There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge. We try all ways that can lead us to it; where reason is wanting, we therein employ experience, which is a means much more weak and cheap; but truth is so great a thing that we ought not to disdain any mediation that will guide us to it. Reason has s0 many forms that we know not to which to take; experience has no fewer; the consequence we would draw from the comparison of events is unsure, by reason they are always unlike. There is no quality so universal in this image of things as diversity and variety. Both the Greeks and the Latins and we, for the most express example of similitude, employ that of eggs; and yet there have been men, particularly one at Delphos, who could distinguish marks of difference amongst eggs so well that he never mistook one for another, and having many hens, could tell which had laid it.
没有任何渴求比对知识的渴求更加自然合理。对于任何能够将我们引向知识大门的方法,我们都会进行尝试。当理性的推理无法满足需求时,我们便借助于经验。经验是一种最经不起推敲、最不值得重视的方法,而真理却是如此伟大，我们不应该轻视任何一条能够使我们到达真理的道路。理性的推理形式各异,以致我们不知该从何处入手;当然，经验的多种多样与理性推理相比也不遑多让。我们从事件的对比中得出的结论,可信度很小,因为事件之间永远都存在着差异。在事物所表现出的现象中,没有一种共有的本质,都存在着差异性和多样性，无论是希腊人、拉丁人，还是我们自己,大家都会用鸡蛋的相似性来作为最有说服力的例子进行比喻。但仍有一些人能够辨别出鸡蛋之间存在的不同,尤其是德尔斐”的那个人,他从没有把鸡蛋弄混淆过,尽管他养了许多母鸡,但却能断定每个鸡蛋分别是哪只母鸡下的。
Dissimilitude intrudes itself of itself in our works; no art can arrive at perfect similitude: neither Perrozet nor any other can so carefully polish and blanch the backs of his cards that some gamesters will not distinguish them by seeing them only shuffled by another. Resemblance does not so much make one as difference makes another. Nature has obliged herself to make nothing other that was not unlike.
I know not what to say to it; but experience makes it manifest, that s0 many interpretations dissipate truth and break it. Aristotle wrote to be understood; if he could not do this, much less will another that is not so good at it; and a third than he, who expressed his own thoughts. We open the matter, and spill it in pouring out: of one subject we make a thousand, and in multiplying and subdividing them, fall again into the infinity of atoms of Epicurus. Never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing; and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly alike, not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse hours. I often find matter of doubt in things of which the commentary has disdained to take notice; I am most apt to stumble in an even country, like some horses that I have known, that make most trips in the smoothest way.
在人类的作品中,总是有各种各样的差别,没有什么艺术能够做到完全相似:无论是帕罗泽，还是其他任何扑克牌制造者,不管他们如何将牌的背面精心擦光、磨净,仍然有人在别人洗牌的时候，一眼就能分辨出不同的牌。大自然的创造必定是不尽相同的。
我不知道我的说法是否正确，但经验表明,对事物进行过多的解释会削弱真理的力量。亚里士多德之所以写作,是为了更好地让人理解他的学说，如果连他自己都做不到这一点,那么,比他逊色的人,以及评论他的思想的人就更无法解释了。我们着手研究一个问题的时候，如果连续不断地将其分解:从一个主题分解成一千个,然后再细化,使其更详尽具体,那就会跌入伊壁鸠鲁的无限的原子世界之中。从未有两个人对同一事物做出过相同的判断;想找到两种完全相似的见解也是不可能的。不仅是在不同的人之间,甚至对于同一个人来说,在不同的时间里,看法也会发生变化。我经常会对注解者不屑一顾的东西产生疑问,因为人在平地上往往更容易跌倒,就像我所熟悉的马更容易在平坦的道路上失蹄一样。
Who will not say that glosses augment doubts and ignorance, since there's no book to be found, either human or divine, which the world busies itself about, whereof the difficulties are cleared by interpretation. The hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty and perplexed than he found it. When were we ever agreed amongst ourselves: "This book has enough; there is now no more to be said about it"? This is most apparent in the law; we give the authority of law to infinite doctors, infinite decrees, and as many interpretations; yet do we find any end of the need of interpretating? Is there, for all that, any progress or advancement towards peace, or do we stand in need of any fewer advocates and judges than when this great mass of law was yet in its first infancy? On the contrary, we darken and bury intelligence; we can no longer discover it, but at the mercy of so many fences and barriers. Men do not know the natural
disease of the mind; it does nothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and perplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work; "A mouse in a pitch barrel." --- It thinks it discovers at a great distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginary truth: but whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, and new inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk with the motion: not much unlike AEsop's dogs, that seeing something like a dead body floating in the sea, and not being able to approach it, set to work to drink the water and lay the passage dry, and so choked themselves.
没有人会说是注解增多了疑问和错误,因为令世人爱不释手的人文书籍或圣书,没有哪一本是靠注解解决了疑难问题的。第一百个注解者把他所发现的更复杂、更不好解答的难点留给了下一个注解者。什么时候我们才能达成这样的共识一“此书的注解已经足够了,无需更多的解释了”呢?在法律中,这种情况最为明显。我们将法律的权威性赋予无数的学者、无数的法令及其永无休止的诠释,但这种解释真的有必要吗?虽然我们进行了诠释,但它们促进社会安宁了吗?比起最初法律烦冗的时期,我们现在需要的律师和法官是否少了呢?恰怡相反,我们埋葬了自己的理解力，只有在遇到各种障碍和困难的时候，我们才能重新将它们拾起。人们不了解自己思想上天生的疾患,他们的思想只知道盲目地寻求，不断地回旋往复、自欺欺人，像蚕一样作茧自缚,最终在茧中窒息而死。“一只老鼠掉进沥青桶里。”2人的思想自以为预见到了远方光明的迹象和真理,自己发现了远方不知为何物的光明迹象和想象中的真理,但当奔向那里的时候,各种各样的困难以及新的追求都成为了横亘在路上的重重障碍,于是,它不得不放慢了速度,并被一路上的磕磕绊绊弄得晕头转向。伊索寓言中的狗的遭遇与此极为相似:那些狗看到了海上漂浮着的像是尸体一样的东西,但它们无法接近,于是开始喝水,打算吸出一条通道,却因此而一命鸣呼。
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