The conduct of the understanding. To which is prefixed, a sketch of the life of the author1812 |
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The Conduct of the Understanding. to Which Is Prefixed, a Sketch of the Life ... John Locke No preview available - 2016 |
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able accustomed allow amine apply arguments assent authority better bottom brought carry cerned clear concerning conduct defect derstanding determined ideas discourse distinct ideas embrace employed endeavour enlarge enquiry error evidence examine exercise eyes faculties fancy farther give habit haste hinder ignorance improvement indifferency JOHN LOCKE judgment keep knowledge labour laziness learned least ledge light Locke lord Ashley mathematicians matters men's minds ment miscarriages mislead Montpelier natural philosophy nature never nion notions object observe oil of vitriol opinions ourselves pains passion perceive portune prejudice principles proof propositions question reason religion remote rence rest riety rules sciences SECT seldom serve settled shew side similies sion sophistry sort stand Stillingfleet suppose tain taken tenets things thoughts tincture tion train of consequences truth and falsehood tural understanding visible wherein wholly words write
Popular passages
Page 27 - Just so it is in the mind; would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observing the connexion of ideas, and following them in train.
Page 18 - ... repeated actions. Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery; others for apologues and apposite diverting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather because it is not got by rules, and...
Page 6 - The second is of those who put passion in the place of reason, and, being resolved that shall govern their actions and arguments, neither use their own nor hearken to other people's reason, any...
Page 27 - ... we are born to it, if we please ; yet we may truly say, nature gives us but the seeds of it ; we are born to be, if we please, rational creatures, but it is use and exercise only that makes us so, and we are, indeed, so no farther than industry and application has earned us.
Page 65 - THIS is THAT which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of everything are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.
Page 19 - Nobody is made any thing by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule, and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician extempore by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker or strict reasoner by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
Page 9 - ... they canton out to themselves a little Goshen in the intellectual world, where light shines, and, as they conclude, day blesses them ; but the rest of that vast expansum they give up to night and darkness, and so avoid coming near it.
Page 32 - I have mentioned mathematics as a way to settle in the mind a habit of reasoning closely and in train ; not that I think it necessary that all men should be deep mathematicians, but that, having got the way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge as they shall have occasion.
Page 8 - ... escaped him, and which his reason would make use of, if they came into his mind. The faculty of reasoning seldom or never deceives those who trust to it ; its consequences, from what it builds on, are evident and certain ; but that which it oftenest, if not only, misleads us in, is, that the principles from which we conclude, the grounds upon which we bottom our reasoning, are but a part, something is left out, which should go into the reckoning, to make it just and exact.
Page 32 - ... that having got the way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge, as they shall have occasion. For, in all sorts of reasoning, every single argument should be managed as a mathematical demonstration ; the connexion and dependence of ideas should be followed, till the mind is brought to the source on which it bottoms, and observes the coherence all along, though in proofs of probability one such train is not enough...