DCLVI. HE IGNORANT ALWAYS CREDULOUS AND SUPERSTITIOUS. -The religion of the Pagans had its foundation upon natural philosophy, as the Christian may seem to have upon moral; for all those gods which the ancients worshiped as persons did but represent the several operations of nature upon several kinds of matter; which, being wrought by an invisible and unintelligible power, the wisest men of those times could invent no way so fit and proper to reduce them, with respect and reverence, to the vulgar capacity, as by expressing them by the figures of men and women (like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, or as poets or painters do virtues and vices), and, by ascribing divinity to them, introduce a veneration in the minds of the common people,-who are apt to contemn any thing they can understand, and admire nothing but what is above their capacity,—which they would never have received on any other account; and, therefore, with great piety and devotion, adored those notions represented by statues and images which, if they had understood, they would never have regarded. If they had known the natural reason of thunder, they would never have sacrificed to Jupiter, to divert it from themselves. Their capacities are naturally too dull to apprehend any thing that is ever so little removed from outward senses, though it be derived from it; but are wonderfully acute at unravelling of mysteries, and such things as have no relation at all to it.-Butler. DCLVII. ASSIONS.-A man can always conquer his passions if he pleases; but he cannot always please to conquer his passions.-Anon. DCLVIII. HE SELFISH SYSTEM. The selfish system, in its literal import, is flatly inconsistent with obvious facts, and therefore is hardly deserving of serious refutation. We are daily and hourly conscious of disinterested benevolence or sympathy, or of wishing the good of others without regard to our own. In the present wretched condition of human society, so unfavourable are the outward circumstances wherein most men are placed, and so bad is the education or training received by most men in their youth, that the benevolence of most men wants the intensity and endurance which are requisite to their own happiness and to the happiness of their fellow-creatures. With the majority, benevolence or sympathy is rather a barren emotion than a strong and steady incentive to vigorous and efficient action. Although the feeling or sentiment affects them often. enough, it is commonly stifled at birth by antagonist feelings or sentiments. But to deny, with Rochefoucault or Mandeville, the existence of benevolence or sympathy, is rather a wild parodox, hazarded in the wantonness of satire, than the deliberate position of a philosopher examining the springs of conduct.-Prof. Austin. DCLIX. RUNKENNESS.-I caution you against a vice, of all others in itself the most debasing; and of all others the most prolific of other sins: I mean that of drunkMan has evil as well as good qualities peculiar to himself. Drunkenness places him as much below the level of brutes as reason elevates him above them.-Sir George Sinclair. enness. M DCLX. AN'S NATURE.-The wisest observers of man's nature have pronounced him to be a creature gentle and sociable; inclinable to, and fit for, conversation; apt to keep good order, to observe rules of justice, to embrace any sort of virtue, if well managed, if instructed by good discipline, if guided by good example, if living under the influence of wise laws and virtuous governors. Fierceness, rudeness, craft, malice, all perverse and intractable, all mischievous and vicious, dispositions, do grow among men,—like weeds in any, even the best, soil, and overspread the earth,—from neglect of good education; from ill conduct, ill babits, ill example; but man's soul hath appetites and capacities by which, well guided and ordered, it soars and climbs continually in its affection and desire towards Divine Perfection.- Barrow. THE END. |