tainty, 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, inust acknowledge 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 embrace 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 proposition, but it presently hastens to some hypothesis to bottom it on; till then it is unquiet and unsettled. So much do our own very tempers dispose us to a right use of our understandings if we would follow, as we should, the inclinations of

our nature.

In some matters of concernment, especially 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 contradiction too heavy for any one's mind to lie constantly under, for him to pretend seriously to be persuaded of the truth of any religion, and yet not to be able to give any reason 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 principles 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 allege that they are not misled, when we complain 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 errour, as well as truth?

To this I answer, the reason why they do 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 excused) but for want of use and exercise. Few men are, from their youth, accustomed to strict reasoning, and to trace the dependence of any truth, in a long train of consequences, to its remote principles, and to observe its connexion; and he that by frequent practice has not been used to this employment of his understanding, it is no more wonder, 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 dispatch the ordinary business of their callings by rote, as we say, as they have learnt 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 recommended to their thoughts, their reasoning about it is still after their own fashion; be it better or worse, it serves their turns, and is the best they are acquainted with; and, therefore, when they are led by it into mistakes, and their business succeeds accordingly, 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. Whatsoever 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 that 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 content 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 connexion of a long train of consequences, from sure foundations; 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 deductions must be examined and laid together, before a man can come to make a right judgment of the point in question. What 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 mathematics; which, therefore, I think should be taught all those who have the time and opportunity; not so much to make them mathematicians, as to make them reasonable creatures; for though we all call ourselves so, because we are born to it, if we please; yet we may truly say, nature gives us but the seeds of it; we are born to be, if we please, rational creatures, but it is use and exercise only that makes us so, and we are indeed, so no farther than industry and application has 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, because 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 affront, 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 employed. 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 whereever a man's rational faculty fails him, and will not serve him to reason, there we cannot say he is rational, how capable soever he may be, by time and exercise, to become

So.

Try in men of low and mean education, who have never elevated their thoughts above the space 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 compass 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 immediately depend, you will find in most men have governed all 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 all that can be said to show their weakness; or 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 of them; for long deductions from remote principles are what they have not been used to, and cannot manage.

What then can grown men never be improved, or enlarged in their understandings? I say not so; but this I think I may say, that it will not be done without industry and application, which will require more time and pains than grown men, settled in their course of life, will allow to it, and therefore very seldom is done. And this very capacity of attaining 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 as 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 edu cation, and getting into the world, gives one infinitely 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 exercise alone that opens them. Sometimes they will stick a long time at a part of a demonstration, 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 understanding, for want of use, often sticks in every plain way, and he himself that is so puzzled, 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 an 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 occasion. For, in all sorts of reasoning, every single argument should be managed as a mathematical demonstration: the connexion and dependence of ideas should be followed, till the mind is brought to the source on which it bottoms, and observes the coherence all along, though in proofs of probability one such train is not enough to settle the judgment, as in demonstrative knowledge.

Where a truth is made out by one demonstration, there needs no farther inquiry: but in probabilities, where there wants demonstration 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 balance one against another, and, upon the whole, the understanding determine its assent.

This is a way of reasoning the understanding should be accustomed to, which is so different from what the illite