Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/47

Rh they either immediately return to their old maxims again, as the foundations to 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 further 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 further 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