Chapter 1: General Rules for Improving Knowledge
Although most of the following rules chiefly address people whose circumstances or position require them to devote themselves especially to gaining greater knowledge, anyone with the leisure and opportunity to read writings like these may find something useful in them.
1. Impress deeply on your mind the immense importance of sound judgment and the rich, priceless benefits of reasoning correctly. Review examples of your own misconduct. Consider seriously how many follies and sorrows you would have escaped, and how much guilt and misery you would have prevented, if you had taken proper care from your early years to judge people, times, and things correctly. This reflection will stir you to improve your reasoning powers with renewed energy and to seize every opportunity and advantage for that purpose.
2. Consider the weaknesses, frailties, and mistakes of human nature in general. They arise from the very constitution of a soul united to an animal body and subjected to many difficulties as a result. Consider also the additional weaknesses, mistakes, and frailties that come from our original rebellion and fall from innocence. Our powers of understanding are further darkened, weakened, and deceived by our senses, imagination, unruly passions, and other influences.
Consider the depth and difficulty of many truths and the attractive appearances of falsehood. These expose us to an endless variety of dangers when we judge things. Read eagerly those authors who discuss prejudices, preconceptions, and the sources of error. Read them with the purpose of making your soul watchful on every side, so that, as far as possible, none of these influences deceives it.
3. A passing look at matters of such importance is not enough. Devise and practice suitable ways to acquaint yourself with your own ignorance. Impress on your mind a deep and painful sense of how limited and imperfect your present knowledge is, so that you will pursue greater knowledge with effort and energy. Among other methods, you may find the following useful.
(1) From time to time, survey the vast, boundless regions of learning. Let your thoughts range over the names of all the sciences, their many branches, and their countless particular subjects. Then reflect on how few of them you know even reasonably well. Even the most learned person will never have reason to repeat what is told of Alexander the Great: after conquering what was called the eastern world, he wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. The worlds of knowledge are immense and endless.
(2) Consider the countless questions and difficulties belonging even to the particular science in which you have made the greatest progress. In how few of them have you reached final, unquestionable certainty! The only exceptions are questions in pure mathematics whose theorems can be demonstrated and leave scarcely any doubt. Yet even in pursuing a few of these, people have become strangely bewildered.
(3) Sometimes give a little thought to the puzzling questions concerning vacuums and atoms, and to infinities, indivisibles, and incommensurable quantities in geometry. Some difficulties in these subjects appear impossible to solve. Consider them deliberately to gain a more vivid sense of the poverty of your understanding and the imperfection of your knowledge.
This will teach you how vain it is to imagine that you know everything. It will teach you to think modestly of your present achievements, when every speck of earth and every inch of empty space exceeds your understanding and triumphs over your presumption.
Arithmo had worked with accounts all his life and thought himself a complete master of numbers. But when pressed to give the square root of 2, he tried and worked for a long time with fractions expressed in thousandths, until he confessed that the inquiry had no end. Yet this perplexing question taught him enough modesty that he was afraid to call the task impossible. We have made some real progress when we become afraid to speak with absolute certainty.
(4) Read accounts of the vast treasures of knowledge possessed by some who have died and by some who are still living. Read and marvel at the almost incredible advances made in the sciences. Become acquainted with people of great learning. By conversing with them and comparing yourself with them, you may come to think modestly of your own achievements. This may inspire fresh zeal to equal them as far as possible, or to surpass them. Let a generous and praiseworthy desire to match their achievements quicken your diligence.
If Vanillus had never met Scitorio and Palydes, he would never have imagined himself a mere beginner in philosophy or set himself to study in earnest.
Remember that if a few superficial accomplishments make you admire and exalt yourself as though you were already learned, you are building an almost impassable barrier against further improvement. You will settle down into idleness and remain content in deep and shameful ignorance. “Many would have attained knowledge if they had not thought they had already attained it.”
4. Do not rely too much on a brilliant mind, quick wit, and natural ability. Without work and study, these will never make anyone knowledgeable and wise. People with a vigorous, lively imagination have unhappily been tempted to despise learning and study. Others have recognized their brilliance in company and their sparkling conversation on common subjects. This has led them to abandon reading and hard work and to grow old in ignorance.
