第25章 Partiality

As there is a partiality to opinions,which,as we have already observed,is apt to mislead the understanding,so there is often a partiality to studies,which is prejudicial also to knowledge and improvement.Those sciences which men are particularly versed in they are apt to value and extol,as if that part of knowledge which everyone has acquainted himself with were that alone which was worth the having,and all the rest were idle and empty amusements,comparatively of no use or importance.

This is the effect of ignorance and not knowledge,the being vainly puffed up with a flatulency arising from a weak and narrow comprehension.It is not amiss that everyone should relish the science that he has made his peculiar study;a view of its beauties and a sense of its usefulness carries a man on with the more delight and warmth in the pursuit and improvement of it.But the contempt of all other knowledge,as if it were nothing in comparison of law or physic,of astronomy or chemistry,or perhaps some yet meaner part of knowledge wherein I have got some smattering or am somewhat advanced,is not only the mark of a vain or little mind,but does this prejudice in the conduct of the understanding,that it coops it up within narrow bounds and hinders it from looking abroad into other provinces of the intellectual world,more beautiful possible and more fruitful than that which it had till then labored in;wherein it might find,besides new knowledge,ways or hints whereby it might be enabled the better to cultivate its own.