fying of our
thoughts; I say Marking them, when we reckon by our selves; and
Signifying, when we demonstrate, or approve our reckonings to other men.
Right Reason Where
And as in Arithmetique, unpractised men must, and Professors themselves
may often erre, and cast up false; so also in any other subject of
Reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men, may
deceive themselves, and inferre false Conclusions; Not but that Reason
it selfe is always Right Reason, as well as Arithmetique is a certain
and infallible art: But no one mans Reason, nor the Reason of any
one number of men, makes the certaintie; no more than an account is
therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously
approved it. And therfore, as when there is a controversy in an account,
the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the
Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence they will
both stand, or their controversie must either come to blowes, or be
undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is
it also in all debates of what kind soever: And when men that think
themselves wiser than all others, clamor and demand right Reason for
judge; yet seek no more, but that things should be determined, by no
other mens reason but their own, it is as intolerable in the society of
men, as it is in play after trump is turned, to use for trump on every
occasion, that suite whereof they have most in their hand. For they do
nothing els, that will have every of their passions, as it comes to
bear sway in them, to be taken for right Reason, and that in their own
controversies: bewraying their want of right Reason, by the claym they
lay to it.
The Use Of Reason
The Use and End of Reason, is not the finding of the summe, and truth
of one, or a few consequences, remote from the first definitions, and
settled significations of names; but to begin at these; and proceed from
one consequence to another. For there can be no certainty of the last
Conclusion, without a certainty of all those Affirmations and Negations,
on which it was grounded, and inferred. As when a master of a family,
in taking an account, casteth up the summs of all the bills of expence,
into one sum; and not regarding how each bill is summed up, by those
that give them in account; nor what it is he payes for; he advantages
himselfe no more, than if he allowed the account in grosse, trusting to
every of the accou
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