69. Causes of this.
(i) Ignorance: He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot
acquit himself of judging amiss.
(ii) Inadvertency: When a man overlooks even that which he does know. This is an affected and present
ignorance, which misleads our judgments as much as the other. Judging is, as it were, balancing an account, and
determining on which side the odds lie. If therefore either side be huddled up in haste, and several of the sums that
should have gone into the reckoning be overlooked and left out, this precipitancy causes as wrong a judgment as if
it were a perfect ignorance. That which most commonly causes this is, the prevalency of some present pleasure or
pain, heightened by our feeble passionate nature, most strongly wrought on by what is present. To check this
precipitancy, our understanding and reason were given us, if we will make a right use of them, to search and see,
and then judge thereupon. Without liberty, the understanding would be to no purpose: and without understanding,
liberty (if it could be) would signify nothing. If a man sees what would do him good or harm, what would make
him happy or miserable, without being able to move himself one step towards or from it, what is he the better for
seeing? And he that is at liberty to ramble in perfect darkness, what is his liberty better than if he were driven up
and down as a bubble by the force of the wind? The being acted by a blind impulse from without, or from within,
is little odds. The first, therefore, and great use of liberty is to hinder blind precipitancy; the principal exercise of
freedom is to stand still, open the eyes, look about, and take a view of the consequence of what we are going to
do, as much as the weight of the matter requires. How much sloth and negligence, heat and passion, the
prevalency of fashion or acquired indispositions do severally contribute, on occasion, to these wrong judgments, I
shall not here further inquire. I shall only add one other false judgment, which I think necessary to mention,
because perhaps it is little taken notice of, though of great influence.
