[An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. by John Locke]@TWC D-Link book
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I.

CHAPTER XXI
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Causes of this.
(i) IGNORANCE: He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judging amiss.
(ii) INADVERTENCY: When a man overlooks even that which he does know.
This is an affected and present ignorance, which misleads our judgments as much as the other.

Judging is, as it were, balancing an account, and determining on which side the odds lie.

If therefore either side be huddled up in haste, and several of the sums that should have gone into the reckoning be overlooked and left out, this precipitancy causes as wrong a judgment as if it were a perfect ignorance.

That which most commonly causes this is, the prevalency of some present pleasure or pain, heightened by our feeble passionate nature, most strongly wrought on by what is present.

To check this precipitancy, our understanding and reason were given us, if we will make a right use of them, to search and see, and then judge thereupon.


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