Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/67

Rh truth its due value, that it wholly debases it: espouse opinions that best comport with their power, profit, or credit, and then seek arguments to support them? Truth lighted upon this way, is of no more avail to us than error, for what is so taken up by us may be false as well as true; and he has not done his duty who has thus stumbled upon truth in his way to preferment.

There is another but more innocent way of collecting arguments very familiar among bookish men, which is to furnish themselves with the arguments they meet with pro and con in the questions they study. This helps them not to judge right nor argue strongly, but only to talk copiously on either side without being steady and settled in their own judgments: for such arguments gathered from other men’s thoughts, floating only in the memory, are there ready indeed to supply copious talk with some appearance of reason, but are far from helping us to judge right. Such variety of arguments only distract the understanding that relies on them, unless it has gone farther than such a superficial way of examining; this is to quit truth for appearance, only to serve our vanity. The sure and only way to get true knowledge, is to form in our minds clear settled notions of things, with names annexed to those determined ideas. These we are to consider with their several relations and