acters; self-conceit averse to discern the real motives of acting: melancholy augurating always for the worst; besides many more, some of which I am afraid every man may find lurking in his own breast, if he will but look narrowly enough.

In all these cases there is not a want of sagacity nor information to judge better, but the customary turn of imagination will admit no ray of light but such as coincides with it. Therefore where we are too late for prevention, we must be the more diligent in applying a cure, which is effected not only by a resolute restraint, but less painfully and perhaps more successfully, by stirring up some desire which may draw us off from our customary ways; especially where the fault lies in the imagination, for if you resolve to bear in mind that you will not think of such a particular thing, you make it the object of your reflection by so doing: therefore it is better, seek for other things you will resolve to think of, for then of course you will keep clear from that you would avoid.

But we must not desist from the application too soon, for thought habit has not the force of passion, it is more tough and stubborn; when you think you have quite weakened its spring, it will recoil again with wonted vigor: like air kept condensed between two brazen hemispheres, which will not expand at first upon giving it vent, but very soon recovers all its former elasticity. The keeping our habits in order may serve for a good school of self-denial, wherein the lessons are easier than those of bearing pain, sickness, losses, hardships and labors, besides that we but rarely have calls to those arduous exercises.

And I cannot help thinking, that if pious women, instead of humiliations and self afflictions, would set themselves in good earnest to pass a day without any motions of fretfulness, peevishness, censoriousness, dilatoriness in the business of their families, forebodings of mischief, lamentations upon the wicked world, or other infirmity that does so easily beset them, it would prove a more acceptable sacrifice, and a more profitable service.

But good habits will want rectifying sometimes as well as bad ones, for without warping into a wrong bias they may become improper by a change of circumstances, like children's clothes out-grown before they are worn out. The man reduced from affluence by losses, must take up other thoughts and other measures than he was used to before the attention to small profits and parsimony habitual to the trader must be thrown aside when by his elder brother's death he comes into possession of the fox hounds, and the tubs of election ale. The same ways are not suitable to the boy, the youth, and the old man, the new convert

and the well-exercised in Religion, the learner, and the proficient in any art or science. Scarce a year passes but new connections, new engagements or accidents call upon us to depart from some of our former customs, and inure ourselves to new ones. Therefore we must always be learning, and always shaping our courses according to the several windings in our line of life for it is a miserable thing for a man to have no employment for his thoughts, unless in hankering after practices that were reasonable for him aforetime though now become unfeasible and unsuitable.

i

CHAP. XXXII.

CREDULITY AND INCREDULITY.

JOIN these two because they generally go together, one being a consequence of the other: for it is the strong attachment to particular persons that makes men averse against hearkening to others, and less attentive to mind what is said, than who said it. Nature made us extremely credulous in our infancy until the cautions learned from our parents and tutors have armed us with an inflexibility to whatever contradicts the principles imbibed from them, or if we become refractory to parents and tutors it is commonly owing to the suggestions of some seducer, to which we have given an easy reception: thus in both cases we disregard one person, only because another has gained our entire confidence.

But the terms of my present subject do not relate solely to the credit found with us by other persons, they extend likewise to all kinds of evidence presenting to the thought which are made to lose their just weight by the fondness we have for whatever they tend to invalidate: so that we become incredulous upon some points by being two credulous of others, for the same prejudice that draws down one scale must necessarily raise up the other. This truth stands exemplified in persons of all denominations: the bigot and the free-thinker, the orthodox and the sectary, the courtier and the patriot, the lover, the projector, and the schemist will receive whatever favors their humor upon the slightest evidence, and reject whatever thwarts it though coming with the strongest.

VOL. IV.

46

For there are three causes of the errors we commit, one the want of sufficient lights to inform our judgment or of sagacity to discern them this may draw us into some present inconveniences, but cannot affect our main concern; the errors will be mere errors without carrying anything blameable in them; they may excite pity or perhaps a smile, but can draw censure from none, except those, whose censure we may justly despise. Another is the want of resolution to execute what our judgment clearly discerns to be right this is only to be excused by the imbecility of human nature, and where such excuse cannot be pleaded, is indeed a fatal error which we must strive to rectify by the exercises of selfdenial and vigilance before recommended. The third is an unlucky custom we fall into of blinding the judgment by shutting out some of the lights that would flow in upon it, and magnifying others with the glass of eagerness to contemplate them; this though a fault of the Will is such a one as no man stands totally exempt from, for it proceeds often from secret motives which we are not aware of, nor is it easy to know when we ought to give our assent and when to withhold it, or when the scale hitches in the briers of prejudice; therefore it behoves us to be very attentive in looking about for such impediments, and careful to loosen them when discovered.

