OF ALL discourse governed by desire of knowledge,there is at last an end,either by attaining or by giving over.And in the chain of discourse,wheresoever it be interrupted,there is an end for that time.
If the discourse be merely mental,it consisteth of thoughts that the thing will be,and will not be;or that it has been,and has not been,alternately.So that wheresoever you break off the chain of a man's discourse,you leave him in a presumption of it will be,or,it will not be;or it has been,or,has not been.All which is opinion.And that which is alternate appetite,in deliberating concerning good and evil,the same is alternate opinion in the enquiry of the truth of past and future.And as the last appetite in deliberation is called the will,so the last opinion in search of the truth of past and future is called the judgement,or resolute and final sentence of him that discourseth.And as the whole chain of appetites alternate in the question of good or bad is called deliberation;so the whole chain of opinions alternate in the question of true or false is called doubt.
No discourse whatsoever can end in absolute knowledge of fact,past or to come.For,as for the knowledge of fact,it is originally sense,and ever after memory.And for the knowledge of consequence,which I have said before is called science,it is not absolute,but conditional.No man can know by discourse that this,or that,is,has been,or will be;which is to know absolutely:but only that if this be,that is;if this has been,that has been;if this shall be,that shall be;which is to know conditionally:and that not the consequence of one thing to another,but of one name of a thing to another name of the same thing.
And therefore,when the discourse is put into speech,and begins with the definitions of words,and proceeds by connexion of the same into general affirmations,and of these again into syllogisms,the end or last sum is called the conclusion;and the thought of the mind by it signified is that conditional knowledge,or knowledge of the consequence of words,which is commonly called science.But if the first ground of such discourse be not definitions,or if the definitions be not rightly joined together into syllogisms,then the end or conclusion is again opinion,namely of the truth of somewhat said,though sometimes in absurd and senseless words,without possibility of being understood.When two or more men know of one and the same fact,they are said to be conscious of it one to another;which is as much as to know it together.And because such are fittest witnesses of the facts of one another,or of a third,it was and ever will be reputed a very evil act for any man to speak against his conscience;or to corrupt or force another so to do:insomuch that the plea of conscience has been always hearkened unto very diligently in all times.