第18章 Arguments

Very much of kin to this is the hunting after arguments to make good one side of a question and wholly to neglect and refuse those which favor the other side.What is this but wailfully to misguide the understanding (and is so far from giving truth its due value that it wholly debases it),[to]espouse opinions that best comport with their porter,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 further 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,and with their several relations and habitudes,and not to 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 retainer 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.