But it will be asked to what purpose we are exhorted to give, or withhold our assent? is not assent voluntary, the act of the objects before us, not of the mind? can any man with all his efforts dissent from the truth that two and two make four, or assent to their making five? All this is very true; nevertheless, though we cannot command assent, we may many times command the means that will infallibly work it: as a man cannot help reading the page he looks upon, nor see things otherwise than are there contained, yet he may shut the book or turn to any other page he pleases, and so choose what he shall see, although he be purely passive in the faculty of vision.

2. Assent belongs to propositions, and is an additional perception over and above those of the terms contained in them, commonly called an opinion or judgment; for though Thomas be taller than John, they may both stand before me, and I may have a full view of their persons, yet without observing which of them is the taller, that is, without framing any mental proposition concerning their height to which I may assent. And among the objects we are daily conversant with, there are a thousand judgments might be passed upon them which never come into our heads, nor indeed is it possible they should all find room there: therefore besides the power we have by our hands, our eyes, or our memory,

to bring objects before us, we have likewise a choice of what propositions we shall form out of the materials in our reflection.

But our present subject stands concerned with such propositions only as occur spontaneously to our thoughts, or are suggested by other persons; yet even here we have a choice in what manner we shall receive them, whereon the assent they shall gain very frequently depends. For except in things very familiar to our acquaintance, where the judgment has been joined in association with the terms, it does not rise immediately upon inspection, but they must be held in contemplation some little time before it will follow; and as our ideas fluctuate for a while both in strength and colors, the determination will be very different according as taken from them in their highest or their lowest state. Therefore in all arguments, whether occurring to the thought or suggested by another, a man must aid himself to come at the decision, by giving them a due consideration and waiting till the fluctuation ends.

The manner of proceeding herein is what I take to be understood by giving or withholding assent, which is done hastily or fairly according as you strive to fix a color, while they are transient, or stay till they fix of themselves; for you neither can nor ought to give any other assent, than that which results naturally from the colors of our ideas. But the color of our ideas is often affected by the mixture of others standing in company with them; therefore if you hold one set in your thoughts to the exclusion of all others, they may have a very different aspect from what they would, had you given those others admittance.

Thus assent may be wrongfully given or withheld two ways, either by a partial choice of the objects you will contemplate, or by fixing your judgment upon them at some particular moment during their fluctuation of color; as a witness deposing positively to a fact will be credited if you refuse to hear other testimony by the weight of which he may be overborne, or may appear to prove a point if you stop him short as soon as he has related the circumstances tending to confirm it, without suffering him to proceed in the rest of his evidence which might make the contrary manifest.

This is innocently practised every day in that temporary persuasion we assume in reading a poem, a fable, or a novel, where we imagine incidents to be true while going on with the story, but whenever admitting our old ideas to return again into view, we presently know the whole to be a fiction. The same is done in following the rule laid down by Tully for an Orator, that he should make his client's case his own and that prescribed by Horace to

such as would touch the passions, which he says they cann o do without putting on the very sentiments they would inspire. So likewise in study and deliberation it is often useful to imagine things for a while otherwise than they really are, for a false supposition may let in lights for our better discernment of the truth.

Yet there is some limitation to this power of temporary persuasion, for though one may imagine Fortunatus to possess a purse in which he shall always find ten guineas immediately after he has emptied it, yet we could not imagine him endued with a faculty of making twice ten guineas to be a hundred, or any other number he should want: and though we might fancy a Fairy causing a house to rise at once out of the ground with a stroke of her wand, or contract Paul's church to the size of a pea, yet while continuing in its own dimensions we could never conceive her enclosing it within a nutshell: which shows that we cannot create a new color in our ideas or our appearances, but can only catch such as they take in their fluctuations by some similitude with things we have

seen.

Therefore Poetry whose province lies chiefly in fiction, nevertheless is restrained to probabilities, that is such things as imagination can suppose to be real: and for the same reason as we grow up we become less and less delighted with extravagant tales, because to children the common works of men appear conjuration and miracle, so that the marvellous and the preternatural is nothing strange to them, for they can always find something similar in their apprehension among the things they have seen.

3. By frequently supposing things true we may bring ourselves to believe them true, the temporary persuasion settling into a fixed one. This happens not so often in facts supposed already past, as in the expectation of similar events likely to fall out in the world. For though the probability of incidents required in fiction be no more than a possibility, yet it implies a possibility that the like may happen again, which being continually fed upon in the imagination, will turn into a high degree of probability.

Hence springs the mischief done to such as are much conversant in plays or novels, for having perpetually filled their head with ideas of Strephons and Phillises, they expect to find a faithful nymph or swain in whatever their fancy sets upon; the charming creature whose beauteous formi or engaging prattle strikes irresistibly must needs be possessed of all valuable perfections; the discovery of a Prince stolen away in his cradle, or the sudden death of a rich uncle, or some extraordinary chance that has happened in the world before, and so may happen again, may reconcile parents, set all to rights, and prove they have made a lucky