Then we have
no further need to think of reasons or to pause over the difficulties of
argument which the mind may anticipate.

30. Thus what we have just said of human reason, which is extolled and
decried by turns, and often without rule or measure, may show our lack of
exactitude and how much we are accessary to our own errors. Nothing would
be so easy to terminate as these disputes on the rights of faith and of
reason if men would make use of the commonest rules of logic and reason[92]
with even a modicum of attention. Instead of that, they become involved in
oblique and ambiguous phrases, which give them a fine field for
declamation, to make the most of their wit and their learning. It would
seem, indeed, that they have no wish to see the naked truth, peradventure
because they fear that it may be more disagreeable than error: for they
know not the beauty of the Author of all things, who is the source of
truth.

31. This negligence is a general defect of humanity, and one not to be laid
to the charge of any particular person. _Abundamus dulcibus vitiis_, as
Quintilian said of the style of Seneca, and we take pleasure in going
astray. Exactitude incommodes us and rules we regard as puerilities. Thus
it is that common logic (although it is more or less sufficient for the
examination of arguments that tend towards certainty) is relegated to
schoolboys; and there is not even a thought for a kind of logic which
should determine the balance between probabilities, and would be so
necessary in deliberations of importance. So true is it that our mistakes
for the most part come from scorn or lack of the art of thinking: for
nothing is more imperfect than our logic when we pass beyond necessary
arguments. The most excellent philosophers of our time, such as the authors
of _The Art of Thinking_, of _The Search for Truth_ and of the _Essay
concerning Human Understanding_, have been very far from indicating to us
the true means fitted to assist the faculty whose business it is to make us
weigh the probabilities of the true and the false: not to mention the art
of discovery, in which success is still more difficult of attainment, and
whereof we have nothing beyond very imperfect samples in mathematics.

32. One thing which might have contributed most towards M. Bayle's belief
that the difficulties of reason in opposition to faith cannot be obviated
is that he seems to demand that God be justified in some such manner as
that commo