10. In every proposition, be it affirmative or negative, the latter appellation either comprehendeth the former, as in this proposition, charity is a virtue, the name of virtue comprehendeth the name of charity, and many other virtues beside; and then is the proposition said to be true, or truth: for, truth, and a true proposition, is all one. Or else the latter appellation comprehendeth not the former; as in this proposition, every man is just; the name of just comprehendeth not every man; for unjust is the name of the far greater part of men: and the proposition is said to be false, or falsity: falsity and a false proposition being also the same thing.
Ratiocination.
11. In what manner of two propositions, whether both affirmative, or one affirmative, the other negative, is made a syllogism, I forbear to write. All this that hath been said of names or propositions, though necessary, is but dry discourse: and this place is not for the whole art of logic, which if I enter further into, I ought to pursue: besides, it is not needful; for there be few men which have not so much natural logic, as thereby to discern well enough, whether any conclusion I shall make in this discourse hereafter, be well or ill collected: only thus much I say in this place, that making of syllogisms is that we call ratiocination or reasoning.
According to reason, against reason.
12. Now when a man reasoneth from principles that are found indubitable by experience, all deceptions of sense and equivocation of words avoided, the conclusion he maketh is said to be according to right reason: but when from his conclusion a man may, by good ratiocination, derive that which is contradictory to any evident truth whatsoever, then he is said to have concluded against reason: and such a conclusion is called absurdity.
Names causes of knowledge, so of error.
13. As the invention of names hath been necessary for the drawing men out of ignorance, by calling to their remembrance the necessary coherence of one conception to another; so also hath it on the other side precipitated men into error: insomuch, that whereas by the benefit of words and ratiocination they exceed brute beasts in knowledge, and the commodities that accompany the same; so they exceed them also in error: for true and false are things not incident to beasts, because they adhere not to propositions and language; nor have they ratiocination, whereby to multiply one untruth by another, as men have.
Translation of the discourse of the mind into the discourse of the tongue, and of the errors thence proceeding.
14. It is the nature almost of every corporal thing, being often moved in one and the same manner, to receive continually a greater and greater easiness and aptitude to the same motion, insomuch as in time the same becometh so habitual, that, to beget it, there needs no more than to begin it. The passions of man, as they are the beginning of voluntary motions; so are they the beginning of speech, which is the motion of the tongue. And men desiring to shew others the knowledge, opinions, conceptions, and passions which are in themselves, and to that end having invented language, have by that means transferred all that discursion of their mind mentioned in the former chapter, by the motion of their tongues, into discourse of words: and ratio now is but oratio, for the most part, wherein custom hath so great a power, that the mind suggesteth only the first word; the rest follow habitually, and are not followed by the mind; as it is with beggars, when they say their paternoster, putting together such words, and in such manner, as in their education they have learned from their nurses, from their companies, or from their teachers, having no images or conceptions in their mind, answering to the words they speak: and as they have learned themselves, so they teach posterity. Now, if we consider the power of those deceptions of the sense, mentioned chapter II. [section 10], and also how unconstantly names have been settled, and how subject they are to equivocation, and how diversified by passion, (scarce two men agreeing what is to be called good, and what evil; what liberality, what prodigality; what valour, what temerity) and how subject men are to paralogism or fallacy in reasoning, I may in a manner conclude, that it is impossible to rectify so many errors of any one man, as must needs proceed from those causes, without beginning anew from the very first grounds of all our knowledge and sense; and instead of books, reading over orderly one’s own conceptions: in which meaning, I take nosce te ipsum[te ipsum] for a precept worthy the reputation it hath gotten.