Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/68

62, and not amuse ourselves with floating names and words of indetermined signification which we can use in several senses to serve a turn. It is in the perception of the habitudes and respects our ideas have one to another that real knowledge consists, and when a man once perceives how far they agree or disagree one with another, he will be able to judge of what other people say, and will not need to be led by the arguments of others, which are many of them nothing but plausible sophistry. This will teach him to state the question right, and see whereon it turns, and thus he will stand upon his own legs, and know by his own understanding. Whereas by collecting and learning arguments by heart, he will be but a retailer to others; and when anyone questions the foundations they are built upon, he will be at a nonplus, and be fain to give up his implicit knowledge.

16. Haste—Labor for labor-sake is against nature. The understanding, as well as all the other faculties, chooses always the shortest way to its end, would presently obtain the knowledge it is about, and then set upon some new inquiry. But this, whether laziness or haste, often misleads it and makes it content itself with improper ways of search, and such as will not