Justice has correction proper for both maladies. As to the oppositions and arguments that honest men have made me, both there and oft in other places, I have met with none that have convinc'd me, and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions. It is true indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon experience and matter of fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot. After all, 'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price upon them, to cause a man to be roasted alive. We are told by several examples, (and particularly Præstantius, of his father) that being more profoundly asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself to be a mare, and that he serv'd the soldiers for a sumpter; and what he fancied himself to be, he really prov'd. If sorcerers dream so materially; if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects, I cannot believe that therefore our wills should be accountable to justice; which I say, as a man, who am neither judg nor privy counsellour; and that think my self by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a man of the common sort born, and vow'd to the obedience of the publick reason, both in words and acts. He that should record my idle talk to the prejudice of the most paltry law, opinion or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more. For in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had then in my thought. Tumultuous and wavering thoughts. All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way advice. "Nec me pudet ut istos, fateri nescire, quod nesciam."-Cicero Acad. "Neither am I asham'd, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what I do not know." I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believ'd. And so I told a great man, who complain'd of the tartness and contention of my advices. Perceiving you to be ready, and prepar'd on one part, I propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear my judgment, not to oblige it. God has your hearts in his hands, and will furnish you choice. I am not so presumptuous as to desire that my opinions should so much as incline you to a thing of so great importance. My fortune has not train'd them up to so potent and elevated conclusions. Truly I have not only a great many humours, but also a great many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I had one. What? if the truest are not always the most commodious to man, being of too wild a composition. Whether it be to the purpose, or not, 'tis no great matter. Our reasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent of jurisdiction, that they judg and exercise themselves, even in inanity and where there is no being? Besides, the flexibility of our invention to forge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facile to receive impressions of falsity, by very frivolous appearances. Torquato Tasso, in his comparison he makes betwixt France and Italy, says, he has observ'd, that our legs are gene 824 NOTHING IS SO SUBTILE AS OUR UNDERSTANDING. rally smaller than those of the Italian gentlemen ; and attributes the cause of it to our being continually on horse-back. Which is the very same from which Suetonius draws a quite contrary conclusion; for he says on the contrary, that Germanicus had made his legs bigger by the continuation of the same exercise. Nothing is so subtle and wandering as our understanding. 'Tis like the shoe of Theramenes, fit for all feet. 'Tis double and various, and the matters are double and diverse too. "Give me a drachm of silver," said a cynick philosopher to Antigonus; "that is not a present befitting a king," reply'd he; "give me then a talent,” said the other; "that is not a present befitting a cynick." Seu plures calor ille vias, et cæca relaxat Acrior, aut Boræ pentrabile frigus adurat.-Virg. Geor. lib. 1. Whether from this new force and nourishment Lest soaking show'rs, or Sol's more potent beam, Or Boreas piercing cold should wither them.-Ogilby. "Ogni medaglia ha il suo riverso." "Every medal has its reverse." This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old, that Carneades had outdone the labours of Hercules, in having fixed the consent of men, that is to say, their opinion, and the liberty of judging. This so strong fancy of Carneades, sprung, in my opinion, antiently from the impudence of those who made profession of knowledge, and their immeasurable self-conceit. Æsop was set to sale with two other slaves, the buyer ask'd the first, "What he could do;" who, to enhance his own value, promis'd mountains and miracles, saying, "he could do this, and that, and I know not what;" the second as much of himself and more: when it came to Æsop's turn and that he was also ask'd "what he could do?" Nothing," said he, "for these two have taken up all before me; they can do every thing." So has it happen'd in the school of philosophy. The pride of those who attributed the capacity of all things to human wit, created in others, out of spite and emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing. The one maintain the same extream in ignorance that the others do in knowledge. To make it undeniably manifest, that man is immoderate throughout, can give no other positive sentence but that of necessity, and the want of ability to proceed further. CHAP. CVI.-OF PHYSIOGNOMY. ALMOST all the opinions we have are deriv'd from authority, and taken upon trust; and 'tis not amiss. We could not chuse worse than by our selves in so weak an age. This image of Socrates his discourses, which his friends have transmitted to us, we approve upon no other account, but meerly the reverence to publick approbation. 'Tis not according to our own knowledge, they are not after our way. If any thing of this kind should spring up new, few men would value them. We discern not the graces otherwise than by certain features, touch'd up, and illustrated by art. Such as glide on in their own purity and simplicity, easily escape so gross a sight as ours; they have a delicate and conceal'd beauty, such as requir'd a clear and purified sight to discover so secret a light. Is not simplicity, as we accept it, cousingerman to folly, and a quality of reproach? Socrates makes his soul move a natural and common motion. "A country peasant said this, a woman said that," he never has any thing in his mouth but carters, joiners, coblers, and masons. These are inductions and similitudes drawn from the most common and known actions of men, every one understands 'em. We should never have entertain'd the nobility and splendor of his admirable conceptions under so vile a form; we, I say, who think all things low and flat, that are not elevated by learning, and who discern no riches but in pomp and show. This world of ours is only form'd for ostentation. Men are only pufft up with wind, and are bandied to and fro like tennis-balls. This man proposes to himself no vain and idle fancies, his design was to furnish us with precepts and things that more fitly