name of learning, to which perhaps fome may add a diftinct head of critical writings, which indeed at bottom is nothing but matter of fact, and refolves itself into this, that fuch a man, or fet of men,

ufed fuch a word or phrafe in fuch a fenfe, i. e. that they made fuch founds the marks of fuch ideas.

Únder reafonings I comprehend ali the difcoveries of general truths made by human reafon, whether found by intuition, demonftration, or probable deductions: And this is that which is, if not alone knowledge (because the truth or probability of particular propofitions may be known too), yet is, as may be fuppofed, most properly the bufinefs of those who pretend to improve their understandings, and make themselves knowing by reading.

Books and reading are looked upon to be the great helps of the understanding, and inftruments of knowledge, as it must be allowed that they are; and yet I beg leave to question whether these do not prove an hinderance to many, and keep feveral bookish men from attaining to folid and true knowledge. This, I think, I may be permitted to fay, that there is no part wherein the understanding needs a more careful and wary conduct, than in the ufe of books; without which they will prove rather innocent amufements than profitable employments of our time, and bring but fmall'additions to our knowledge.

There is not feldom to be found even amongst thofe who aim at knowledge, who with an unwearied industry employ their whole time in books, who fcarce allow themfelves time to eat or fleep, but read, and read, and read on, but yet make no great advances in real knowledge, though there be no defect in their intellectual faculties, to which their little progrefs can be imputed. The mistake here is, that it is ufually supposed, that by reading, the author's knowledge is transfufed into the reader's understanding; and fo it is, but not by bare reading, but by reading and understanding what he writ; whereby I mean, not barely comprehending what is affirmed or denied in each propofition, (though that great readers do not always think themfelves concerned precifely to do) but to fee and follow the train of his reafonings, obferve the ftrength and clearness of their connection, and examine upon what they bottom.

Without this a man may read the discourses of a very rational author, writ in a language, and in propofitions that he very well understands, and yet acquire not one jot of his knowledge, which confifting only in the perceived, certain, or probable connection of the ideas made ufe of in his reafonings, the reader's knowledge is no farther increased than he perceives that; fo much as he fees of this connection, fo much he knows of the truth or probability of that author's opinions.

All that he relies on without this perception, he takes upon truft upon the author's credit, without any knowledge of it at all. This makes me not at all wonder to fee some men fo abound in citations, and build so much upon authorities, it being the fole foundation on which they bottom moft of their own tenets; fo that in effect they have but a fecond-hand, or implicit knowledge, i. e. are in the right, if such an one, from whom they borrowed it, were in the right in that opinion which they took from him, which indeed is no knowledge at all. Writers of this or former 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 falfehood of opinions, which have no other fort of trial but reafon and proof, which they themselves made ufe of to make themfelves knowing, and fo must others too that will partake in the ir 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 fhow the truth or probability of their concleons; and for this we owe them great acknowledgments for faving us the pains in fearching out thofe proofs which they have collected for us, and which poflibly, after all our pains, we might not have found, nor been able to have set them in fo good a light as that which they left them us in. Upon this account we are mightily beholden to judicious writers of all ages, for those difcoveries and difcourfes they have left behind them for our inftruction, if we know how to make a right ufe of them; which is not to run them over in an hafty perufal, and perhaps