But when they lost the physical liveliness of youth, they became dull and foolish, to the point of attracting contempt and ridicule. Lucidus and Scintillo are young men of this kind. They shine in conversation and display their natural gifts before the ignorant. They take pride in their lively imaginative images and consider themselves wise and learned. But they would do well to avoid knowledgeable people and the test of reasoning. I would advise them to think ahead once a day about the contemptible figure they will cut in old age.
Witty people sometimes have enough sense to recognize their own weakness. They therefore cleverly avoid challenges to their views, or boldly pretend to despise and reject argument. They do this because they know their own ignorance and inwardly acknowledge that they lack skill in reasoning.
5. Just as you must not imagine yourself learned because you have a quick wit, neither must you imagine that extensive, laborious reading and a strong memory make you truly wise.
The judgment of that excellent critic Horace, when he considered whether natural ability or study makes the best poet, applies equally well to every kind of learning. Oldham renders it in English:
Concerning poets there has been contest, Whether they’re made by art, or nature best; But if I may presume in this affair, Among the rest my judgment to declare, No art without a genius will avail, And parts without the help of art will fail: But both ingredients jointly must unite, Or verse will never shine with a transcendent light.
Meditation and careful thought, the exercise of your own reason and judgment on everything you read, give good sense even to the finest natural ability. They provide the truest improvement of your understanding. A boy with a strong memory may repeat a whole book of Euclid and still not be a geometer: perhaps he cannot demonstrate even one theorem. Memorino has learned half the Bible by heart. He has become a living concordance and a speaking index to large volumes of theology, yet he understands little theology.
A well-stocked library and a capacious memory are certainly of exceptional use in improving the mind. But suppose all your learning is merely a collection of what others have written, without a thorough understanding of its meaning or a reasoned choice and determination of your own views. In that case, I do not see why your head has any greater claim to true learning than your shelves do.
You may have read abundantly in philosophy, theology, ethics, metaphysics, and every other art and science. Yet if memory is the only faculty you use, while neglecting your reasoning powers, you can justly claim no higher standing than that of a good historian of the sciences.
Notice that much of the preceding advice is especially suited to people who are conceited about their abilities and ready to think highly of themselves. A modest, humble young person with good natural ability should not be discouraged by any of these considerations. They are intended only to encourage diligence and guard against vanity and pride.
6. Do not be so foolish as to imagine that a life of learning is a life of laziness and ease. Do not enter any of the learned professions unless you are determined to work hard at study and can make it your delight and the joy of your life. Follow the motto of our late Lord Chancellor King: “... Work itself is pleasure.”
Being a true scholar is no idle occupation. Someone devoted to luxury, pleasure, recreation, and amusement should never undertake to devote himself entirely to the sciences unless his soul has been so reformed and refined that he can enjoy all these pleasures in a higher degree in his study, among his books and papers.
Sobrino is a temperate man and a philosopher. In his growing understanding and his serene, healthy soul, he enjoys the equivalent of partridge and pheasant, venison and rich stews, and every delicacy, though his dinner is a dish of sprouts or turnips.
Languinos loved his ease and therefore chose to be trained as a scholar. He was very lazy by temperament, and he never cared for study. He now meets with universal contempt in his profession because he has nothing but the gown and the name.
7. Let the hope of new discoveries, together with the satisfaction and pleasure of known truths, inspire your daily efforts. Do not think that learning as a whole has reached perfection. Nor should you think that knowledge of a particular subject in any science cannot improve merely because it has remained unchanged for five hundred or a thousand years.
Through God’s blessing on human ingenuity and diligence, the present age has brought to light truths about nature and discoveries in the heavens and the earth that seemed beyond human reach. But might there not be Sir Isaac Newtons in every science? Never despair of discovering what has not yet been found, unless you see something in its nature that makes it impossible to investigate and beyond the reach of our faculties.
Nor should a student of theology imagine that our age has reached a full understanding of everything that can be known from Scripture. Every age since the Reformation has shed further light on difficult passages of the Bible, long obscured by the early rise of antichrist.
Many difficulties and obscurities still surround certain truths of Christianity. Several concern important doctrines, such as the origin of sin, Adam’s fall, the person of Christ, the blessed Trinity, and God’s decrees, among others. These continue to perplex honest, inquiring readers and provide material for noisy controversy. It is therefore certain that several things in the Bible remain unknown and insufficiently explained. It is also certain that there is some way to solve these difficulties and reconcile these apparent contradictions.
