3. Judgment, or assent to probability, supplies our want of knowledge.
The faculty which God has given man to
supply the want of clear and certain knowledge, in cases where that cannot be had, is judgment: whereby the mind
takes its ideas to agree or disagree; or, which is the same, any proposition to be true or false, without perceiving a
demonstrative evidence in the proofs. The mind sometimes exercises this judgment out of necessity, where
demonstrative proofs and certain knowledge are not to be had; and sometimes out of laziness, unskilfulness, or
haste, even where demonstrative and certain proofs are to be had. Men often stay not warily to examine the
agreement or disagreement of two ideas which they are desirous or concerned to know; but, either incapable of
such attention as is requisite in a long train of gradations, or impatient of delay, lightly cast their eyes on, or
wholly pass by the proofs; and so, without making out the demonstration, determine of the agreement or
disagreement of two ideas, as it were by a view of them as they are at a distance, and take it to be the one or the
other, as seems most likely to them upon such a loose survey. This faculty of the mind, when it is exercised
immediately about things, is called judgment; when about truths delivered in words, is most commonly called
assent or dissent: which being the most usual way, wherein the mind has occasion to employ this faculty, I shall,
under these terms, treat of it, as least liable in our language to equivocation.
