And thus men want proofs,
who have not the convenience or opportunity to make experiments and
observations themselves, tending to the proof of any proposition;
nor likewise the convenience to inquire into and collect the
testimonies of others: and in this state are the greatest part of
mankind, who are given up to labour, and enslaved to the necessity
of their mean condition, whose lives are worn out only in the
provisions for living. These men's opportunities of knowledge and
inquiry are commonly as narrow as their fortunes; and their
understandings are but little instructed, when all their whole time
and pains are laid out to still the croaking of their own bellies,
or the cries of their children. It is not to be expected that a man
who drudges on all his life in a laborious trade, should be more
knowing in the variety of things done in the world than a packhorse,
who is driven constantly forwards and backwards in a narrow lane and
dirty road, only to market, should be skilled in the geography of
the country. Nor is it at all more possible that he who wants leisure,
books, and languages, and the opportunity of conversing with variety
of men, should be in a condition to collect those testimonies and
observations which are in being, and are necessary to make out many,
nay most, of the propositions that, in the societies of men, are
judged of the greatest moment; or to find out grounds of assurance
so great as the belief of the points he would build on them is thought
necessary.
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