Artful declamations have often fatal effects in misleading weak readers from the truth. A talent at oratory is therefore a very mischievous weapon in the hands of an ill-disposed man. It is the wisdom of a reader, when he has productions of genius put into his hands, to examine all the peculiar notions he finds in such writings, stripping them of their ornaments to the bare thought; which, if it will stand the test of cool reason, is to be received; if not, the style it is clothed in ought to gain it no favour; but it ought to be rejected with indignation. Wit, humour, and raillery, have done infinite mischief among superficial readers. Of which talents some authors have such a command, as to be capable of working up unthinking and unprincipled people to believe or practice whatever they please.

Strive to understand things as they are in themselves. Do not think of conceiving of them otherwise than according to their real natures. Do not labour to explain religion by chemistry, to reduce morals to mathematical certainty, or to think of eternal rectitude as an arbitrary or factitious constitution. The nature of things will not be forced. Bring your understanding to them. Do not think of reducing them to your hypothesis; unless you be indifferent about true knowledge, and mean only to amuse yourself with a jeu d'esprit.

In reading, labour to get into the full sense of the author's principal terms, and the truths affirmed in his propositions. After that, observe whether he proves, or only affirms roundly; whether what he says is built on fancy, or on truth, and the nature of things. And do not pretend to believe him one hair's breadth beyond what you understand: you cannot if you would.

In conversation, or writing, if you mean to give or receive information, accurately define your terms. Keep to the original sense you affixed to them. Use no tautology. Think in time what objections may be made to what you are going to urge. Let truth be your sole view. Despise the pleasure of conquering your antagonist. Pronounce modestly, so as to leave room for a retreat. Keep yourself superior to passion and peevishness. Yield whatever you can, that your antagonist may see you do not dispute for contention's sake. When you have argued

the matter fully, and neither can bring over the other, drop the subject amicably, mutually agreeing to differ.

If you would thoroughly re-examine a subject of importance, fancy it to be quite new to you before you begin to inquire into it. Throw out of your mind all your former notions of it; and put yourself in the place of an honest Indian, to whom a missionary is explaining the christian religion. Take every single thought to pieces, and reduce every complex idea to its simples. Get into the author's precise sense in every general term he uses. Strip his thoughts bare of all flourishes. Turn ever single point, in every complicated subject, all the ways it is capable of. View ever minute circumstance that may have any weight, not in one, but in all lights. Throw out of your mind every desire or wish, that may bias you either for or against the proposition. Shake off every prejudice, whether in favour of or against the author. Let the merit of every single argument be duly weighed; and do not let yourself be too strongly influenced by one you understand fully, against another, which you do not so clearly see through; or by one you are familiar with, against one that may be new to you, or not to your humour. The weight is of more consequence than the number of argument. Labour above all things to acquire a clear methodical, and accurate manner of thinking, speaking, or writing. Without this, study is but fruitless fatigue, and learning useless lumber.

Do not form very high or very mean notions of persons or things, where a great deal is to be said on both sides. Whatever is of a mixed nature ought to be treated as such. Judging of truth in the lump will make wild work. If an author pleases you in one place, do not therefore give yourself up implicitly to him. If he blunders in one place, do not therefore conclude that his whole book is nonsence. Especially if he writes well in general, do not imagine, from one difficult passage, which you cannot reconcile with the rest, that he meant to contradict his whole book; but rather conclude that you misunderstand him. Per haps mathematics is the only science on which any author has, or can write, without falling into mistakes.

Take care of false associations. Error may be ancient; truth of late discovery. The many may go wrong, while the few are in the right.

Learning does not always imply

judgment in an author, or soundness in his opinions. Nor is all vulgar error that is believed by the vulgar. Truth stands independent of all external things. In all your researches, let that be your object.

Take care of being misled by words of no meaning, of double meaning, or of uncertain signification. Regard always in an author the matter more than the style. It is the thought that must improve your mind. The language can only please your ear. If you are yourself to write or to preach, you will do more with mankind by a fine style than deep thought. All men have ears and pàssions; few strong understandings to work upon.

If you give yourself up to a fantastical, overheated, gloomy, or superstitious imagination, you may bid farewell to reason and judgment. Fancy is to be corrected, moderated, restrained, watched, and suspected, not indulged and let loose. Keep down every passion, and in general, every motion of the mind, except cool judgment and reflection, if you really mean to find out truth. What matter whether an opinion be yours, or your mortal enemy's? If it be true, embrace it without prejudice; if false, reject it without mercy: truth has nothing to do with your self-love, or your quarrels.

