422 LOGIC: OR, THE RIGHT USE OP REASON. we cannot come at any certain knowledge of them without the labour of many and difficult, as well, as chargeable expe- riments. There are other truths which have great darkness upon them because we have no proper means or medium to come at the knowledge of them. Though in our age we have found out many of the deep things of nature by the assistance of glasses and other instruments ; yet we are not hitherto arrived at any sufficient methods to discover the shapes of these little particles of matter which distinguish the several stunners, odours, and colours of bodies ; nor to find what sort of atoms compose liquids, or solids, and distinguish wood, minerals, metals, glass, stone, &c. There is a darkness also lies upon the actions of the intel- lectual or angelical world; their manners of subsistence and agency, the power of spirits to move bodies, and the union of our souls with this animal body of ours, are much unknown to us on this account. Now in many of those cases, a great part of mankind is not content to be entirely ignorant ; but they rather choose to form rash and hasty judgments, to guess at things without just evidence, to believe something concerning them before they can know them ; and thereby they fall into error. This sort of prejudice, as well as most others, is cured by patience and diligence in enquiry and reasoning, and a suspension of judgment, till we have attained some proper mediums of know- ledge, and till we see sufficient evidence of .the truth. H. The appearance of things in a disguise, is another spring of prejudice, or rash judgment. The outside of things, which first strikes us, is oftentimes different from their inward nature ; and we are tempted to judge suddenly according to outward ap- pearances. If a picture is daubed with many bright and glaring colours, the vulgar eye admires it as an excellent piece ; whereas the same person judges very contemptuously of some admirable design, sketched out only with a black pencil on a coarse paper, though by the hand of Raphael. So the scholar spies the name of a new book in a public news -paper ; he is charmed with the title, he purchases, he reads with huge expectations, and finds it all trash and impertinence ; this is a prejudice derived from the appearance ; we are too ready to judge that volume valuable which bath so gooda frontispiece. The large heap of encomiums and swelling words of assurance that are bestowed on quack-me- dicines in public advertisements, tempt many a reader to judge them infallible, and to use the pills or the plaister, with vast hope, and frequent disappointment. We are tempted to form our judgment of persons as well as things by these outward appearances. Where there is wealth, equipage, agd splen4our, we -are ready to call that man happy
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