Logic, or the Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry After Truth; With a Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as Well as in the Sciences

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1806. Excerpt: ... CHAP. IV. GENERAL DIRECTIONS TO ASSIST US IN JUDGING ARIGHT. T, HE chief design of the art of logic is to assist us in forming a true judgment of things ; a sew proper observations for this end have been dropt occasionally in some of the foregoing chapters : Yet it is necessary to mention them again in this place, that we may have a more complete and simultaneous view of the general directions, which are necessary in order to judge aright. A multitude of advices may be framed for this purpose ; the chief of them may, for order fake, be reduced to the following heads. Direction I. " When we consider ourselves as philosophers, or searchers aster truth, we should examine all our old opinions asresh, and inquire what was the ground of them, and whether our assent was built on just evidence ; and then we should cast off all those judgments which were formed heretofore without due examination." A man in pursuit of knowledge should throw off all those prejudices which he had imbibed in times past, and guard against all the springs of error mentioned in the preceding chapter, with the utmost watchsulness, for time to come. Observe here, That this rule of casting away all onr former pi ejudicate opinions and sentiments is not proposed to any of us to be practised at once, considered as men of business or religion, as friends or neighbours, as fathers or sons, as magistrates, subjects,or christians; but merely as philosophers and searchers aster truth : And though it may be well presumed that many of our judgments, both true and false, together with the practices built thereon in the natural, the civil, and the religions lise, were formed without sufficient evidence ; yet an universal rejection of all these might destioy at once our present sense and practice of duty with regard to God, ourse...