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[n].
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