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Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being:
Part 2, Chapter 01.
- ON OPINION, BELIEF, AND KNOWLEDGE

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    To begin our consideration of the modes [N1] of which man consistes, we shall (1) state, what they are, (2) their effects, and (3) their cause.
[Note N1]: The modes of which Man consists are ideas, differentiated as Opinion, true Belief, and clear and distinct Knowledge, produced by objects, each in its own way.

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    As regards the first, let us begin with those that are first known to us: namely, certain ideas or the consciousness of the knowledge of ourselves, and of the things which are outside us.

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    Now we get these ideas [N1] (1) either merely through belief (which belief arises either from experience, or from hearsay), (2) or, in the second place, we acquire them by way of a true belief, (3) or, thirdly, we have them as the result of clear and distinct conception.
    The first is commonly subject to error.
    The second and third, however, although they differ from one another, cannot err.
[Note N1]: These ideas of this Belief are put first on page [ST202]; here and there they are also called opinion, which they really are.

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    To make all this somewhat clearer and more intelligible, we shall give the following illustration taken from the Rule Three.
    Some one [N1] has just heard it said that if, in the Rule of Three, the second number is multiplied by the third, and then divided by the first, a fourth rumber will then be obtained which has the same relation to the third as the second has to the first. And notwithstanding the possibility that he who put this before him might have been lying, he still made his calculations accordingly, and he did so without having acquired any more knowledge of the Rule of Three than a blind man has of colour, so that whatever he may have said about it, he simply repeated as a parrot repeats what it has been taught.
[Note N1]: This one merely forms an opinion, or, as is commonly said, believes through hearsay only. [B omits this note.]

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    Another, [N1] having a more active intelligence, is not so easily satisfied with mere hearsay, but tests it by some actual calculations, and when he finds that they agree with it, then he gives credence to it. But we have rightly said that this one also is subject to error; for how can he possibly be sure that his experience of a few particulars can serve him as a rule for all?
[Note N1]: This one thinks or believes not simply through hearsay, but from experience: and these are the two kinds of people who have [mere] opinions. [B omits this note.]

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    A third,[N1] who is not satisfied with hearsay, because it may deceive, nor with experience of a few particulars, because this cannot possibly serve as a rule, examines it in the light of true Reason, which, when properly applied, has never deceived. This then tells him that on account of the nature of the proportion in these numbers it had to be and could not happen otherwise.
[Note N1]: This one is certain through true belief, which can never deceive him, and he is properly called a believer.

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    A fourth, [N1] however, having the clearest knowledge of all, has no need of hearsay, or experience, or the art of reasoning, because by his penetration he sees the proportion in [N2] all such calculations immediately. [N3]
[Note N1]: But this last one is never [merely] of opinion, nor a [mere] believer, but sees the things themselves, not through something else, but through the things themselves.

[Note N2]: A: "and"; B: "in."

[Note N3]: B adds here, in the body of the text, the substance of the above two notes on the third and fourth kinds of knowledge.

 
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