John Locke:
Of the Conduct of the Understanding

Edited by F. W. Garforth
Classics in Education Series - No. 31

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Section 24. Partiality. This partiality, where it is not permitted an authority to render all other studies insignificant or contemptible, is often indulged so far as to be relied upon and made use of in other parts of knowledge to which it does not at all belong and wherewith it has no manner of affinity. Some men have so used their heads to mathematical figures that, giving a preference to the methods of that science, they introduce lines and diagrams into their studies of divinity or politic[al] enquiries, as if nothing could be known without them; and others, accustomed to retired speculations, run natural philosophy into metaphysical notions and the abstract generalities of logic; and how often may one meet with religion and morality treated of in the terms of the laboratory and thought to be improved by the methods and notations of chemistry. But he that will take care of the conduct of his understanding to direct it right to the knowledge of things must avoid those undue mixtures and not, by a fondness for Chat he has found useful and necessary in one, transfer it to another science where it serves only to perplex and confound the understanding. It is a certain truth that res nolunt male administration; [052] it is no less certain res nolunt male intelligence. [053] Things themselves are to be considered as they are in themselves, and then they still show us in what way they are to be understood. For to have right conceptions about them we must bring our understandings to the inflexible natures and unalterable relations of things, and not endeavor to bring things to any preconceived notions of our own. [054]

There is another partiality very commonly observable in men of study, no less prejudicial nor ridiculous than the former, and that is a fantastical and wild attributing all knowledge to the ancients alone or to the moderns. This raving upon antiquity in matter of poetry Horace has wittily described and exposed in one of his satires. [055] The same sort of madness may be found in reference to all the other sciences. Some will not admit an opinion not authorized by men of old, who were then all giants in knowledge; nothing is to be put into the treasury of truth or knowledge which has not the stamp of Greece or Rome upon it; and since their days will scarce allow that men have been able to see, think or write. Others, with a like extravagancy, contemn all that the ancients have left us and, being taken with the modern inventions and discoveries, lay by all that went before, as if whatever is called old must have the decay of time upon it and truth too were liable to mold and rottenness. Men, I think, have been much the same for natural endowments in all times. Fashion, discipline and education have put eminent differences in the ages of several countries and made one generation much differ from another in arts and sciences; but truth is always the same; time alters it not, nor is it the better or worse for being of ancient or modern tradition. Many were eminent in former ages of the world for their discovery and delivery of it; but though the knowledge they have left us be worth our study, yet they exhausted not all its treasure; they left a great deal for the industry and sagacity of after ages, and so shall we. That was once new to them which anyone now receives with veneration for its antiquity; nor was it the worse for appearing as a novelty, and that Which is now embraced for its newness will, to posterity, be old but not thereby be less true or less genuine. There is no occasion on this account to oppose the ancients and the moderns to one another or to be squeamish on either side. He that wisely conducts his mind in the pursuit of knowledge will gather what lights and get what helps he can from either of them, from whom they are best to be had, without adoring the errors or rejecting the truths which he may find mingled in them.

Another partiality may be observed, in some to vulgar, in others to heterodox tenets. Some are apt to conclude that what is the common opinion cannot but be true; so many men's eyes, they think, cannot but see right; so many men's understandings of all sorts cannot be deceived; and therefore [they] will not venture to look beyond the received notions of the place and age nor have so presumptuous a thought as to be wiser than their neighbors. They are content to go with the crowd, and so go easily, which they think is going right or at least serves them as well. But however Fox populi lox Dei [056] has prevailed as a maxim, yet I do not remember wherever God delivered his oracles by the multitude or nature truths by the herd. On the other side, some fly all common opinions as either false or frivolous. The title of many-headed beast [057] is a sufficient reason to them to conclude that no truths of weight or consequence can be lodged there. vulgar opinions are suited to vulgar capacities and adapted to the ends of those that govern. He that is ill know the truth of things must leave the common and beaten tract, which none but weak and servile minds are satisfied to trudge along continually in. Such nice [058] palates relish nothing but strange notions quite out of the flay; whatever is commonly received has the marl; of the beast [059] on it, and they think it a lessening to them to hearken to it or receive it; their mind runs only after paradoxes; these they seek, these they embrace, these alone they vent, and so, as they think, distinguish themselves from the vulgar. But common or uncommon are not the marks to distinguish truth or falsehood and therefore should not be any bias to us in our enquiries. We should not judge of things by men's opinions, but of opinions by things. The multitude reason but ill, and therefore may be well suspected and cannot be relied on nor should be followed as a sure guide; but philosophers who have quitted the orthodoxy of the community and the popular doctrines of their countries have fallen into as extravagant and as absurd opinions as ever common reception countenanced. It would be madness to refuse to breathe the common air or quench one's thirst with water because the rabble use them to these purposes; and if there are conveniences of life which common use reaches not. it is not reason to reject them because they are not grown into the ordinary fashion of the country and every villager does not know them.

Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge and the business of the understanding; whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by consent or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance or something worse.

Another sort of partiality there is whereby men impose upon themselves and by it made their reading little useful to themselves; I mean the making use of the opinions of writers and laying stress upon their authorities wherever they find them to favor their own opinions.

There is nothing almost has done more harm to men dedicated to letters than giving the name of study to reading and making a man of great reading to be the same with a man of great knowledge. or at least to be a title of honor. All that can be recorded in writing are only facts or reasonings. Facts are of three sorts:

1. Merely of natural agents. observable in the ordinary operations of bodies one upon another, whether in the visible course of things left to themselves, or in experiments made by men applying agents and patients [060] to one another after a peculiar and artificial manner. 2. Of voluntary agents, more especially the actions of men in society, which makes civil and moral history. 3. Of opinions [06l]

In these three consists. as it seems to me, that which commonly has the name of learning; to which perhaps some may add a distinct head of critical writings, which indeed at bottom is nothing but matter of fact and resolves itself into this, that such a man or set of men used such a word or phrase in such a sense, i.e. that this made such sounds the marks of such ideas. [062]

Under reasonings I comprehend all the discoveries of general truths made be human reason, whether found by intuition, demonstration or probable deductions. [063] And this is that which is, if not alone knowledge (because the truth or probability of particular propositions may be known too), suet is, as may be supposed, most properly the business of those who pretend to improve their understandings and make themselves knotting by reading.

Books and reading are looked upon to be the great helps of the understanding and instruments of knowledge, as it must be allotted that they are; and yet I beg leave to question whether these do not prove a hindrance to many and keep several bookish men from attaining to solid and true knowledge. This, I think, I may be permitted to say, that there is no part wherein the understanding needs a more careful and wary conduct than in the use of books; without which they will prove rather innocent amusements than profitable employments of our time, and bring but small additions to our knowledge.

There is not seldom to be found, even amongst those who aim at knowledge, [those] Echo with an unwearied industry employ their whole time in books, who scarce allow themselves time to eat or sleep, but read and read and read on, but yet make no great advances in real knowledge, though there be no defect in their intellectual faculties, to which their little progress can be imputed. The mistake here is, that it is usually supposed that, by reading, the author's knowledge is transfused into the reader's understanding; and so it is, but not by bare reading, but by reading and understanding what he writ. Thereby I mean, not barels comprehending what is affirmed or denied in each proposition (though that great readers do not always think themselves concerned precisely to do), but to see and follows the train of his reasonings, observe the strength and clearness of their connection and examine upon What they bottom. Without this a man may read the discourses of a very rational author, writ in a language and in propositions that he very well understands, and yet acquire not one jot of his knowledge; which consisting only in the perceived, certain or probable connection of the ideas made use of in his reasonings, the reader's knowledge is no further increased than he perceives that, so much as he sees of this connection, so much he knows of the truth or probability of that author's opinions.

All that he relies on without this perception he takes upon trust upon the author's credit without any knowledge of it at all. This makes me not at all wonder to see some men so abound in citations and build so much upon authorities, it being the sole foundation on which they bottom most of their own tenets: so that in effect they have but a second hand or implicit knowledge, [064] i.e. are in the right if such an one from whom they borrowed it were in the right in that opinion which they took from him, Which indeed is no knowledge at all. Writers of this or former arts may be good witnesses of matters of fact which they deliver, which we may do well to take upon their authority; but their credit can go no further than this; it cannot at all affect the truth and falsehood of opinions, which have another sort of trial by reason and proof, which they themselves made use of to make themselves knowing, and so must others too that will partake in their knowledge. Indeed it is an advantage that they have been at the pains to find out the proofs and lay them in that order that may show the truth or probability of their conclusions; and for this we owe them great acknowledgments for saving us the pains in searching out those proofs which they have collected for us and which possibly, after all our pains, we might not have found nor been able to set them in so good a light as that which they left them us in. Upon this account we are mightily beholding to judicious writers of all ages for those discoveries and discourses they have left behind them for our instruction, if we know how to make a right use of them; which is not to run them over in a hasty perusal and perhaps lodge their opinions or some remarkable passages in our memories, but to enter into their reasonings, examine their proofs, and then judge of the truth or falsehood, probability or improbability of what they advance, not by any opinion we have entertained of the author, but by the evidence he produces and the conviction he affords us drawn from things themselves. Knowing is seeing, and, if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves that we do so be another man's eyes, let him use never so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any learned author as much as w e will.

Euclid and Archimedes are allowed to be knowing and to have demonstrated what they say; and yet whosoever shall read over their writings without perceiving the connection of their proofs and seeing what they knew, though he may understand all their words, yet he is not the more knowing; he may believe indeed but does not know what they say, and so is not advanced one jot in mathematical knowledge by all his reading of those approved mathematicians.

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