7. When the wills of many concur to one and the same action and effect, this concourse of their wills is called consent; by which we must not understand one will of many men, for every man hath his several will, but many wills to the producing of one effect: but when the wills of two divers men produce such actions as are reciprocally resistant one to the other, this is called contention; and, being upon the persons one of another, battle: whereas actions proceeding from consent, are mutual aid.
8. When many wills are involved or included in the will of one or more consenting, (which how it may be, shall be hereafter declared) then is that involving of many wills in one or more, called union.
9. In deliberations interrupted, as they may be by diversion of other business, or by sleep, the last appetite of such part of the deliberation is called intention, or purpose.
CHAPTER XIII.
1. Having spoken of the powers and acts of the mind, both cognitive and motive, considered in every man by himself, without relation to others; it will fall fitly into this chapter, to speak of the effects of the same power one upon another; which effects are also the signs, by which one taketh notice what another conceiveth and intendeth. Of these signs, some are such as cannot easily be counterfeited; as actions and gestures, especially if they be sudden, whereof I have mentioned some; (for example, look in chapter IX.) with the several passions whereof they are signs: others there are which may be counterfeited; and those are words or speech; of the use and effects whereof, I am to speak in this place.
2. The first use of language, is the expression of our conceptions, that is, the begetting in one another the same conceptions that we have in ourselves; and this is called teaching; wherein, if the conception of him that teacheth continually accompany his words, beginning at something true in experience, then it begetteth the like evidence in the hearer that understandeth them, and maketh him to know something, which he is therefore said to learn: but if there be not such evidence, then such teaching is called persuasion, and begetteth no more in the hearer, than what is in the speaker’s bare opinion. And the signs of two opinions contradictory one to another; namely, affirmation and negation of the same thing, is called controversy: but both affirmations, or both negations, consent in opinion.
3. The infallible sign of teaching exactly, and without error, is this, that no man hath ever taught the contrary: not that few, how few soever, if any; for commonly truth is on the side of a few, rather than of the multitude: but when in opinions and questions considered and discussed by many, it happeneth that not any one of the men that so discussed them differ from another, then it may be justly inferred, they know what they teach, and that otherwise they do not. And this appears most manifestly to them that have considered the divers subjects wherein they have exercised their pens, and the divers ways in which they have proceeded, together with the diversity of the success thereof: for, those men who have taken in hand to consider nothing else but the comparison of magnitudes, numbers, times, and motions, and how their proportions are to one another, have thereby been the authors of all those excellencies by which we differ from such savage people as now inhabit divers places in America; and as have been the inhabitants heretofore of those countries where at this day arts and sciences do most flourish: for, from the studies of these men, have proceeded whatsoever cometh to us for ornament by navigation, and whatsover we have beneficial to human society by the division, distinction, and portraiting the face of the earth; whatsoever also we have by the account of times, and foresight of the course of heaven; whatsoever by measuring distances, planes, and solids of all sorts; and whatsoever either elegant or defensible in building: all which supposed away, what do we differ from the wildest of the Indians? Yet to this day was it never heard of, that there was any controversy concerning any conclusion in this subject; the science whereof hath nevertheless been continually amplified and enriched by the conclusions of most difficult and profound speculation. The reason whereof is apparent to every man that looketh into their writings; for they proceed from most low and humble principles, evident even to the meanest capacity; going on slowly, and with most scrupulous ratiocination; viz. from the imposition of names, they infer the truth of their first propositions; and from two of the first, a third; and from any two of the three, a fourth; and so on, according to the steps of science, mentioned chapter VI. [section 4]. On the other side, those men who have written concerning the faculties, passions, and manners of men, that is to say, of moral philosophy, and of policy, government, and laws, whereof there be infinite volumes, have been so far from removing doubt and controversy in the questions they have handled, that they have very much multiplied the same: nor doth any man at this day so much as pretend to know more than hath been delivered two thousand years ago by Aristotle: and yet every man thinks that in this subject he knoweth as much as any other; supposing there needeth thereunto no study but that accrueth unto them by natural wit; though they play, or employ their mind otherwise in the purchase of wealth or place. The reason whereof is no other, than that in their writings and discourses they take for principles those opinions which are already vulgarly received, whether true or false; being for the most part false. There is therefore a great deal of difference between teaching and persuading; the sign of this being controversy; the sign of the former, no controversy.
4. There be two sorts of men that commonly be called learned: one is that sort that proceedeth evidently from humble principles, as is described in the last section; and those men are called mathematici: the other are they that take up maxims from their education, and from the authority of men, or of custom, and take the habitual discourse of the tongue for ratiocination; and these are called dogmatici. Now seeing in the last section those we call mathematici are absolved of the crime of breeding controversy, and they that pretend not to learning cannot be accused, the fault lieth altogether in the dogmatics, that is to say, those that are imperfectly learned, and with passion press to have their opinions pass everywhere for truth, without any evident demonstration either from experience, or from places of Scripture of uncontroverted interpretation.
5. The expression of those conceptions which cause in us the experience of good while we deliberate, as also of those which cause our expectation of evil, is that which we call counselling, and is the internal deliberation of the mind concerning what we ourselves are to do or not to do. The consequences of our actions are our counsellors, by alternate succession in the mind. So in the counsel which a man taketh from other men, the counsellors alternately do make appear the consequences of the action, and do not any of them deliberate, but furnish among them all, him that is counselled with arguments whereupon to deliberate with himself.