procure belief, by how much the more they are beyond, or contrary to ordinary observation. This is the proper case of miracles, which, well attested, do not only find credit themselves, but give it also to other truths.

There are propositions that challenge the highest degree of our assent on bare testimony, whether the thing proposed agree or disagree with common experience and the ordinary course of things, or no: the reason whereof is, because the testimony is of such an one, as cannot deceive nor be deceived; and that is God himself. This carries with it certainty beyond doubt, evidence beyond exception. This is called by a peculiar name, Revelation, and our assent to it, Faith; which has as much certainty in it, as our knowlege itself: and we may as well doubt of our own being, as we can, whether any revelation from God be true. So that faith is a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and leaves no manner of room for doubt or hesitation; only we must be sure, that it be a divine revelation, and that we understand it right; else we shall expose ourselves to all the extravagancy of enthusiasm, and all the error of wrong principles, if we have faith and assurance in what is not divine revelation.

CHAPTER XVII.

Of Reason.

The word reason, in English, has different significations; sometimes it is taken for true and clear principles; sometimes for clear and fair deductions from those principles; sometimes for the cause, and particularly for the final cause: but the consideration I shall have of it here, is, as it stands for a faculty, whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from

beasts, and wherein it is evident he much surpasses them.

Reason is necessary, both for the enlargement of our knowlege, and regulating our assent: for it hath to do both in knowlege and opinion, and is necessary and assisting to all our other intellectual faculties; and, indeed, contains two of them, viz. 1. sagacity, whereby it finds intermediate ideas; 2. illation, whereby it so orders and disposes of them, as to discover what connexion there is in each link of the chain, whereby the extremes are held together, and thereby, as it were, to draw into view the truth sought for; which is that we call illation or inference; and consists in nothing but the perception of the connexion there is between the ideas, in each step of the deduction; whereby the mind comes to see, either the certain agreement or disagreement of any two ideas, 'as in demonstration, in which it arrives at knowlege, or their probable connexion, on which it gives or withholds its assent, as in opinion.

Sense and intuition reach but a little way. The greatest part of our knowlege depends on deductions and intermediate ideas. In those cases where we must take propositions for true without being certain of their being so, we have need to find out, examine, and compare the grounds of their probability. In both cases, the faculty which finds out the means, and rightly applies them to discover certainty in the one, and probability in the other, is that which we call reason. So that in reason we may consider these four degrees: 1. the discovering and finding out of proofs; 2. the regular and methodical disposition of them, and laying them in such order, as their connexion may be plainly perceived; 3. the perceiving their connexion. 4. The making a right conclusion.

There is one thing more which I shall desire to be considered concerning reason,-and that is, whether

syllogism, as is generally thought, be the proper instrument of it, and the usefullest way of exercising this faculty. The causes I have to doubt of it, are these:

1. Because syllogism serves our reason but in one only of the fore-mentioned parts of it, and that is tó show the connexion of the proofs of any one instance, and no more: but in this it is of no great use, since the mind can perceive such connexion, where it really is, as easily, nay, perhaps better, without it. We may observe that there are many men that reason exceeding clear and rightly, who know not how to make a syllogism and I believe scarce any one makes syllogisms in reasoning within himself. Indeed, sometimes they may serve to discover a fallacy, hid in a rhetorical florish; or, by stripping an absurdity of the cover of wit and good language, show it in its naked deformity. But the weakness or fallacy of such a loose discourse it shows, by the artificial form it is put into, only to those who have thoroughly studied mode and figure, and have so examined the many ways that three propositions may be put together, as to know which of them does certainly conclude right, and which not, and on what grounds it is that they do so. But they who have not so far looked into those forms, are not sure by virtue of syllogism that the conclusion certainly follows from the premises. The mind is not taught to reason by these rules; it has a native faculty to perceive the coherence or incoherence of its ideas, and can range them right, without any such perplexing repetitions.

And to show the weakness of an argument, there needs no more but to strip it of the superfluous ideas, which, blended and confounded with those on which the inference depends, seem to show a connexion where there is none, or at least do hinder the discovery of the want of it, and then to lay the naked ideas on which the force of the argumentation depends in their due order; in which position the mind taking a view

of them, sees what connexion they have, and so is able to judge of the inference without any need of syllogism at all.

2. Because syllogisms are not less liable to fallacies than the plainer ways of argumentation: and for this I appeal to common observation, which has always found these artificial methods of reasoning more adapted to catch and entangle the mind, than to instruct and inform the understanding. And if it be certain that fallacy can be couched in syllogisms, as it cannot be denied, it must be something else, and not syllogism, that must discover them. But if men skilled in, and used to syllogisms, find them assisting to their reason, in the discovery of truth, I think they ought to make use of them. All that I aim at is, that they should not ascribe more to these forms than belongs to them; and think that men have no use, or not so full a use of their reasoning faculty without them.

But however it be in knowlege, I think it is of far less or no use at all in probabilities: for the assent there being to be determined by the preponderancy, after a due weighing of all the proofs on both sides, nothing is so unfit to assist the mind in that, as syllogism; which running away with one assumed probability, pursues that till it has led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under consideration.

But let it help us (as perhaps may be said) in convincing men of their errors or mistakes; yet still it fails our reason in that part, which, if not its highest perfection, is yet certainly its hardest task, and that which we most need its help in, and that is, the finding out of proofs, and making new discoveries. This way of reasoning discovers no new proofs, but is the art of marshalling and ranging the old ones we have already. A man knows first, and then he is able to prove syllogistically; so that syllogism comes after knowlege; and then a man has little or no need of it. But it is chiefly by the finding out those ideas that show the

connexion of distant ones, that our stock of knowlege is increased, and that useful arts and sciences are advanced.

It is fit, before I leave this subject, to take notice of one manifest mistake in the rules of syllogism, viz. that no syllogistical reasoning can be right and conclusive, but what has, at least, one general proposition in it. As if we could not reason about particulars. Whereas, in truth, the immediate object of all our reasoning is nothing but particulars. Every man's reasoning is only about the ideas existing in his own mind, which are truly, every one of them, particular existences and our reasoning about other things, is only as they correspond with those our particular ideas.

Reason, though of a very large extent, fails us in several instances: as, 1. where our ideas fail: 2. it is often at a loss, because of the obscurity, confusion, or imperfection of the ideas it is employed about. Thus having no perfect idea of the least extension of matter, nor of infinity, we are at a loss about the divisibility of matter. 3. Our reason is often at a stand, because it perceives not those ideas which would serve to show the certain or probable agreement or disagreement of any two other ideas. 4. Our reason is often engaged in absurdities and difficulties, by proceeding on false principles, which being followed, lead men into contradictions to themselves, and inconsistency in their own thoughts.

5. Dubious words and uncertain signs often puzzle men's reason, and bring them to a nonplus.

Though the deducing one proposition from another be a great part of reason, and that which it is usually employed about; yet the principal act of ratiocination' is the finding the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, one with another, by the intervention of a third. As a man, by a yard, finds two houses to be of the same length, which could not be brought to