16. To supply the narrowness of demonstrative and intuitive knowledge we have nothing but judgment upon
probable reasoning.
Secondly, There are other ideas, whose agreement or disagreement can no otherwise be
judged of but by the intervention of others which have not a certain agreement with the extremes, but an usual or
likely one: and in these it is that the judgment is properly exercised; which is the acquiescing of the mind, that any
ideas do agree, by comparing them with such probable mediums. This, though it never amounts to knowledge, no,
not to that which is the lowest degree of it; yet sometimes the intermediate ideas tie the extremes so firmly
together, and the probability is so clear and strong, that assent as necessarily follows it, as knowledge does
demonstration. The great excellency and use of the judgment is to observe right, and take a true estimate of the
force and weight of each probability; and then casting them up all right together, choose that side which has the
overbalance.
