ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Section Vii : of the Idea of Necessary Connexion PART I THE great advantage of the mathematical sciences above the moral consists in this, that the ideas of the former, being sensible, are always clear and determin- ate, the smallest distinction between them is immediately per- ceptible, and the same terms are still expressive of the same ideas, without ambiguity or variation.

An oval is never mis- taken for a circle, nor an hyperbola for an ellipsis. The isos- celes and scalenum are distinguished by boundaries more ex- act than vice and virtue, right and wrong. If any term be defined in geometry, the mind readily, of itself, substitutes, on all occasions, the definition for the term defined: or even when no definition is employed, the object itself may be presented to the senses, and by that means be steadily and clearly apprehended.

But the finer sentiments of the mind, the operations of the understanding, the various agitations of the passions, though really in themselves distinct, easily escape us, when surveyed by reflection; nor is it in our power to recall the original object, as often as we have oc- casion to contemplate it. Ambiguity, by this means, is gradually introduced into our reasonings: similar objects are readily taken to be the same: and the conclusion becomes at last very wide of the premises.

One may safely, however, affirm, that, if we consider these sciences in a proper light, their advantages and disadvan- tages nearly compensate each other, and reduce both of them to a state of equality. If the mind, with greater facility, re- tains the ideas of geometry clear and determinate, it must carry on a much longer and more intricate chain of reason- ing, and compare ideas much wider of each other, in order to reach the abstruser truths of that science.

And if moral ideas are apt, without extreme care, to fall into obscurity and confusion, the inferences are always much shorter in these disquisitions, and the intermediate steps, which lead to the conclusion, much fewer than in the sciences which treat of quantity and number. In reality, there is scarcely a proposi- tion in Euclid so simple, as not to consist of more parts, than are to be found in any moral reasoning which runs not into chimera and conceit.