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the law of cause and effect . Such experience should teach us to be moderate in our expectations , and though firm , yet modest in our convictions ^ : as , unless we knew all the causes that are at work , we cannot reckon with positive certainty on any event ; and in the pursuit of truth are as liable to error and uncertainty , as in the practical labours in which we are daily impressed with our short-sightedness and weakness . While we rejoice that
we have sufficient assurance to encourage and reward the labour of our heads and hands , we must beware lest we depend on this assurance too far , and become liable to new disappointments , and the victims of error the more humbling as it is allied to presumption . In some departments of science , the operation of causes is less obscure than in others , and results may therefore be predicted with greater certainty . An astronomer foretells an eclipse , and it happens on the very day and hour specified , perhaps , a hundred years
before . But the wisest parent , watching with the most unremitting attention over the education of his child , cannot pretend to judge what his intellectual , and still less his moral character will be , ten years hence . Such differences in the various departments of study should be carefully marked by the lover of truth ; or he will be apt to determine the ratio at which his intellectual progress shall proceed , or to fly to the other extreme , and place little reliance on the calculations of astronomers , and to question the demonstrations of the mathematician .
We must not leave unnoticed one most abundant source of error to which all are liable , but more especially inexperienced and shallow thinkers ; we mean the liability to attend to words rather than the ideas of which they are the symbol * - It is so impossible to press into our limits what ought to be said on this subject , that we feel some hesitation in adverting to it at all . But the slightest warnings are better than none at all ; and when we mention that it is by taking advantage of this infirmity that sceptics and infidels
have acquired every advantage of which they can boast , there can be no further question of the importance of care lest we be thus seduced froni the path of truth . Language is far from being a perfect mode of communication . We have more ideas than wor # s , and the same word must often , therefore , express more ideas than one ; and a proposition which may be perfectly true when a word bears one sense , may be false if the meaning be
changed . Artful reasoners take advantage of this imperfection of language to mislead the unwary ; and careless reasoners aTe themselves led astray by it . The greater part of Hume ' s arguments which have done the most mischief are easily refuted by clear thinkers , who are accustomed to begin an inquiry by fixing the meaning of the various terms employed ^ and adhering steadily to it through every step of the argument .
We well remember the dismay and perplexity with which we first read Hume ' s Dialogues ; being unable to discover where he was wrong , though perfectly convinced that there was artifice somewhere ; the chain of arguv ment seemed for the most part complete , though errors were apparent here and there . When at length the deception was discovered * it was still difficult to detect it in every false step of the argument : to find at once the exact
place where the meaning of a word was changed , or to disco , ver how many significations it was made to bear , Such- , pains , however , are well bestowed ; the result can but be satisfactory in all such inquiries . Among the many excellent works which have for their object the exposure of this species of deception , and the offer of assistance to the weak and inexperienced thinker , we cannot but mention Cogan's Ethical Questions , as jone which lias done
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710 Essays on the Art of Thinking . '
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1829, page 710, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2577/page/38/
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