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

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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 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, 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 wherever 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 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 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 conclusion 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 polestar 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