As a question
becomes more complicated and involved, and extends to a greater number
of relations, disagreement of opinion will always be multiplied; not
because we are irrational, but because we are finite beings, furnished
with different kinds of knowledge, exerting different degrees of
attention, one discovering consequences which escape another, none
taking in the whole concatenation of causes and effects, and most
comprehending but a very small part, each comparing what he observes
with a different criterion, and each referring it to a different
purpose.
Where, then, is the wonder, that they who see only a small part should
judge erroneously of the whole? or that they, who see different and
dissimilar parts, should judge differently from each other?
Whatever has various respects, must have various appearances of good and
evil, beauty or deformity; thus, the gardener tears up as a weed, the
plant which the physician gathers as a medicine; and "a general," says
Sir Kenelm Digby, "will look with pleasure over a plain, as a fit place
on which the fate of empires might be decided in battle, which the
farmer will despise as bleak and barren, neither fruitful of pasturage,
nor fit for tillage[1].
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