The Religion of Nature Delineated

of error, which I take to be such as these:

1. Want of faculties; when men pretend to judge of things above them. As some (straying out of their proper element and falling into the dark, where they find no ideas but their own dreams, come to) assert what they have no reason to assert, so others deny what there is the highest reason to believe, only because they cannot comprehend it.

2. Want of due reflection upon those ideas we have, or may have: by which it comes to pass that men are destitute of that knowledge which is gained by the contemplation of them, and their relations; misapply names, confusedly; and sometimes deal in a set of words and phrases to which no ideas at all belong, and which have indeed no meaning. Of kin to this is,

3. Want of proper qualifications and προπαιδεύματα.156 As when illiterate people invade the provinces of scholars; the half-lettered are forward, and arrogate to themselves what a modest, studious man dares not,157 though he knows more; and scholars that have confined themselves to one sort of literature, launch out into another: unsuccessfully all.

4. Not understanding in what the nature and force of a just consequence consists. Nothing more common than to hear people assert that such a thing follows from such a thing, when it does not follow: i.e., when such a consequence is founded in no axiom, no theorem, no truth that we know of.

5. Defects of memory and imagination. For men, in reasoning, make much use of these: memory is upon many occasions consulted, and sometimes drafts made upon the fantasy. If, then, they depend upon these, and these happen to be weak, clouded, perverted any way, things may be misrepresented, and men led out of the way by misshapen apparitions. There ought to be, therefore, a little distrust of these faculties, and such proper helps ought to be used, as perhaps the best judgments want the most.

6. Attributing too much to sense. For, as necessary as our senses are to us, there are certainly many things which fall not within their notice; many which cannot be exhibited after the manner of sensible objects, and to which no images belong. Everyone who has but just saluted the mathematics and philosophy, must be convinced that there are many things in nature which seem absurd to sense, and yet must be admitted.

7. Want of refinement, and the practice of thinking and reasoning by ourselves.158 A rambling and irregular life must be attended with a loose and irregular head, ill-connected notions, and fortuitous conclusions. Truth is the offspring of silence, unbroken meditations, and thoughts often revised and corrected.

8. The strength of appetites, passions, prejudices. For by these the understanding may be corrupted, or overborne; or at least the operations of the mind must be much obstructed by the intrusion of such solicitors as are no retainers to the rational powers, and yet strong, and turbulent. Among other prejudices, there is one of a particular nature which you must have observed to be one of the greatest causes of modern irreligion. While some opinions and rites are carried to such an immoderate height as exposes the absurdity of them to the view of almost everybody, but them who raise them, not only gentlemen of the belles lettres, but even men of common sense many times see through them; and then out of indignation and an excessive renitence, not separating that which is true from that which is false, they come to deny both, and fall back into the contrary extreme, a contempt of all religion in general.159

9. Ill stating of a question; when men either put it wrong themselves, or accept it so put from others. A small addition or falsity, slipped into the case, will ferment, and spread itself; an artificial color may deceive one; an encumbered manner may perplex one. The question ought to be presented before its judge clean, and in its natural state, without disguise or distortion. To this last may be subjoined another cause, nearly allied to it: not fixing the sense of terms, and (which must often follow) not rightly understanding what it is that is to be examined and resolved.

Secondly, the reason why the many are commonly in the wrong and so wretchedly misjudge things: The generality of people are not sufficiently prepared, by a proper education, to find truth by reasoning. And, of them who have liberal education, some are soon immersed and lost in pleasures, or at least in fashionable methods of living, rolling from one visit or company to another,160 and flying from nothing so much as from themselves and the quiet retreats proper for meditation and reasoning; others become involved in business and the intricate affairs of life, which demand their attention and engross their time; others fall into a slothful neglect of their studies and disuse of what they have learnt, or want help and means to proceed, or only design to deceive life and gratify themselves with the amusements and sensual parts of learning; and others there are, whose misfortune it is to begin wrong, to begin with the conclusion, taking their opinions from places where they have been bred, or accommodating them to their situation in the world, and the conditions of that employment by which they are to get their bread, before they have ever considered them, and then making the subsequent business of their lives to dispute for them and maintain them, right or wrong. If such men happen to be in the right, it is luck, and part of their portion, not the effect of their improvements; and if they happen to be in the wrong, the more they study, and the more learning they get, the more they are confirmed in their errors, and having set out with their backs upon truth, the further they go, the more they recede from it. Their knowledge is a kind