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

them by such ways as we can. The case is to be stated in a manner suitable to their capacities; a fair narration of matters of fact, and their circumstances, to be made; many times persons and things to be described by proper diatyposes and the like: all which are additional labor, and take up much room in discourses and books, and are performed by different authors upon different subjects, and in different kinds of writing, with an infinite variety of methods and forms, according to men’s different views and capacities; and many times not without a necessity of some condescensions, ascititious advantages, and even applications to the passions. But notwithstanding this, in strict reasoning nothing is required but to lay steps in a due order, firmly connected, and expressed properly, without flourish;130 and to arrive at truth by the shortest and clearest gradation we are able.

Once more: perhaps disputacious men may say I ascribe the investigation of truth to one faculty, when it is in reality the joint business of several. For when we go about this work, we are forced to make use of subordinate powers, and even external helps; to draw diagrams and put cases in our own imagination; to correct the images there, compound them, divide them, abstract from them; to turn over our memory, and see what has been entered and remains in that register; even to consult books, and use pen and ink. In short, we assemble all such axioms, theorems, experiments, and observations, as are already known, and appear capable of serving us, or present themselves upon the opening and analysis of the question or case before us. And when the mind has thus made its tour, fetched in materials from every quarter, and set them in its own view, then it contemplates, compares, and methodizes them; gives the first place to this, the second to that, and so on; and when trials do not succeed rightly, rejects some, adopts others, shifts their order, etc., till at last the series is so disposed that the thing required comes up resolved, proved, or disproved, by a just conclusion from proper premises. Now, in this process there seem to be many faculties concerned in these acts of circumspection, recollection, invention, reflection, comparing, methodizing, judging. But what if all this be so? I do not exclude the use of such subservient powers, or other helps as are necessary to the exerting this faculty of reason; nor deny the mind matter to work upon. I may allow all the intellectual faculties their proper offices, and yet make reason to be what I have described it to be.

IX. There is such a thing as right reason, or, Truth may be discovered by reasoning.131 The word “reason” has several acceptations. Sometimes it is used for that power mentioned in the last proposition, as when we say: “Man is a being endowed with reason.” And then the sense of this proposition must be this: that there is such a use to be made of this power, as is right, and will manifest truth. Sometimes it seems to be taken for those general truths, of which the mind possesses itself from the intimate knowledge of its own ideas, and by which it is governed in its inferences and conclusions, as when we say: “Such a thing is agreeable to reason:” for that is as much as to say it is agreeable to the said general truths, and that authentic way of making deductions which is founded in them. And then the sense of this proposition is that there are such general truths, and such a right way of inferring. Again: sometimes it seems to stand only for some particular truth, as it is apprehended by the mind with the causes of it, or the manner of its derivation from other truth: that is, it differs not from truth execept in this one respect, that it is considered not barely in itself, but as the effect and result of a process of reasoning; or it is truth with the arguments for our assent, and its evidences, about it; as when it is said: “that such or such an assertion is reason.” And then the sense of the proposition is that there are truths so to be apprehended by the mind. So all comes to this at last: truth (or there are truths, which) may be discovered, or found to be such, by reasoning.

If it were not so, our rational faculties, the noblest we have, would be vain.

Beside, that it is so appears from the foregoing propositions and what we know within ourselves. ’Tis certain we have immediate and abstract ideas: the relations of these are adequately known to the mind, whose ideas they are; the propositions expressing these relations are evidently known to be true; and these truths must have the common privilege and property of all truths: to be true in all the particulars and uses to which they are applicable. If, then, any things are notified to us by the help of our senses, or present themselves by any other way or means, to which these truths may be immediately applied, or from whence deductions may be made after the forementioned manner, new truths may be thus collected. And since these new truths, and the numerous descendents that may spring from their loins, may be used still in the same manner, and be as it were the seed of more truth, who can tell at what undescried fields of knowledge even men may at length arrive? At least, nobody can doubt but that much truth, and particularly of that kind which is most useful to us in our conduct here, is discoverable by this method.

They, who oppugn the force and certainty of reason, and treat right reason as a chimera, must argue against reason either with reason, or without reason. In the latter way they do nothing; and in the former they