“He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought, in the first place, to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not will not take much pains to get it, nor be much concerned when he misses it. There is nobody, in the commonwealth of learning, who does not profess himself a lover of truth,—and there is not a rational creature, that would not take it amiss, to be thought otherwise of. And yet, for all this, one may truly say, there are very few lovers of truth, for truth-sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know, whether he be so, in earnest, is worth inquiry; and I think, there is this one unerring mark of it, viz. _the not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built on will warrant_. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it, loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end. For the evidence that any proposition is true (_except such as are self-evident_) lying only in the proofs a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of assent he affords it _beyond the degrees of that_ evidence, it is plain _all that surplusage of assurance_ is owing to some other affection, and not to the love of truth; it being as _impossible_ that the love of truth should carry _my assent above the evidence_ there is to me that it is true, as that the love of truth should make me assent to any proposition for the sake of that evidence which it has not that it is true; which is in effect to love it as a truth, because it is possible or probable that it may not be true.(5)”