I have said above that we should keep a perfect indifference for all opinions,not wish any of them true or try to make them appear so,but,being indifferent,receive and embrace them according as evidence and that alone gives the attestation of truth.They that do thus,i.e.
keep their minds indifferent to opinions,to be determined only by evidence,will always find the understanding has perception enough to distinguish between evidence or no evidence,betwixt plain and doubtful;and if they neither give nor refuse their assent but by that measure,they will be safe in the opinions they have.Which being perhaps but few,this caution will have also this good in it,that it still put them upon considering and teach them the necessity of examining more than they do;without which the mind is but a receptacle of inconsistencies,not the storehouse of truths.They that do not keep up this indifference in themselves for all but truth,not supposed,but evidenced in themselves,put colored spectacles before their eyes and look on things through false glasses,and then think themselves excused in following the false appearances which they themselves put upon them.
I do not expect that by this way the assent should in everyone be proportioned to the grounds and clearness wherewith every truth is capable to be made out,or that men should be perfectly kept from error;that is more than human nature can by any means be advanced to;I aim at no such unattainable privilege;I am only speaking of what they should do who would deal fairly with their own minds and make a right use of their faculties in the pursuit of truth;we fail them a great deal more than they fail us.
It is mismanagement more than want of abilities that men have reason to complain of and which they actually do complain of in those that differ from them.He that by an indifferency for all but truth suffers not his assent to go faster than his evidence,nor beyond it,will learn to examine and examine fairly instead of presuming,and nobody will be at a loss or in danger for want of embracing those truths which are necessary in his station and circumstances.In any other way but this all the world are born to orthodoxy;they imbibe at first the allowed opinions of their country and parts,and so,never questioning their truth,not one of a hundred ever examines.They are applauded for presuming they are in the right.He that considers is a foe to orthodoxy,because possibly he may deviate from some of the received doctrines there.And thus men without any industry or acquisition of their own inherit local truths (for it is not the same everywhere)and are inured to assent without evidence.
This influences further than is thought;for what one of a hundred of the zealous bigots in all parties ever examined the tenets he is so stiff in or ever thought it his business or duty so to do?It is suspected of luke warmness to suppose it necessary and a tendency to apostasy to go about it.And if a man can bring his mind once to be positive and fierce for positions whose evidence he has never once examined,and that in matters of greatest concernment to him,What shall keep him from this short and easy way of being in the right in cases of less moment?Thus eve are taught to clothe our minds as we do our bodies after the fashion in vogue,and it is accounted fantasticalness or something worse not to do so.This custom (which who dares oppose?)makes the short-sighted bigots and the warier skeptics,as far as it prevails.And those that break from it are in danger of heresy;for,taking the Whole world,how much of it does truth and orthodoxy possess together?
Though it is by the last alone (which has the good luck to be everywhere)that error and heresy are judged of;for argument and evidence signify nothing in the case and excuse nowhere,but are sure to be borne down in all societies by the infallible orthodoxy of the place.Whether this be the way to truth and right assent,let the opinions that take place and prescribe in the several habitable parts of the earth declare.
I never saw any reason yet why truth might not be trusted to its own evidence;I am sure,if that be not able to support it,there is no fence against error,and then truth and falsehood are but names that stand for the same things.Evidence,therefore,is that by which alone every man is (and should be)taught to regulate his assent,who is then and then only in the right way when he follows it.
Men deficient in knowledge are usually in one of these three states:either wholly ignorant;or as doubting of some proposition they have either embraced formerly or at present are inclined to;or,lastly,they do with assurance hold and profess without ever having examined and being convinced by well-grounded arguments.
The first of these are in the best state of the three,by having their minds yet in their perfect freedom and indifferency,the likelier to pursue truth the better,having no bias yet clapped on to mislead them.
