454 LOGIC: OR, THE RIGHT IISFS OF REASON. Yet remember the caution or limitation here which I gave under the first direction, namely, that this is not to be too strictly applied to matters of daily practice, either in human life or reli- gion ; but when we consider ourselves as philosophers, or search- ers after truth, we should always withhold our assent where there is not just evidence ; and as far and as fast as we can, in a due consistence with our daily necessary duties, we should also reform and adjust all our principles and practices both in religion and the civil life by these rules. VI. Direct. We must " judge of every proposition by these proper and peculiar mediums or means, whereby the evidence of it is to be obtained," whether it be sense, consciousness, intelli- gence, reason, or testimony. All our faculties and powers are to be employed in judging of their proper objects. If we judge of sounds, colours, odours, sapors, the smoothness, roughness, softness, or hardness of bodies, it must be done by the use of our senses ; but then we must take heed that our senses are well disposed, as shall be shewn afterward. And since our senses in their various exercises are in some cases liable to be deceived, and more especially when by our eyes or ears we judge of the figure, quantity, distance, and position of objects that are afar off, we ought to call our reason in to the assistance of our senses, and correct the errors of one sense by the help of another. It is by the powers of sense and reason joined together, that we must judge philosophically of the inward nature, the secret properties and powers, the causes and effects, the relations and proportions of a thousand corporeal objects which surround us on earth, or are placed at a distance in the heavens. If a man, on the one hand, confines himself only to sensible experiments, and does not exercise reason upon them, he may surprise himself and others with strange appearances, and learn to entertain the world with sights and shews, but will never become a philoso- pher ; and, on the other hand, if a man imprison himself in his closet, and employ the most exquisite powers of reason to find out the nature of things in the corporeal world, without the use of his senses, and the practice of experiments, he will frame to himself a scheme of chimeras instead of true philosophy. Hence came the invention of substantial forms and qualities of materia prima and privation, with all the insignificant names used by the peripatetic writers ; and it was for want of more experiments, that the great Descartes failed in several parts of his philosophi- cal writings. In the abstracted and speculative parts of the mathe- maties which treat of quantity and number, the faculty of reason must be chiefly employed to perceive the relation of various quaq- tities, and draw,certain and useful conclusions; but it wants the
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