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64 and impatience of the mind also, that a not due tracing of the arguments to their true foundation is owing; men see a little, presume a great deal, and so jump to the conclusion. This is a short way to fancy and conceit, and (if firmly embraced) to opinionatry, but is certainly the farthest way about to knowledge. For he that will know, must by the connection of the proofs see the truth and the ground it stands on; and therefore if he has for haste skipt over what he should have examined, he must begin and go over all again, or else he will never come to knowledge.

17. Desultory.—Another fault of as ill consequence as this, which proceeds also from laziness, with a mixture of vanity, is the skipping from one sort of knowledge to another. Some men’s tempers are quickly weary of one thing. Constancy and assiduity is what they cannot bear: the same study long continued in is as intolerable to them, as the appearing long in the same clothes or fashion is to a court-lady.

18. Smattering.—Others, that they may seem universally knowing, get a little smattering in everything. Both these may fill their heads with superficial notions of things, but are very much out of the way of attaining truth or knowledge.

19. Universality.—I do not here speak against the taking a taste of every sort of knowledge; it is certainly very useful and necessary to form the mind; but then it must be done in a different way and to a