Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/75

Rh it is pretended to be built on. Such an examen as is requisite to discover, that every reader’s mind is not forward to make, especially in those who have given themselves up to a party, and only hunt for what they can scrape together that may favor and support the tenets of it. Such men willfully exclude themselves from truth, and from all true benefit to be received by reading. Others of more indifferency often want attention and industry. The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original, and to see upon what basis it stands and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in reading. The mind should by severe rules be tied down to this, at first, uneasy task; use and exercise will give it facility. So that those who are accustomed to it readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the argument, and presently, in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of hooks, and the clew to lead them through the mizmaze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in, and showed the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers to it will be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men’s studies, and they will suspect they shall make but small progress if in the books they read they must stand to examine and unravel every argument, and follow it step by step up to its original.

I answer, this is a good objection, and ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much