Why should not a sincere seeker of truth in the present age find the proper solution through work, diligence, study, prayer, and the best use of his reasoning powers? These knots and perplexities have so far remained unsolved and have provided material for angry quarrels. Happy is everyone whom Heaven favors with the opportunity to help introduce the blessed age of light and love.
8. Do not always hover on the surface of things or hastily accept mere appearances. Examine matters deeply, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially those related to your own profession. Do not let yourself judge things from a first glimpse or a brief, superficial view. This will fill your mind with errors and prejudices, give it a wrong direction and a bad habit of thinking, and leave you with many judgments to retract.
Subito is carried away by title pages. He ventures to pass judgment at once on a substantial book and recommends it enthusiastically after reading half the preface. He immediately rejected another volume of controversy, equally large, because it claimed to discuss the Trinity, yet he could find neither the word “essence” nor “subsistencies” in its first twelve pages. But Subito changes his opinions about people, books, and things so often that nobody pays attention to him.
Some sciences or branches of knowledge may be subjects you cannot pursue diligently or examine deeply because of your profession, limited leisure, inclination, or lack of ability. You must be content with a general, secondhand acquaintance with them. Do not claim to form judgments of your own on subjects you understand very imperfectly.
9. Once a day, especially in your early years of life and study, ask yourself what new ideas, propositions, or truths you have gained. What further confirmation of known truths have you found? What advances have you made in any branch of knowledge? If possible, let no day pass without some intellectual gain. Such a practice, followed faithfully, must certainly advance us in useful knowledge.
A wise proverb among the learned, borrowed from the words and practice of a celebrated painter, says, “Let no day pass without one line at least.” The Pythagoreans also held it as a sacred rule that every evening they should review the day’s actions and affairs three times. They were to examine their conduct, what they had done, and what they had neglected. They assured their pupils that this method would bring them great progress along the path of virtue:
Nor let soft slumber close your eyes, Before you’ve recollected thrice The train of action through the day: Where have my feet chose out their way? What have I learnt, where-e’er I’ve been, From all I’ve heard, from all I’ve seen? What know I more that’s worth the knowing? What have I done that’s worth the doing? What have I sought that I should shun? What duty have I left undone? Or into what new follies run? These self-inquiries are the road That leads to virtue, and to God.
I would be glad to find young men in a Christian nation wholeheartedly practicing what this pagan writer teaches.
10. Keep a constant watch against a dogmatic spirit. Do not give firm, unalterable assent to any proposition until you have a firm, unalterable basis for it and clear, certain evidence. Before giving such assent, examine the proposition from every side and investigate the matter thoroughly enough that you cannot be mistaken.
Even when you think you have full grounds for certainty, do not express it too soon or too often in an absolute, overbearing manner. Remember that human nature, in its corrupt and feeble state, is always liable to error. A dogmatic spirit brings many disadvantages.
(1) It closes your ears to further reasoning on the subject and closes your mind to further improvement in knowledge. If you have firmly fixed your opinion, even on grounds that are too slight and insufficient, you will be determined to reject the strongest reasons for the opposite view. You will become obstinate against the force of the clearest argument.
Positivo is a man of this kind. He has often declared his certainty about the Cartesian vortices. Last year, reading something on mathematical philosophy brought further light into his understanding with irresistible force. Yet because he had asserted his former opinions so confidently, he is now tempted to close his eyes a little against the truth or to evade it when discussing the subject. If he accepted the evidence, he would have to confess his former folly and mistake, and he lacks the humility to do so.
(2) A dogmatic spirit naturally leads to arrogance and gives a person a haughty, presumptuous manner in conversation. Audens is learned and very good company, but his air of infallible certainty sometimes makes his behavior unbearable.
A dogmatic spirit also inclines a person to judge his neighbors harshly. Each of his own opinions seems to him as clear as if written with sunbeams. He grows angry because his neighbor does not see it in the same light. He is tempted to despise those with whom he exchanges views as people of limited, clouded understanding because they will not believe what he believes.
Furio goes further down this reckless path. He charges those who reject his ideas with deliberate obstinacy and vile hypocrisy. He boldly tells them that they resist the truth and sin against their consciences.
