The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

XIV. To conclude this section: The way to happiness and the practice of truth incur the one into the other.119 For no being can be styled happy, that is not ultimately so: because if all his pains exceed all his pleasures, he is so far from being happy that he is a being unhappy or miserable, in proportion to that excess. Now, by proposition XI, nothing can produce the ultimate happiness of any being, which interferes with truth; and therefore, whatever does produce that, must be something which is consistent and coincident with this.

Two things then (but such as are met together, and embrace each other), which are to be religiously regarded in all our conduct, are truth (of which in the preceding section) and happiness (that is, such pleasures as accompany or follow the practice of truth, or are not inconsistent with it, of which I have been treating in this). And as that religion, which arises from the distinction between moral good and evil, was called natural, because grounded upon truth and the natures of things; so perhaps may that too, which proposes happiness for its end, inasmuch as it proceeds upon that difference which there is between true pleasure and pain, which are physical (or natural) good and evil. And since both these unite so amicably, and are at last the same, here is one religion which may be called natural upon two accounts.

My manner of thinking, and an objection formerly made, oblige me in the next place to say something concerning the means of knowing what is true: whether there are any that are sure, and which one may safely rely upon. For if there be not, all that I have written is an amusement to no purpose. Besides, as this will lead me to speak of reason, etc., some truths may here (as some did in the former section) fall in our way, which may be profitable upon many occasions; and what has been already asserted, will also be further confirmed.

I. An intelligent being, such as is mentioned before, must have some immediate objects of his understanding, or at least a capacity of having such. For if there be no object of his intellect, he is intelligent of nothing, or not intelligent. And if there are no immediate objects, there can be none at all: because every object must be such (an object) either in itself immediately, or by the intervention of another which is immediate, or of several, one of which must at least be immediate.

II. An intelligent being, among the immediate objects of his mind, may have some that are abstract and general. I shall not at present inquire how he comes by them (it matters not how), since this must be true if there is any such thing as a rational being. For, that reason is something different from the knowledge of particulars may appear from hence: because it is not confined to particular things or cases. What is reason in one instance, is so in another. What is reasonable with respect to Quinctius, is so in respect of Nævius.120 Reason is performed in species. A rational being, therefore, must have some of these species (I mean specific and abstract ideas) to work with, or some superior method, such as perhaps some higher order of reasoners may have but we have not.

The knowledge of a particular idea is only the particular knowledge of that idea or thing: there it ends. But reason is something universal, a kind of general instrument, applicable to particular things and cases as they occur. We reason about particulars, or from them; but not by them.

In fact we find within ourselves many logical, metaphysical, mathematical ideas, no one of which is limited to any particular or individual thing⁠—but they comprehend whole classes and kinds. And it is by the help of these that we reason and demonstrate. So that we know, from within ourselves, that intelligent beings not only may have such abstract ideas as are mentioned in the proposition, but that some actually have them: which is enough for my purpose.

III. Those ideas or objects that are immediate, will be adequately and truly known to that mind whose ideas they are. For ideas can be no further the ideas of any mind, than that mind has (or may have) a perception of them: and therefore that mind must perceive the whole of them, which is to know them adequately.

Again: these ideas being immediate, nothing (by the term) can intervene to increase, diminish, or any way alter them. And to say the mind does not know them truly, implies a contradiction, because it is the same as to say that they are misrepresented: that is, that there are intervening and misrepresenting ideas.

And lastly: there cannot be an immediate perception of that which is not; nor therefore of any immediate object otherwise than as it is. We have indeed many times wrong notions, and misperceptions of things: but then these things are not the immediate objects. They are things, which are notified to us by the help of organs and media, which may be vitiated, or perhaps are defective at best, and incapable of transmitting things as they are in themselves, and therefore occasion imperfect and false images. But then, even in this case, those images and ideas that are immediate to the percipient are perceived as they are: and that is the very reason why the originals, which they should exhibit truly, but do not, are not perceived as they are. In short, I only say the mind must know its own immediate ideas.

IV. What has been said of these ideas which are immediate, may be said also of those relations or respects which any of those ideas bear immediately each to other: they must