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are all employed in deducing, well or ill, conclusions from premises: each concerning the subject of his own particular business. Many, indeed, who allow the use of systematic principles in other things, are accustomed to cry up common sense as the sufficient and only safe guide in reasoning. But that common sense is only our second-best guide; that the rules of art, if judiciously framed, are always desirable when they can be had, is an assertion for the truth of which I may appeal to the testimony of mankind in general; which is so much the more valuable, inasmuch as it may be accounted the testimony of adversaries. For the generality have a strong predilection in favour of common sense, except in those points in which they respectively possess the knowledge of a system of rules. A sailor e.g. will perhaps despise the pretensions of medical men, and prefer treating a disease by common sense; but he would ridicule the proposal of navigating a ship by common sense, without regard to the maxims of nautical art.

155. TAINTY.

DIFFERENCE OF OPINIONS DOES NOT IMPLY UNCERALC. But still it would be a satisfaction if all men thought the same way, difference of opinions implying uncertainty. EUPH. Tell me, Alciphron, what you take to be the cause of a lunar eclipse. ALC. The shadow of the earth interposing between the sun and the moon. EUPH. Are you assured of this? ALC. Undoubtedly. EUPH. Are all mankind agreed in this truth? ALC. By no means. Ignorant and barbarous people assign different ridiculous causes of this appearance. EUPH. It seems then there are different opinions about the nature of an eclipse. ALC. There are. EUPH. And nevertheless one of these opinions is true. ALC. It is. EUPH. Diversity therefore of opinions about a thing doth not hinder but that the thing may be, and one of the opinions concerning it may be true. ALC. I acknowledge it. EUPH. It should seem, therefore, that your argument against the belief of a God from the variety of opinions about His nature is not conclusive.

G. BERKELEY

156. NATURE GIVES WAY TO CUSTOM ALONE. Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished. Force maketh nature more violent in the return; doctrine

and discourse maketh nature less importune1: but custom only doth alter and subdue nature. He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great nor too small tasks: for the first will make him dejected by often failing, and the second will make him a small proceeder, though by often prevailing. And, at the first, let him practise with helps, as swimmers do with bladders or rushes; but, after a time, let him practise with disadvantages, as dancers do with thick shoes: for it breeds great perfection, if the practice be harder than the use.

LORD BACON

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157. ENVY OF VIRTUE GENERALLY IN THE VICIOUS. A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others for men's minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope to attain another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune. A man that is busy and inquisitive is commonly envious: for to know much of other men's matters cannot be because all that ado" may concern his own estate; therefore it must needs be that he taketh a kind of play-pleasure in looking upon the fortunes of others; neither can he that mindeth but his own business find much matter for envy; for envy is a gadding passion, and walketh the streets, and doth not keep home: Non est curiosus, quin idem sit malevolus.

LORD BACON

158. OPINION. 'Twas a good Fancy of an old Platonick: The Gods which are above Men, had something whereof Man did partake [an intellect knowledge], and the Gods kept on their Course quietly. The Beasts, which are below Man, had something whereof Man did partake [Sense and Growth], and the Beasts lived quietly in their way. But Man had something in him, whereof neither Gods nor Beasts did partake, which gave him all the Trouble, and made all the Confusion in the world; and that is Opinion. J. SELDEN

159. PREJUDICE IN FAVOUR OF ANTIQUITY. Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, 1 importune] i.q.,importunate, troublesome. 2 ado] i.e. bustle.

but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns and the beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead, we rate them by his best.

S. JOHNSON

160. LIFE A DREAM. And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the next, as the phantasms of the night to the conceit of the day. There is an equal delusion in both; and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other. We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps; and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that which hath passed. We must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatic souls [sleep-walkers] do walk about in their own corpses, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above themselves. For then the soul begins to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.

SIR T. BROWNE

161. REVENGE AND GRATITUDE. Indignation always implies resentment, or a desire of retaliating on the inju

rious person, so far at least as to make him repent the wrong he hath committed. This indignation in the person injured, is, from our knowledge of mankind, supposed to be, not indeed universally, but generally so much stronger, that it ought to be distinguished by another appellation, and is accordingly denominated revenge. In like manner, beneficence, on whomsoever exercised, is the natural object of our love; love always implies benevolence or a desire of promoting the happiness of the beneficent person; but this passion in the person benefited is conceived to be so much greater, and to infer so strong an obligation to a return of good offices to his benefactor, that it merits to be distinguished by the title gratitude.

162. STORY OF A DOLPHIN. Ælian writeth of a singular love of a dolphin towards a boy; the boy being very faire used with his companions to play by the sea-side, and to wash themselves in the water, and practise to swim. A Dolphin fell into great liking with this boy above the rest, and used very familiarly to swim by him side by side; the boy, though at the first he feared the dolphin, grew by custome so familiar with him, that they would contend together in swimming each by other: and sometimes the boy would get upon his backe, and ride upon the fish as though he had beene a horse: insomuch that the dolphin would carry him a great way into the sea, and bring him to lande againe in the sight of all the people of the citie adjoyning, wherein they took great pleasure: it chanced at last that the boy lying with his belly close to the dolphin's backe, the sharpe pricke (which those fishes have) rising out of the middest of his backe ran into the boye's belly, and killed him. The dolphin, perceiving by the weight of the boy and by the blood which stained the water, that he was dead, swam speedily with all his force to land, and then laid down the dead body, and for sorrow died presently by him. These examples may make many men seem more brute than beasts, that perform things appertaining to vertue more effectually by the instinct of nature onely, than they do by nature and reason joyned together. SIR R. BARCKLEY

163. THE BLINDNESS OF GREAT CRIMINALS. His conduct upon these occasions may be thought irrational. But

guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the mind; it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason; it puts him into confusion. He has recourse to such miserable and absurd expedients for covering his guilt, as all those who are used to sit in the seat of judgment know, have been the cause of detection of half the villanies in the world. To argue, that these could not be his reasons, because they were not wise, sound and substantial, would be to suppose what is not true, that bad men were always discreet and able. But I can very well from the circumstances discover motives which may affect a guilty, anxious, restless mind, full of the weak resources of fraud, craft and intrigue, that might induce him to make these discoveries, and to make them in the manner he has done. Not rational, and well-fitted for their purposes, I am very ready to admit. For God forbid that guilt should ever leave a man the free undisturbed use of his faculties.

T. ERSKINE

164. AN ARISTOCRACY. In a democracy, where the right of making laws resides in the people at large, public virtue, or goodness of intention, is more likely to be found, than either of the other qualities of government. Popular assemblies are frequently foolish in their contrivance, and weak in their execution; but generally mean to do the thing that is right and just, and have always a degree of patriotism or public spirit. In aristocracies there is more wisdom to be found than in the other frames of government, being composed or intended to be composed of the most experienced citizens: but there is less honesty than in a republic and less strength than in a monarchy. A monarchy is, indeed, the most powerful of any; for by the entire conjunction of the legislative and executive powers all the sinews of government are knit together, and united in the hand of the prince: but then there is imminent danger of his employing that strength to improvident or oppressive purposes.

DEMOCRACY MORE FAVOURABLE TO VIRTUE THAN

SIR W. BLACKSTONE

165. EROS AND ANTEROS. The ancient sages parabled, that Love, if he be not twin-born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called Anteros; whom while he seeks all

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