The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04 · Thomas Hobbes
CHAPTER IV.
1. Discourse. 2. The cause of coherence of thoughts. 3. Ranging. 4. Sagacity. 5. Reminiscence. 6. Experience. 7. Expectation. 8. Conjecture. 9. Signs. 10. Prudence. 11. Caveats of concluding from experience. [Sidenote: Discourse.] 1. The _succession_ of conceptions in the mind, series or consequence of one after another, may be _casual_ and incoherent, as in dreams for the most part; and it may be _orderly_, as when the former thought introduceth the latter; and this is _discourse_ of the mind. But because the word discourse is commonly taken for the _coherence_ and consequence of words, I will, to avoid equivocation, call it _discursion_. [Sidenote: The cause of coherence of thoughts.] 2. The _cause_ of the _coherence_ or consequence of one conception to another, is their first _coherence_ or consequence at that _time_ when they are produced by sense: as for example, from St. Andrew the mind runneth to St. Peter, because their names are read together; from St. Peter to a _stone_, for the same cause; from _stone_ to _foundation_, because we see them together; and for the same cause, from foundation to _church_, and from church to _people_, and from people to _tumult_: and according to this example, the mind may run almost from anything to anything. But as in the _sense_ the conception of cause and effect may succeed one another; so may they after sense in the _imagination_: and for the most part they do so; the _cause_ whereof is the _appetite_ of them, who, having a conception of the _end_, have next unto it a conception of the next _means_ to that end: as, when a man, from a thought of _honour_ to which he hath an appetite, cometh to the thought of _wisdom_, which is the next means thereunto; and from thence to the thought of _study_, which is the next means to wisdom.
10. This taking of signs by _experience_, is that wherein men do ordinarily think, the difference stands between man and man in _wisdom_, by which they commonly understand a man’s whole ability or _power cognitive_; but this is an _error_: for the signs are but _conjectural_; and according as they have often or seldom failed, so their _assurance_ is more or less; but _never full_ and _evident_: for though a man have always seen the day and night to follow one another hitherto; yet can he not thence conclude they shall do so, or that they have done so eternally: _experience concludeth nothing universally_. If the signs hit twenty times for one missing, a man may lay a wager of twenty to one of the event; but may not conclude it for a truth. But by this it is plain, that they shall _conjecture best_, that have _most experience_, because they have most signs to conjecture by: which is the reason _old men_ are _more prudent_, that is, conjecture better, _cæteris paribus_, than young: for, being old, they remember more; and experience is but remembrance. And _men_ of _quick_ imagination, _cæteris paribus_, are more _prudent_ than those whose imaginations are slow: for they observe _more_ in _less_ time. Prudence is nothing but conjecture from experience, or taking of signs from experience warily, that is, that the experiments from which he taketh such signs be all remembered; for else the cases are not alike that seem so.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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