20. Remedies of our difficulties in dealing demonstratively with moral ideas.
One part of these disadvantages in
moral ideas which has made them be thought not capable of demonstration, may in a good measure be remedied
by definitions, setting down that collection of simple ideas, which every term shall stand for: and then using the
terms steadily and constantly for that precise collection. And what methods algebra, or something of that kind,
may hereafter suggest, to remove the other difficulties, it is not easy to foretell. Confident I am, that, if men would
in the same method, and with the same indifferency, search after moral as they do mathematical truths, they
would find them have a stronger connexion one with another, and a more necessary consequence from our clear
and distinct ideas, and to come nearer perfect demonstration than is commonly imagined. But much of this is not
to be expected, whilst the desire of esteem, riches, or power makes men espouse the well-endowed opinions in
fashion, and then seek arguments either to make good their beauty, or varnish over and cover their deformity.
Nothing being so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind; nothing so deformed and irreconcilable to the
understanding as a lie. For though many a man can with satisfaction enough own a no very handsome wife to in
his bosom; yet who is bold enough openly to avow that he has espoused a falsehood, and received into his breast
so ugly a thing as a lie? Whilst the parties of men cram their tenets down all men's throats whom they can get into
their power, without permitting them to examine their truth or falsehood; and will not let truth have fair play in
the world, nor men the liberty to search after it: what improvements can be expected of this kind? What greater
light can be hoped for in the moral sciences? The subject part of mankind in most places might, instead thereof,
with Egyptian bondage, expect Egyptian darkness, were not the candle of the Lord set up by himself in men's
minds, which it is impossible for the breath or power of man wholly to extinguish.
