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Chapter XIV
Of Judgment
1. Our knowledge being short, we want something else. The
understanding faculties being given to man, not barely for
speculation, but also for the conduct of his life, man would be at a
great loss if he had nothing to direct him but what has the
certainty of true knowledge. For that being very short and scanty,
as we have seen, he would be often utterly in the dark, and in most of
the actions of his life, perfectly at a stand, had he nothing to guide
him in the absence of clear and certain knowledge. He that will not
eat till he has demonstration that it will nourish him; he that will
not stir till he infallibly knows the business he goes about will
succeed, will have little else to do but to sit still and perish.
2. What use to be made of this twilight state. Therefore, as God has
set some things in broad daylight; as he has given us some certain
knowledge, though limited to a few things in comparison, probably as a
taste of what intellectual creatures are capable of to excite in us
a desire and endeavour after a better state: so, in the greatest
part of our concernments, he has afforded us only the twilight, as I
may so say, of probability; suitable, I presume, to that state of
mediocrity and probationership he has been pleased to place us in
here; wherein, to check our over-confidence and presumption, we might,
by every day's experience, be made sensible of our short-sightedness
and liableness to error; the sense whereof might be a constant
admonition to us, to spend the days of this our pilgrimage with
industry and care, in the search and following of that way which might
lead us to a state of greater perfection. It being highly rational
to think, even were revelation silent in the case, that, as men employ
those talents God has given them here, they shall accordingly
receive their rewards at the close of the day, when their sun shall
set and night shall put an end to their labours.
3. Judgment, or assent to probability, supplies our want of
knowledge. The faculty which God has given man to supply the want of
clear and certain knowledge, in cases where that cannot be had, is
judgment: whereby the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree; or,
which is the same, any proposition to be true or false, without
perceiving a demonstrative evidence in the proofs. The mind
sometimes exercises this judgment out of necessity, where
demonstrative proofs and certain knowledge are not to be had; and
sometimes out of laziness, unskilfulness, or haste, even where
demonstrative and certain proofs are to be had. Men often stay not
warily to examine the agreement or disagreement of two ideas which
they are desirous or concerned to know; but, either incapable of
such attention as is requisite in a long train of gradations, or
impatient of delay, lightly cast their eyes on, or wholly pass by
the proofs; and so, without making out the demonstration, determine of
the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, as it were by a view of
them as they are at a distance, and take it to be the one or the
other, as seems most likely to them upon such a loose survey. This
faculty of the mind, when it is exercised immediately about things, is
called judgment; when about truths delivered in words, is most
commonly called assent or dissent: which being the most usual way,
wherein the mind has occasion to employ this faculty, I shall, under
these terms, treat of it, as least liable in our language to
equivocation.
4. Judgement is the presuming things to be so, without perceiving
it. Thus the mind has two faculties conversant about truth and
falsehood:-
First, KNOWLEDGE, whereby it certainly perceives, and is undoubtedly
satisfied of the agreement or disagreement of any ideas.
Secondly JUDGMENT, which is the putting ideas together, or
separating them from one another in the mind, when their certain
agreement or disagreement is not perceived, but presumed to be so;
which is, as the word imports, taken to be so before it certainly
appears. And if it so unites or separates them as in reality things
are, it is right judgment.
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