The last resort a man has recourse to in the conduct of himself is his understanding;for though we distinguish the faculties of the mind and give the supreme command to the will as to an agent,yet the truth is,the man which is the agent determines himself to this or that voluntary action upon some precedent knowledge or appearance of knowledge in the understanding.No man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or other which serves him for a reason for what he does;and whatsoever faculties he employs,the understanding,with such light as it has,well or ill informed,constantly leads;and by that light,true or false,all his operative powers are directed.The will itself,how absolute and uncontrollable however it may be thought,never fails in its obedience to the dictates of the understanding.Temples have their sacred images,and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind.But in truth the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them,and to these they all universally pay a ready submission.It is therefore of the highest concernment that great care should be taken of the understanding to conduct it right in the search of knowledge and in the judgments it makes.
The logic noes in use has so long possessed the chair,as the only art taught in the schools for the direction of the mind in the study of the arts and sciences,that it would perhaps be thought an affectation of novelty to suspect that rules that have served the learned world these two or three thousand years and which without any complaint of defects the learned have rested in are not sufficient to guide the understanding.And I should not doubt but this attempt would be censured as vanity or presumption did not the great Lord Verulam's authority justify it,who,not servilely thinking learning could not be advanced beyond what it was because for many ages it had not been,did not rest in the lazy approbation and applause of what was,because it was,but enlarged his mind to Chat might be.In his preface to his Norum Organum concerning logic he pronounces thus,Qui summas dialecticae partes tribuerunt atque inde fidissima scientiis praesidia comparari putarunt,verissime atque optime viderunt intellectum Slumanum sibi permissum merito suspectum esse debere.Serum infirmior omnino est malo medicinal nec ipsa mali expers.
Siquidem dialectica quae recepta est.licet ad ci-ailia et antes quae in sermone et opinione positae sunt rectissime adhibeatur,naturae tamen subtilitatem longo intervallo non attingit;et prensando quod non capit ad encores potius stabiliendos et quasi figendos qua1n ad viam veritati aperiendam valuit.
"They,"says he,"who attributed so much to logic perceived very well and truly that it seas not safe to trust the understanding to itself without the guard of any rules.But the remedy reached not the evil but became a part of it;for the logic which took place,though it might do well enough in civil affairs and the arts which consisted in talk and opinion,yet comes very far short of subtlety in the real performances of nature and,catching at what it cannot reach,has served to confirm and establish errors rather than to open a way to truth."And therefore a little after he says,"That it is absolutely necessary that a better and perfected use and employment of the mind and understanding should be introduced."Necessario requiritur ut melior et perfectior mentis et intellectus humani usus et adoperatio introducatur.
