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النشر الإلكتروني

The universal smatterer knows nothing to the bottom. The man of one science, on the contrary, makes that every thing, solves all difficulties by it, resolves all things into it; like the musician and dancing master in Moliere who labour to prove, that the welfare of states, and happiness of the world, depend wholly on the cultivation of those two elegancies.

Some men seem to have minds too narrow to apprehend any subject without first cramping and hampering it. Nothing great or generous can find room in their souls. They view things bit by bit, as one who looks through a miscroscope. A man of such a character may know some subjects more minutely than one who is universally allowed to be a great man, and yet such a one must be acknowledged to be a person of very mean accomplishments. For it is not having a heap of unanimated knowledge in one's head, but having the command of it, and being capable of applying and exerting it in a masterly manner, that denominates a truly great and highly accomplished mind.

Men's natural tempers have a very great influence over their way of thinking. Sanguine people, for example, see every thing very suddenly, and often very clearly in one light. But they do not always take time to view a complex subject on all sides, and in every light; without which, it is impossible to determine any thing about it with certainty. These tempers, when joined with weak judgments, make wild work in matters of inquiry and learning. For through haste and eagerness, they lay false foundations, or raise superstructures upon nothing. San. guine tempers, however, are generally found to be the fittest for action, and without a considerable degree of zeal and warmth, men seldom carry any great design into execution.

Men of cold saturnine tempers are generally slow and laborious in their researches, doubtful and undetermined in their opinions, and awkward at applying their discoveries and observations for the general advantage of knowledge, and of mankind. But if the miner did not dig up the ore, the curious artist could not fashion the metal into utensils and instruments necessary in life. The laborious searcher after knowledge is necessary to the man of genius.

For it is from him that he has the materials he works upon, which he would not himself bestow the drudgery of searching after. For a laborious turn is very rarely found to accompany brightness of genius.

Some people's reading never goes beyond the bulk of a pamphlet, who do not for all that quit their pretensions to disputing and arguing. But conversation alone does not go deep enough to lay a solid foundation of knowledge; nor does reading alone fully answer the purpose of digesting and rendering our knowledge useful. Reading is necessary to get at the fundamental principles of a science. And the careful perusal of a few capital books is sufficient for this purpose. Afterwards to talk over the subject with a set of intelligent men, is the best method for extending one's views of it. For in an evening's conversation, you may learn the substance of what each of your friends has spent many months in studying.

If you can find one or more ingenious, learned, and communicative friends, with whom to converse upon curious and useful subjects, to hear their opinions, and ask the advice, especially of those who are advanced in life, and, having been at the seat of the muses, are qualified to di rect you the shortest way thither; if you can find in the place where you live, such a set of friends, with whom to converse freely and without the trammels of systematic or academic rules, you will find more improvement, in a short time, from such society, than from twenty years solitary study.

Some choose only to read on what they call the orthodox side, that is, books in defence of those opinions which the bulk of people receive without examining. They conclude, a great number of people cannot be in the wrong. Others take for granted, that whatever is generally received, must be wrong. Such readers are sure to peruse whatever comes out against articles, or creeds, or religion in general. But they do not take the pains to give the defenders of them the hearing. And yet there is no doubt, but prejudice is equally wrong on either side; and in our times, there are almost as many prejudiced against, as in favour of, formerly received opinions. There is nothing commendable in believing what is true, unless that belief be the effect of examina

tion. Nor is there any merit in opposing error, if such opposition is accidental, and the effect of prejudice.

In establishing a set of principles, most people let themselves be biassed by prejudice, passion, education, spiritual guides, common opinion, supposed orthodoxy, or almost any thing. And after having been habituated to a particular way of thinking which they took up without examination, they can no more quit it, than they can change the features of their faces, or the make of their persons. To come at truth, one ought to begin with throwing out of his mind every attachment to either side, and bring himself to an absolute indifference which is true, or which false. He who wishes an opinion to be true, is in danger of being misled into the belief of it upon insufficient grounds; and he who wishes it to be false, is likely to reject it in spite of sufficient evidence for its truth. To observe some men studying, reading, arguing, and writing wholly on one side, without giving the other a fair hearing, making learning a party affair, and stirring up faction against truth, one would imagine, their minds were not made like those of most rational beings, of which truth is the proper object; but that it gave them a pleasure to be deceived.