These are the people who delight in insults when they engage in controversy. They freely accuse their fellow Christians of absurdity and stupidity, and lavish charges of heresy and nonsense on their opponents. In matters of sacred importance, they pronounce abundant curses on Christians better than themselves. They condemn their neighbors to damnation without justice or mercy. When they pronounce sentences of divine wrath against supposed heretics, they add their own human fury and indignation. A religious dogmatist is not far from a bigot and is in serious danger of becoming a bloody persecutor.
11. Caution and slowness to assent will protect you from frequent mistakes and retractions. Still, acquire enough humility and courage to retract a mistake and confess an error. Frequent changes indicate that your original judgments were made too lightly. Yet you should never be too proud to change your opinion or frightened of being called fickle. Learn to disregard those common scare tactics that keep foolish people in their old mistakes for fear of being accused of inconsistency.
I acknowledge that it is better not to judge than to judge falsely. It is wiser to withhold assent until we see complete evidence. But if we have assented too hastily, as even the wisest person sometimes does, and have professed something we later find false, we should never be ashamed or afraid to renounce the mistake.
There is an excellent essay among the Occasional Papers, intended “to encourage the world to practice retractions again.” I recommend it to every scholar and every Christian.
12. Anyone who wishes to raise his judgment above the common level and learn to judge people and things fairly must guard against letting fancy govern his mind and whims govern his affairs. If indulged early and continually, fancy and whim promise an old age overrun with follies.
By a person governed by whims, I mean someone who is greatly pleased or displeased by little things; who sets his heart on matters of very little importance; whose choices are determined every day by trifles; whose actions are seldom guided by reason and the nature of things; and whose passions are frequently stirred by matters of little consequence.
When allowed to continue, this practice will gradually warp the judgment into treating little things as great and tempt you to give them excessive weight. This disposition will incline you to place an unfair value on almost everything you encounter. Every step along this path takes you that much farther from wisdom.
13. For the same reason, take care not to treat important matters as trifles or make sport of things that call for reverence and are sacred. Do not indulge a spirit of ridicule, as some witty people do on every occasion and subject. This will bias your judgment just as unhappily in the opposite direction, inclining you to undervalue the most valuable things.
Whatever bad habit we indulge in practice will gradually gain power over our understanding and lead us into many errors. Jocander has a joke ready in answer to everything he hears. He reads books in the same jovial spirit and has acquired the art of turning every thought and sentence into amusement. How many clumsy, distorted judgments he makes about solemn subjects, even when he intends to be serious and earnest!
His merriment and laughter have become a settled habit and disposition that lead his understanding shamefully astray. You will see him wandering after a bright, fluttering feather. Like someone following a deceptive marsh light, he is drawn into bogs and mud almost every day of his life.
14. Always maintain a virtuous and devout spirit. Indulging vicious inclinations degrades the understanding and distorts the judgment. Sexual immorality, wine, and new wine take away a person’s heart, soul, and reason. Sensuality ruins the better faculties of the mind. Indulging appetite and passion weakens the powers of reason. It makes the judgment weak and susceptible to every falsehood, especially errors that tend to gratify bodily appetites. It also turns the soul strangely away from the steadfast honesty and integrity that necessarily belong to the pursuit of truth.
The virtuous person is on the right path to wisdom. “God gives to those that are good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy” (Eccl 2:26).
Devotion to God, together with temperance and virtue, is necessary to make someone truly wise and sound in judgment. Someone who abandons religion must act so contrary to his own conscience and best judgment that he abuses and damages the faculty of judgment itself.
This follows both from the nature of things and from God’s righteous judgment. Even the supposed sages among the pagans, who did not wish to retain God in their knowledge, were given over to a reprobate mind, a mind unable to distinguish or judge properly. As a result, they judged inconsistently and practiced sheer absurdities (Rom 1:28).
It is also characteristic of the slaves of antichrist that those “who receive not the love of the truth” were exposed to the power of diabolical deceptions and “lying wonders” (2 Thess 2:10, etc.). When divine revelation shines before people with glorious evidence and they close their eyes against it, the god of this world is allowed to blind them even in the most obvious, ordinary matters evident to the senses.
For this reason, the great God of Heaven sends them powerful delusions so that they believe a lie. The nonsense of transubstantiation in the Roman Catholic world is a most glaring fulfillment of this prophecy, beyond even what could have been imagined or expected among creatures who claim to reason.
