ho find the appearance of wisdom
more easily attained by questions than solutions, how it comes to pass,
that the world is divided by such difference of opinion? and why men,
equally reasonable, and equally lovers of truth, do not always think in
the same manner?

With regard to simple propositions, where the terms are understood, and
the whole subject is comprehended at once, there is such an uniformity
of sentiment among all human beings, that, for many ages, a very
numerous set of notions were supposed to be innate, or necessarily
co-existent with the faculty of reason: it being imagined, that universal
agreement could proceed only from the invariable dictates of the
universal parent.

In questions diffuse and compounded, this similarity of determination is
no longer to be expected. At our first sally into the intellectual
world, we all march together along one straight and open road; but as we
proceed further, and wider prospects open to our view, every eye fixes
upon a different scene; we divide into various paths, and, as we move
forward, are still at a greater distance from each other. As a question
becomes more complicated and involved, and extends to a greater number
of relations, disagreement of opinion will always be multiplied; not
because we are irrational, but because we are finite beings, furnished
with different kinds of knowledge, exerting different degrees of
attention, one discovering consequences which escape another, none
taking in the whole concatenation of causes and effects, and most
comprehending but a very small part, each comparing what he observes
with a different criterion, and each referring it to a different
purpose.

Where, then, is the wonder, that they who see only a small part should
judge erroneously of the whole? or that they, who see different and
dissimilar parts, should judge differently from each other?

Whatever has various respects, must have various appearances of good and
evil, beauty or deformity; thus, the gardener tears up as a weed, the
plant which the physician gathers as a medicine; and "a general," says
Sir Kenelm Digby, "will look with pleasure over a plain, as a fit place
on which the fate of empires might be decided in battle, which the
farmer will despise as bleak and barren, neither fruitful of pasturage,
nor fit for tillage[1]."

Two men examining the same question proceed commonly like the physician
and gardener in selecting herbs, or the farmer and hero l