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

all the forms of true syllogisms may be proved to conclude rightly, all the advances made in the syllogistic method, toward the discovery or confirmation of truth, are so many instances and proofs of what is here asserted. So also are the performances of the mathematicians. From some self-evident truths and a few easy theorems, which they set out with at first, to what immense lengths, and through what a train of propositions, have they propagated knowledge! How numerous are their theorems and discoveries now, so far once out of human ken!

I do not enter so far into the province of the logician as to take notice of the difference there is between the analytic and synthetic methods of coming at truth or proving it; whether it is better to begin the disquisition from the subject, or from the attribute. If, by the use of proper media, anything can be shown to be or not to be, I care not from what term the demonstration or argument takes its rise. Either way, propositions may beget their like, and more truth be brought into the world.

VIII. That power which any intelligent being has⁠—of surveying his own ideas and comparing them; of forming to himself, out of those that are immediate and abstract, such general and fundamental truths as he can be sure of;127 and of making such inferences and conclusions as are agreeable to them, or to any other truth, after it comes to he known; in order to find out more truth, prove or disprove some assertion, resolve some question, determine what is fit to be done upon occasion, etc., the case or thing under consideration being first fairly stated and prepared⁠—is what I mean by the faculty of reason, or what entitles him to the epithet “rational.” Or in short, Reason is a faculty of making such inferences and conclusions as are mentioned under the preceding proposition, from anything known or given.

The Supreme being has no doubt a direct and perfect intuition of things, with their natures and relations, lying as it were all before Him, and pervious to His eye; or at least we may safely say that He is not obliged to make use of our operose methods by ideas and inferences, but knows things in a manner infinitely above all our conceptions. And as to superior finite natures, what other means of attaining to the knowledge of things they may have is a thing not to be told by me, or how far they may excel us in this way of finding truth. I have an eye here chiefly to our own circumstances. Reason must be understood, when it is ascribed to God, to be the Divine reason; when to other beings above us, to be their reason; and in all of them, to transcend ours as much as their natures respectively do our nature.128

It cannot be amiss to note further, that though a man who truly uses his rational powers⁠—has abstract and universal ideas obtained by reflection; out of these frames to himself general truths, or apprehends the strength of such, and admits them, when they occur to him; by these, as by so many standards, measures and judges of things; and takes care to have the materials which he makes use of in reasoning, to be rivetted and compacted together by them⁠—yet by a habit of reasoning he may come to serve himself of them, and apply them so quick, that he himself shall scarce observe it. Nay, most men seem to reason by virtue of a habit acquired by conversation, practice in business, and examples of others, without knowing what it is that gives the solidity even to their own just reasonings: just as men usually learn rules in arithmetic, govern their accounts by them all their days, and grow very ready and topping in the use of them, without ever knowing or troubling their heads about the demonstration of any one of them. But still though this be so, and men reason without adverting upon general ideas and abstract truths, or even being aware that there are any such⁠—as it were by rule or a kind of rote⁠—yet such there are, and upon them rests the weight of reason as its foundation.

This, by the way, helps us to detect the cause why the generality of people are so little under the dominion of reason: why they sacrifice it to their interests and passions so easily; are so obnoxious to prejudices, the influence of their company, and din of a party; so apt to change, though the case remains the very same; so unable to judge of things that are ever so little out of the way; and so conceited and positive in matters that are doubtful, or perhaps to discerning persons manifestly false. Their reasoning proceeds in that track which they happen to be got into, and out of which they know not one step, but all is to them Terra incognita; being ignorant of the scientific part, and those universal, unalterable principles, upon which true reasoning depends, and to find which and the true use of them are required cool hours and an honest application, beside many preparatives.

In the next place, it must be noted that one may reason truly from that which is only probable, or even false.129 Because just inferences may be made from propositions of these kinds: that is, such inferences may be made as are founded in certain truths, though those propositions themselves are not certainly true. But then what follows or is concluded from thence, will be only probable, or false, according to the quality of that proposition, or those propositions, from which the inference is made.

Again, it should be observed that what I have said of reasoning, chiefly belongs to it as it is an internal operation. When we are to present our reasonings to others, we must transfer our thoughts to