Though it is the business and the very character of a wise man, to examine both sides, to hear different opinions, and search for truth even among the rubbish of error; yet there are numberless books, which I cannot think the shortness and uncertainty of life, that leaves no room for tedious trifling, will admit of examining with the care that must be bestowed in trying to find out the author's meaning, and to learn somewhat from him. As some writers, so to speak, never go deep enough to draw blood of a subject; so others refine and subtilize away all that the understanding can lay hold of. The logicians and metaphysicians, with their substantial forms, and intentional species; the Malebranches and Behmens! What fruit there is to be got from reading such writers, is to me; inconceivable. For the fate of all such refinements is, to be found partly unintelligible, partly absurd, and partly of no manner of consequence toward the discovery of any new truth...

Some men have the misfortune of an awkard, and as

it were a left-handed way of thinking and apprehending things. A great thought in such minds is not a great thought. For what is in itself clear and distinct, to such men appears dim and confused. Those gentlemen are mightily given to finding difficulties in the clearest points, and are great collectors of arguments pro and con. But their labours have no tendency to give either themselves or others satisfaction in any one subject of inquiry. It seems to be their delight to darken, rather than enlighten.

Want of education, or of so much culture as is necessary for habituating the mind to wield its faculties, is the same sort of disadvantage, for finding out and communicating intricate truth, as a raw recruit's never having learned the military exercise, is for his performing the movements properly in a review or a battle. It is therefore matter of compassion to see silly people, without the least improvement by education, without the advantage even of first principles, striking slap-dash at points of science, of which they do not so much as understand what it is they would affirm or deny; disputing and confuting, against those, who have spent their lives in a particular study; pretending, perhaps the first moment they ever thought of a subject, to see through the whole of it; taking upon them to make use of arguments, a sort of tools, which they have no more command of than I should of the helm of a ship, in a tempest. The shortest way of finishing a dispute with people, who will be meddling with what you know to be out of their depth, is to tell them, what reading and study you have bestowed upon it, and that still you do not think yourself sufficiently master of the subject. If your antagonist has any modesty, he must be sensible, that it is arrogance in him to pretend, without all the necessary advantages, to understand a subject better than one, who has had them.

Men of business, and men of pleasure, even if they have had their minds in their youth opened by education, and put in the way of acquiring knowledge, are generally found afterwards to lose the habit of close thinking and reasoning. But no one is less capable of searching into, or communicating truth, than he who has been from his carliest youth brought up, as most of the great are, in pleasure and folly.

There is no single obstacle, which stands in the way of more people in the search of truth, than pride. They have once declared themselves of a particular opinion; and they cannot bring themselves to think they could possibly be in the wrong. Consequently they cannot persuade themselves of the necessity of re-examining the foundations of their opinions. To acknowledge, and give up their error, would be a still severer trial. But the truth is, there is more greatness of mind in candidly giving up a mistake, than would have appeared in escaping it at first, if not a very shameful one. The surest way of avoiding error, is, careful examination. The best way of leaving room for a change of opinion, which should always be provided for, is to be modest in delivering one's sentiments. A man may, without confusion, give up an opinion, which he declared without arrogance.

The case of those, whose secular interests have engaged them to declare themselves of a certain party; where conscience is not allowed to speak loud enough to be heard on the side of candid and diligent examination, is the most remediless of any. Those men have nothing for it but to find out plausible arguments for their pre-established opinions, find themselves obliged not to examine whether their notions be true; but to contrive ways and means to make them true in spite of truth itself. If they happen to be in the right, so much the better for them. If in an error, having set out with their backs upon truth, the longer they travel, the farther they are from it; the more they study, the more they are deceived.

There are some men of no settled way of thinking at all; but change opinions with every pamphlet they read. To get rid of this unmanly fickleness, the way is, to labour to furnish the mind early with a set of rational well groundcd principles, which will, generally speaking, lead to reasonable consequences. Take for an example the following one among many. "The only end of a true religion "must be to perfect the human nature, and lead mankind to happiness." The reader must perceive at once, that such a fundamental principle will serve to discover and expose almost all the errors and absurdities of false religions, and those which may be introduced into the true. And so of other general principles.

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