ains of
knowledge, introduced, as I suppose, the like use of these maxims into
a great part of conversation out of the Schools, to stop the mouths of
cavillers, whom any one is excused from arguing any longer with,
when they deny these general self-evident principles received by all
reasonable men who have once thought of them: but yet their use herein
is but to put an end to wrangling. They in truth, when urged in such
cases, teach nothing: that is already done by the intermediate ideas
made use of in the debate, whose connexion may be seen without the help
of those maxims, and so the truth known before the maxim is produced,
and the argument brought to a first principle. Men would give off
a wrong argument before it came to that, if in their disputes they
proposed to themselves the finding and embracing of truth, and not a
contest for victory. And thus maxims have their use to put a stop to
their perverseness, whose ingenuity should have yielded sooner. But the
method of the Schools having allowed and encouraged men to oppose and
resist evident truth till they are baffled, i.e. till they are reduced
to contradict themselves, or some established principles: it is no
wonder that they should not in civil conversation be ashamed of that
which in the Schools is counted a virtue and a glory, viz. obstinately
to maintain that side of the question they have chosen, whether true or
false, to the last extremity; even after conviction. A strange way to
attain truth and knowledge: and that which I think the rational part of
mankind, not corrupted by education, could scare believe should ever
be admitted amongst the lovers of truth, and students of religion or
nature, or introduced into the seminaries of those who are to propegate
the truths of religion or philosophy amongst the ignorant and
unconvinced. How much such a way of learning is like to turn young men's
minds from the sincere search and love of truth; nay, and to make them
doubt whether there is any such thing, or, at least, worth the adhering
to, I shall not now inquire. This I think, that, bating those places,
which brought the Peripatetic Philosophy into their schools, where it
continued many ages, without teaching the world anything but the art of
wrangling, these maxims were nowhere thought the foundations on which
the sciences were built, nor the great helps to the advancement of
knowledge.]

{Of great use to stop wranglers in disputes, but of little use to the