say otherwise is thought so unjust an affront and so senseless a censure that nobody ventures to do it. It looks like the degradation of a man below the dignity of his nature. It is true, that he that reasons well in any one thing, has a mind naturally capable of reasoning well in others, and to the same degree of strength and clearness, and possibly much greater, had his understanding been so employed. But it is as true that he who can reason well to-day about one sort of matters, cannot at all reason to-day about others, though perhaps a year hence he may. But wherever a man’s rational faculty fails him, and will not serve him to reason, there we cannot say he is rational, how capable soever he may be by time and exercise to become so.
Try in men of low and mean education who have never elevated their thoughts above the spade and the plow, nor looked beyond the ordinary drudgery of a day-laborer. Take the thoughts of such an one used for many years to one track, out of that narrow compass he has been all his life confined to, you will find him no more capable of reasoning than almost[1] a perfect natural[2] Some one or two rules on which their conclusions immediately depend, you will find in most men have governed all their thoughts; these, true or false, have been the maxims they have been guided by: take these from them and they are perfectly at a loss, their compass and pole-star[3] then are gone, and their understanding is perfectly at a nonplus; and therefore
