9. Our reason often fails us. Reason, though it penetrates into
the depths of the sea and earth, elevates our thoughts as high as
the stars, and leads us through the vast spaces and large rooms of
this mighty fabric, yet it comes far short of the real extent of
even corporeal being. And there are many instances wherein it fails
us: as,
I. In cases when we have no ideas. It perfectly fails us where our
ideas fail. It neither does nor can extend itself further than they
do. And therefore, wherever we have no ideas, our reasoning stops, and
we are at an end of our reckoning: and if at any time we reason
about words which do not stand for any ideas, it is only about those
sounds, and nothing else.
10. II. Because our ideas are often obscure or imperfect. Our reason
is often puzzled and at a loss because of the obscurity, confusion, or
imperfection of the ideas it is employed about; and there we are
involved in difficulties and contradictions. Thus, not having any
perfect idea of the least extension of matter, nor of infinity, we are
at a loss about the divisibility of matter; but having perfect, clear,
and distinct ideas of number, our reason meets with none of those
inextricable difficulties in numbers, nor finds itself involved in any
contradictions about them. Thus, we having but imperfect ideas of
the operations of out minds, and of the beginning of motion, or
thought how the mind produces either of them in us, and much
imperfecter yet of the operation of God, run into great difficulties
about free created agents, which reason cannot well extricate itself
out of.
Pages:
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032