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44 by one sum, charged and discharged, when there are a hundred others to be taken into consideration.

This, therefore, it would be well if men’s minds were accustomed to, and that early, that they might not erect their opinions upon one single view when so many others are requisite to make up the account, and must come into the reckoning before a man can form a right judgment. This would enlarge their minds and give a due freedom to their understandings, that they might not be led into error by presumption, laziness, or precipitancy, for I think nobody can approve such a conduct of the understanding as should mislead it from truth, though it be ever so much in fashion to make use of it.

To this perhaps it will be objected, that to manage the understanding as I propose would require every man to be a scholar, and to be furnished with all the materials of knowledge and exercised in all the ways of reasoning. To which I answer, that it is a shame for those that have time and the means to attain knowledge to want any helps or assistance for the improvement of their understandings that are to be got, and to such I would be thought here chiefly to speak. Those methinks, who, by the industry and parts of their ancestors, have been set free from a constant drudgery to their backs and their bellies, should bestow some of their spare time on their heads, and open their minds by some trials and essays, in all the sorts and matters of reasoning. I have before mentioned mathematics, wherein algebra gives new helps and