I Am Indeed Amazed When I Consider

If I Go For The Alternative Which Is False, Then Obviously I Shall Be In Error; If I Take The Other Side, Then It Is By... Chance That I Arrive At The Truth, And I Shall Still Be At Fault.... In This Incorrect Use Of Free Will May Be Found The Privation Which Constitutes The Essence Of Error.

I Concluded That I Might Take As A General Rule The Principle That All Things Which We Very Clearly And Obviously Conceive Are True: Only Observing, However, That There Is Some Difficulty In Rightly Determining The Objects Which We Distinctly Conceive.

Situations In Life Often Permit No Delay; And When We Cannot Determine The Course Which Is Certainly Best, We Must Follow The One Which Is Probably The Best. This Frame Of Mind Freed Me Also From The Repentance And Remorse Commonly Felt By Those Vacillating Individuals Who Are Always Seeking As Worthwhile Things Which They Later Judge To Be Bad.

In Philosophy, When We Make Use Of False Principles, We Depart The Farther From The Knowledge Of Truth And Wisdom Exactly In Proportion To The Care With Which We Cultivate Them, And Apply Ourselves To The Deduction Of Diverse Consequences From Them, Thinking That We Are Philosophizing Well, While We Are Only Departing The Farther From The Truth; From Which It Must Be Inferred That They Who Have Learned The Least Of All That Has Been Hitherto Distinguished By The Name Of Philosophy Are The Most Fitted For The Apprehension Of Truth.

Even Those Who Have The Weakest Souls Could Acquire Absolute Mastery Over All Their Passions If We Employed Sufficient Ingenuity In Training And Guiding Them.