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 explain and elucidate is thought to be understood too. Thus fancy passes for knowledge, and what is prettily said is mistaken for solid. I say not this to decry metaphor, or with design to take away that ornament of speech; my business here is not with rhetoricians and orators, but with philosophers and lovers of truth; to whom I 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 before 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 applied 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 illustrate more abstruse and unfamiliar ideas which

the mind is not yet thoroughly accustomed to: but then they must be made use of to illustrate ideas that we already have, not to paint to us those which we yet have not. Such borrowed and allusive ideas may follow real and solid truth, to set it off when 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 assure ourselves we rather fancy than know, and are not yet penetrated into the inside and reality of the thing, be it what it will, but content 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

Where

source,

a truth is made out by one

stration, there needs no farther inqui in probabilities. where there wants de tion to establish the truth beyond dou it is not enough to trace one argume but all the arguments, after having examined on both sides, must be laid ance one against another, and, upon the the understanding determine its assen This is a way of reasoning the un ing should be accustomed to, which ferent from what the illiterate are that even learned men oftentimes » have very little or no notion of it. to be wondered, since the way of in the schools, leads them quite away by insisting on one topical argumen success of which the truth or falseh question is to be determined, and v judged to the opponent or defenda is all one as if one should balance : by one sun, charged and dischar; there are an hundred others to be consideration.

and observe its strength and w

This, therefore, it would be wel minds were accustomed to, and t that they right not erect their opi one single view, when so many othe site to make up the account, and into the reckoning, before a man

ight judgment. This would enlarge their
minds, and give a due freedom to their der
tandings, that they might not be led into e-
or by presumption, laziness, or precipitancy;
or I think nobody can approve such a ce-
uct of the understanding as should mislead t
rom truth, though it be ever so much in fab
on to make use of it.

To this perhaps it will be objected, that to
manage the understanding as I propose would
equire every man to be a scholar, and to be
rnished with all the materials of knowledge,
nd exercised in all the ways of reasoning
To which I answer, that it is a shame for
ose that have time, and the means to attain
nowledge, to want any helps or assistance,
or the improvement of their understanding,
mat are to be got; and to such I would be
hought here chiefly to speak. Those me-
inks, who by the industry and parts of their
cestors, have been set free from a constant
rudgery to their backs and their bellies,
hould bestow some of their
eir heads, and upon their minds, by some
spare time
ials and essays, in all the sorts and matters
f reasoning. I have before mentioned m
ematics, wherein algebra gives new helps
nd views to the understanding. If I propose
mese, it is not, as I said, to make
thorough mathematician, or a deep algebra-
every man
t; but yet I think the study of them is of

on noquup 8 18 XX

bor uodnal

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 different 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 dressed 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 flatterer (that studies but to please) is received for good. There are so manyways of fallacy, such arts of giving colours, appearances, and resemblances 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 subservient to any thing else, cannot but be caught. He that has a mind to believe, has half assent