The credulous man believes without sufficient evidence. The obstinate doubts without reason. The sanguine is convinced at once. The plegmatic withholds his assent long. The learned has his hypothesis. The illiterate his prejudice. The proud is above being convinced. The fickle is not of the same opinion two days together. Young people determine quickly. The old delibcrate long. The dogmatist affirms as if he went upon mathematical demonstration. The sceptic doubts his own faculties, when they tell him that twice two are four. Some will believe nothing in religion that they cannot fully understand. Others will believe nothing to a point of doctrine, though the bare proposition be ever so clear, if it be possible to start any difficulty about the modes of it. Fashion, the only rule of life among many, especially almost universally in the higher ranks, has even a considerable influence in opinion, in taste, in reading, and in the methods of improving the mind. It runs through politics, divinity, and all but the mathematical sci

ences.

And there are a set of people at this day weak enough to think of making even them yield to it, and of new modelling and taking to pieces a system of philosophy founded in demonstration.

Parents may have misled us; teachers may have misinformed us; spiritual guides in many countries do notoriously mislead the people, and in all are fallible. The ancient philosophers differed among themselves in fundamentals. The fathers of the church contradict one another, and often contradict both scripture and reason. Popes and councils have decreed against one another. Weknow our ancestors to have been in the wrong in innumerable instances and they had the better of us in some. Kings repeal the edicts of their predecessors; and parliaments abrogate acts of former parliaments. Good men may be mistaken. Bad men will not stick to deceive us.

Here is therefore no manner of foundation for implicit belief. If we mean to come at truth, there is but one way for it; to attend to the cool and unprejudiced dictates of reason, that heaven-born director within us, which will never mislead us in any affair of consequence to us, unless we neglect to use its assistance, or give ourselves up to the government of our passions or prejudices. More especially we of this age and nation, who have the additional advantage of divine revelation, which also convinces us of its authority by reason, should be peculiarly unjustifiable in quitting those sacred guides, to whose conduct heaven itself has entrusted us, and of which the universal freedom of the present happy times allows us the use without restraint, and giving ourselves up to be led blindfold by any other. And, besides reason and revelation, there is no person or thing in the universe, that ought to have the least influence over us in our search after truth.

All the operations of the mind become easy by habit. It will be of great use to habituate yourself to examine, reflect, compare, and view, in every light, all kinds of subjects. Mathematics in youth, rational logic, such as Mr. Locke's, and conversation with men of clear heads, will be of great advantage to accustom you to readiness and justness in reasoning. But carefully avoid disputing for disputing's sake. Keep on improving and enlarging your views in a variety of ways. One part of knowledge is con

Re

nected with, and will throw a light upon another. view from time to time your former inquiries, especially in important subjects. Try whether you have not let yourself be imposed upon by some fallacy. And if you find so, though you have published your opinion through all Europe, make not the least hesitation to own your mistake, and retract it.-Truth is above all other regards. And it is infinitely worse to continue obstinately in a mistake, and be the cause of error in others' than to be thought fallible, or, in other words, to be thought a mortal man. In examining into truth, keep but one single point in view at a time; and when you have searched it to the bottom, pass on to another, and so on, till you have gone through all, and viewed every one in every different light. At last, sum up the collective evidence on both sides. Balance them against one another, and give your assent accordingly, proportioning your certainty or persuasion to the amount of the clear and unquestionable evidences upon the whole.

In reasoning there is more probability of convincing by two or three solid arguments closely put, than by as many dozen inclusive ones, ill digested, and improperly ranged. I know of no way of reasoning equal to the Sacratic, by which you convince your antagonist out of his own mouth. I could name several eminent writers, who have so laboured to establish their opinions by a multiplicity of arguments, that, by means of over-proving, they have rendered those doctrines doubtful, which, with a third part of the reasoning bestowed by them, would have appeared unquestionable.

Of all disputants, those learned controversial writers are the most whimsical, who have the talents of working themselves up in their closets into such a passion, as to call their antagonist's names in black and white; to use railing instead of reasoning, and palm off the public with rogue, rascal, dog, and blockhead, for solid confutations, as if the academy, at which they had studied, had been that of Billingsgate.

If one thinks he is in the right, it can be no great matter with how much modesty and temper he defends truth, so he does not give it up. And if he should be found afterwards to have been in the wrong, which in most disputable points is always to be apprehended, his modest