16. Where it is in our power to suspend our judgment.
As knowledge is no more arbitrary than perception; so, I
think, assent is no more in our power than knowledge. When the agreement of any two ideas appears to our
minds, whether immediately or by the assistance of reason, I can no more refuse to perceive, no more avoid
knowing it, than I can avoid seeing those objects which I turn my eyes to, and look on in daylight; and what upon
full examination I find the most probable, I cannot deny my assent to. But, though we cannot hinder our
knowledge, where the agreement is once perceived; nor our assent, where the probability manifestly appears upon
due consideration of all the measures of it: yet we can hinder both knowledge and assent, by stopping our inquiry,
and not employing our faculties in the search of any truth. If it were not so, ignorance, error, or infidelity, could
not in any case be a fault. Thus, in some cases we can prevent or suspend our assent: but can a man versed in
modern or ancient history doubt whether there is such a place as Rome, or whether there was such a man as Julius
Caesar? Indeed, there are millions of truths that a man is not, or may not think himself concerned to know; as
whether our king Richard the Third was crooked or no; or whether Roger Bacon was a mathematician or a
magician. In these and such like cases, where the assent one way or other is of no importance to the interest of any
one; no action, no concernment of his following or depending thereon, there it is not strange that the mind should
give itself up to the common opinion, or render itself to the first comer. These and the like opinions are of so little
weight and moment, that, like motes in the sun, their tendencies are very rarely taken notice of. They are there, as
it were, by chance, and the mind lets them float at liberty. But where the mind judges that the proposition has
concernment in it: where the assent or not assenting is thought to draw consequences of moment after it, and good
and evil to depend on choosing or refusing the right side, and the mind sets itself seriously to inquire and examine
the probability: there I think it is not in our choice to take which side we please, if manifest odds appear on either.
The greater probability, I think, in that case will determine the assent: and a man can no more avoid assenting, or
taking it to be true, where he perceives the greater probability, than he can avoid knowing it to be true, where he
perceives the agreement or disagreement of any two ideas.
If this be so, the foundation of error will lie in wrong measures of probability; as the foundation of vice in wrong
measures of good.
