all their incomes in provisions for the body, and employ none of it to procure the means and helps of knowledge; who take great care to appear always in a neat and splendid outside, and would think themselves miserable in coarse clothes, or a patched coat, and yet contentedly suffer their minds to appear abroad in a piebald livery of coarse patches and borrowed shreds, such as it has pleased chance, or their country tailor (I mean the common opinion of those they have conversed with) to clothe them in.  I will not here mention how unreasonable this is for men that ever think of a future state, and their concernment in it, which no rational man can avoid to do sometimes:  nor shall I take notice what a shame and confusion it is to the greatest contemners of knowledge, to be found ignorant in things they are concerned to know.  But this at least is worth the consideration of those who call themselves gentlemen, That, however they may think credit, respect, power, and authority the concomitants of their birth and fortune, yet they will find all these still carried away from them by men of lower condition, who surpass them in knowledge.  They who are blind will always be led by those that see, or else fall into the ditch:  and he is certainly the most subjected, the most enslaved, who is so in his understanding.  In the foregoing instances some of the causes have been shown of wrong assent, and how it comes to pass, that probable doctrines are not always received with an assent proportionable to the reasons which are to be had for their probability:  but hitherto we have considered only such probabilities whose proofs do exist, but do not appear to him who embraces the error.

7.  Fourth cause of Error, Wrong Measures of Probability:  which are—­

Fourthly, There remains yet the last sort, who, even where the real probabilities appear, and are plainly laid before them, do not admit of the conviction, nor yield unto manifest reasons, but do either suspend their assent, or give it to the less probable opinion.  And to this danger are those exposed who have taken up wrong measures of probability, which are: 

I. Propositions that are in themselves certain and evident, but doubtful and false, taken up for principles.

II.  Received hypotheses.

III.  Predominant passions or inclinations.

IV.  Authority.

8.  I. Doubtful Propositions taken for Principles.