The 4 Causes of our Errors

The Prejudices of Childhood

71. The chief cause of our errors is to be found in the prejudices of our childhood.

Here we may notice the first and chief cause of our errors.

In early life, the mind was so closely bound to the body. It was limited to the thoughts from the objects that made impressions on the body.

Those thoughts did not refer to anything existing beyond the body. They only showed:

• pain when the body was hurt
• pleasure when the body was benefitted
• when the body was neither greatly benefited nor hurt

The mind experienced the sensations we call tastes, smells, sounds, heat, cold, light, colours, and the like.

• These really are just inside our minds.

• These vary according to the diversities of the parts and modes that affect the body.

The mind at the same time also perceived magnitudes, figures, motions, and the like that come from thoughts and not from external sensations.

The machine of the body has been fabricated by nature so that it can move itself in various ways of its own inherent power. It:

• follows what is useful
• avoids what was detrimental.

The mind was closely connected with the body.

It reflected on the objects it pursued or avoided.

It remarked for the first time that those objects existed out of itself.

The mind attributed to those objects magnitudes, shapes, motions, etc, which it apprehended either:

• as things or
• as the modes of things.

It also attributed to them tastes, odours, and other sensations caused by itself.

The mind, immersed in the body, only considered other objects in so far as they were useful to the body.

It judged that there was more or less reality in each object, according as the impressions it caused on the body were more or less powerful.

Hence arose the belief that there was more substance or body in rocks and metals than in air or water. This is because the mind perceived in them more hardness and weight.

Moreover, the air was thought to be merely nothing so long as we experienced no agitation of it by the wind, or did not feel it hot or cold.

The stars gave hardly more light than the slender flames of candles, we supposed that each star was but of this size.

The mind did not observe that:

• the earth moved around its axis, or
• its edges were curved like a globe.

It judged that the earth was immovable and flat.

Our mind has been imbued from our infancy with a thousand other prejudices of the same sort.

In our youth, we have accepted these without sufficient examination.

We then admitted them as being of the highest truth and clearness, as if they had been known by our senses, or implanted in us by nature.

72. 2. We cannot forget these prejudices

In our mature years, the mind is no longer wholly subject to the body. But it is not in the habit of referring all things to it. It also seeks to discover the truth of things considered in themselves.

We realize the falsehood of many of the judgments we had before. Yet we find it difficult to expunging them from our memory. As long as they remain there, they give rise to various errors.

For example, we imagined the stars to be very small. We find it difficult to believe that they are so large even if this is assured by plain astronomical reasons.

73. 3. We become tired by attending to those objects which are not present to the senses.

We are thus used to judge of these not from present perception but from pre-conceived opinion.

Our mind cannot attend to any object at length without experiencing some pain and fatigue.

Of all objects it has the greatest difficulty in attending to those which are present neither to the senses nor to the imagination:

whether for the reason that this is natural to it from its union with the body, or because in our early years, being occupied merely with perceptions and imaginations, it has become more familiar with, and acquired greater facility in thinking in those modes than in any other.

Hence, many are unable to conceive any substance except what is imaginable and corporeal, and even sensible.

They are ignorant that those objects alone are imaginable which consist in extension, motion, and shape, while there are many others besides these that are intelligible.

They persuade themselves that:

• nothing can subsist but body, and
• there is no body which is not sensible.

Since in truth we perceive no object such as it is by sense alone [but only by our reason exercised upon sensible objects], as will hereafter be clearly shown, it thus happens that the majority during life perceive nothing unless in a confused way.

74. 4. We attach our thoughts to words which do not express ideas accurately.

We attach all our conceptions to words by which to express them. We then commit to memory our thoughts in connection with these terms.

We afterwards find it more easy to recall the words than the things signified by them, we can scarcely conceive anything with such distinctness as to separate entirely what we conceive from the words that were selected to express it.

On this account, the majority attend to words rather than to things; and thus very frequently assent to terms without attaching to them any meaning, either because they think they once understood them, or imagine they received them from others by whom they were correctly understood.

This, however, is not the place to treat of this matter in detail, seeing the nature of the human body has not yet been expounded, nor the existence even of body established; enough, nevertheless, appears to have been said to enable one to distinguish such of our conceptions as are clear and distinct from those that are obscure and confused.

75. Summary of what must be observed in order to philosophize correctly.

To philosophize properly, we must:

1. Lay aside our prejudices

We must withhold our assent from the opinions we have formerly admitted, until upon new examination we discover that they are true.

2. Make an orderly review of the notions we have in our minds

We should hold as true all and only those which we will clearly and distinctly apprehend.

In this way we will observe that:

• we exist as it is our nature to think, and
• there is a God upon whom we depend.

After considering his attributesk, we will be able to investigate the truth of all other things, since God is the cause of them.

Besides, the notions we have of God and of our mind, we will likewise find that we possess the knowledge of many propositions which are eternally true, as, for example, that nothing cannot be the cause of anything, etc.

We will farther discover in our minds the knowledge of a corporeal or extended nature that may be moved, divided, etc., and also of certain sensations that affect us, as of pain, colours, tastes, etc., although we do not yet know the cause of our being so affected.

Comparing what we have now learned, by examining those things in their order, with our former confused knowledge of them, we will acquire the habit of forming clear and distinct conceptions of all the objects we are capable of knowing.

In these few precepts seem to me to be comprised the most general and important principles of human knowledge.

76. We should prefer the Divine authority to our perception.

But apart from things revealed, we should assent to nothing that we do not clearly apprehend.

Above all, we must impress on our memory the infallible rule, that:

• what God has revealed is incomparably more certain than anything else
• we should submit our belief to the Divine authority rather than to our own judgment, even although perhaps the light of reason should, with the greatest clearness and evidence, appear to suggest to us something contrary to what is revealed.

But in things regarding which there is no revelation, it is by no means consistent with the character of a philosopher to accept as true what he has not ascertained to be such, and to trust more to the senses, in other words, to the inconsiderate judgments of childhood than to the dictates of mature reason.