15. Guard against pride in your own reason and a vain opinion of your intellectual powers that neglects divine help and blessing. Do not presume that your own self-sufficiency will bring you great achievements in knowledge. Those who trust entirely to their own understanding are pronounced fools in God’s word. The wisest of men describes them this way: “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool” (Prov 28:26). The same divine writer advises us to “trust in the Lord with all our heart, and not to lean to our understandings, nor to be wise in our own eyes” (Prov 3:5, 7).
Those who neglect religion and dependence on God while trying to discover every point concerning divine things by the sheer force of their own reason have been allowed to run into wild extremes of folly and bizarre opinions. Anyone who follows this vain course and refuses to ask for God’s guidance in studying religion has good reason for fear. He may be abandoned by God and left prey to a thousand prejudices, handed over to the follies of his own heart, and allowed to pursue his own temporal and eternal ruin. Even in ordinary studies, we should seek the support of the God of truth through humility and dependence.
16. Therefore, offer your daily requests to God, the Father of lights, asking him to bless all your efforts in reading, study, and conversation. Consider how easily and imperceptibly he can lead you, by a single turn of thought, into a wide field of useful ideas. He can teach you to grasp a clue that will guide your thoughts safely and easily through all the difficulties of an intricate subject.
Consider how easily the Author of your being can direct your movements through his providence. A glance, a word heard, or a sudden turn of imagination may lead you to a sequence of valuable thoughts. By his hidden and supreme government, he can lead you to read a particular treatise or converse with a particular person. Either may give you more light on a deep subject in an hour than you could gain through a month of solitary work.
Consider how easily the God of spirits can put a useful suggestion into your mind. He can give a fruitful turn to your own thoughts or to those of the people with whom you converse. From this you may gain inexpressible insight and satisfaction in a matter that has long puzzled and entangled you. He can show you a path that the vulture’s eye has not seen and lead you through an unknown gate out of a wilderness and maze of difficulties where you have long wandered.
Continually ask his divine grace to direct your inclination toward suitable studies and fix your heart on them. He can keep temptations away on either side, both through the course of his providence and through the hidden, imperceptible promptings of his Spirit. He can guard your understanding against every harmful influence of error. He can protect you from dangerous books and people that might otherwise have a disastrous effect and lead you into destructive mistakes.
Do not let the godless and irreverent dismiss this advice as mere bigotry or religious fanaticism derived from faith and the Bible. My reasons for supporting this devout practice of asking God to bless our studies come from the light of nature as well as revelation. Should we not expect the one who made our souls, the Father of spirits, to exert a benevolent influence on their instruction and government?
The Author of our rational powers can plunge them into darkness whenever he pleases through a sudden illness. Or he can abandon them to wander into dark and foolish opinions when they are filled with a vain conceit of their own insight. He expects us to acknowledge him in the ordinary affairs of life. He just as certainly expects this in the higher operations of the mind and in the search for knowledge and truth.
Even the pagan Greeks were taught by the light of reason to say, “We begin with Zeus.” The Latins likewise said, “From Jupiter comes the beginning, Muses.” In works of learning, they thought it necessary to begin with God. Even poets call on the Muse as a goddess to help them compose.
The opening lines of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the first line of Musaeus’s poem about Hero and Leander, the beginning of Hesiod’s Works and Days, and several other works provide sufficient examples. Ovid also includes this act of devotion as he begins the stories in his Metamorphoses.
Christianity, through the commands of Scripture, obliges us all the more to ask the true God’s help in every effort of the mind to improve ourselves and others. Bishop Saunderson says that study without prayer is atheism, just as prayer without study is presumption.
We are still more strongly encouraged by the testimony of those who have acknowledged from experience that sincere prayer did not hinder their studies. Sometimes they gained more knowledge on their knees than by working through a variety of authors. They left this observation for those who follow them: “Praying is the best studying.”
To conclude, let diligence and devotion work together, and you need not doubt a happy outcome. “Incline thine ear to wisdom; apply thine heart to understanding: cry after knowledge, and lift up thy voice: seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord” (Prov 2:2), etc. This fear is the beginning of wisdom. It is “the Lord who gives wisdom even to the simple, and out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.”