serve to the use of life: servare modum, finemque tenere, Naturamque sequi. To keep a mean, his end still to observe, Lucan. l. 2. He was also always one and the same, and raised himself not by starts, but by complexion, to the highest pitch of vigour; or to say better, he exalted nothing, but rather brought down and reduc'd all asperities and difficulties to their original and natural condition, and subjected their power for in Cato 'tis most manifest, that there is a proceeding extended far beyond the common ways of ordinary men. In the brave exploits of his life, and in his death, we find him always mounted upon his manag'd horses. Whereas this man always creeps upon the ground, and with a slow and ordinary pace, treats of the most useful discourses, and bears himself through both at his death, and the nicest traverses that would present themselves in the course of human life. It has 826 WE ARE ALL OF US RICHER THAN WE THINK WE ARE. fallen out well, that the man most worthy to be known, and to be presented to the world for example, should be he of whom we have the most certain knowledge; he has been pry'd into by the most clear. sighted men that ever were. The testimonies we have of him are admirable both in fidelity and knowledge. 'Tis a great thing that he was able so to order the pure imaginations of a child, that without altering or wresting them, he has thereby produc'd the most beautiful effects of a human soul. He presents it neither elevated nor rich, he only represents it sound, but certainly with a brisk and sprightly health. By these common and natural springs, by these vulgar and ordinary fancies, without being mov'd or making any bustle in the business, he set up, not only the most regular, but the most high and vigorous beliefs, actions and manners that ever were. 'Tis he who brought again from heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, to restore her to man, with whom her most just and greatest business lies. See him plead before his judges, do but observe by what reasons he rouzes his courage to the hazards of war; with what arguments he fortifies his patience against calumny, tyranny, death and the perverseness of his wife you will find nothing in all this borrow'd from arts and sciences. The simplest may there discover their own means and power; 'tis not possible more to retire, or to creep more low. He has done human nature a great kindness in shewing it how much it can do of it self. We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than our own. Man can in nothing fix and conform himself to his meer necessity. Of pleasure, wealth and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his greediness is incapable of moderation. And I find, that in curiosity of knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge as far as the matter. "Ut omnium rerum, sic literarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus."-Senec. Ep. 106. "That, as of every thing else, we should also be sick of the intemperance of letters." And Tacitus has reason to commend the mother of Agricola, for having restrain'd her son in his too violent appetite of learning. 'Tis a good, if duly consider'd, which has in it, as the other goods of men have, a great deal of vanity, and of proper and natural weakness, and that costs very dear; the acquisition of it is more hazardous, than that of all other meat or drink. For in other things, what we have bought, we carry home in some vessel, and there have liberty to examine our markets, how much it costs, and what 'tis worth, according to the season; but sciences we can, at the very first, bestow into no other vessel than the soul; we swallow them in buying, and return from the market, either already infected or amended. There are of such sorts as only burthen and overcharge the stomach instead of nourishing; and moreover, some that, under colour of curing, poison us. I have been pleas'd, in places where I have been, to see men in. devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity, poverty and penitence. 'Tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites to blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency, that tickles us with the opinion of knowledge. And 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of poverty to add unto it that of the mind. We need not be taught to live at our ease. And Socrates tells us, that it is in us, with the way how to find it, and the manner how to use it. All these acquisitions of ours, which exceed our natural ones, are, upon the matter, superfluous and vain. 'Tis much if they do not more burthen and cumber us than they do us good. "Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam."-Ibid. "A man of good natural parts and a good disposition, has no great need of learning." "Tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument. Do but recollect your self, and you will find in your self natural arguments against death, which are true, and more proper, and fit to serve you in time of necessity. 'Tis they that make a peasant, and an intire people die with as much constancy as a philosopher. Should I have died less chearfully before I had read Cicero's Tusculanes? I believe not. And when I find my self at the best, I perceive that my tongue is inrich'd indeed, but my courage little or nothing elevated by them. It is just as nature forg'd it at first, and against my conflict only defends it self after a natural and ordinary way. Books have not so much serv'd me for instruction as exercise. What if knowledge, trying to arm us with new defences against natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in our fancies their weight and grandeur, than her reasons and subtilties to secure us from them? They are subtilties indeed, with which she oft alarms us to little purpose. Do but observe, how many slight and frivolous, and if nearly examin'd, how many incorporeal arguments the closest and wisest authors scatter about one good one. They are no other but quirks and fallacies to amuse and gull us. But for as much as it may be with some profit, I will sift it no further. Many of that sort are here and there disperst up and down this treatise, either upon borrowing, or by imitation; therefore ought a man to take a little heed, not to call that force which is only a knack of writing, and that solid which is only quick, or that good which is only fine. "Quæ magis gustata quam potata delectant.”—Thusc. l. 5. "Which more delight in tasting, than in being drunk off." Every thing that pleases does not nourish. "Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur.”—Sen. Epist. "Where the question is not about improving the wit, but bettering the understanding." To see the bustle that Seneca keeps to fortifie himself against death, to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, and bait so long upon the perch, would have lessen'd his reputation with me, had he not very bravely maintain'd it to the last. His so ardent and frequent agitations discover, that he was in |