CHAPTER XVI - THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.
WE have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to
make us love one another.
Reflect on things past as wars, negotiations, factions, etc. We
enter so little into those interests, that we wonder how men could
possibly be so busy and concerned for things so transitory; look on
the present times, we find the same humour, yet wonder not at all.
A wise man endeavours, by considering all circumstances, to make
conjectures and form conclusions; but the smallest accident
intervening (and in the course of affairs it is impossible to
foresee all) does often produce such turns and changes, that at
last he is just as much in doubt of events as the most ignorant and
inexperienced person.
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because
he that would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude,
will convince others the more, as he appears convinced himself.
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when
they will not so much as take warning?
I forget whether Advice be among the lost things which Aristo says
are to be found in the moon; that and Time ought to have been
there.
No preacher is listened to but Time, which gives us the same train
and turn of thought that older people have tried in vain to put
into our heads before.
When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the
good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds
run wholly on the bad ones.
In a glass-house the workmen often fling in a small quantity of
fresh coals, which seems to disturb the fire, but very much
enlivens it. This seems to allude to a gentle stirring of the
passions, that the mind may not languish.
Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires
miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or
languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's
revenue.
The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the
follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the
former.
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to
posterity, let him consider in old books what he finds that he is
glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to
none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and
admire, not Achilles or AEneas. With historians it is quite the
contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and
events we read, and we little regard the authors.
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this
sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Men who possess all the advantages of life, are in a state where
there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to
please them.
It is unwise to punish cowards with ignominy, for if they had
regarded that they would not have been cowards; death is their
proper punishment, because they fear it most.
The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as
the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing, and by the dullest
nation, as the Germans.
One argument to prove that the common relations of ghosts and
spectres are generally false, may be drawn from the opinion held
that spirits are never seen by more than one person at a time; that
is to say, it seldom happens to above one person in a company to be
possessed with any high degree of spleen or melancholy.
I am apt to think that, in the day of Judgment, there will be small
allowance given to the wise for their want of morals, nor to the
ignorant for their want of faith, because both are without excuse.
This renders the advantages equal of ignorance and knowledge. But,
some scruples in the wise, and some vices in the ignorant, will
perhaps be forgiven upon the strength of temptation to each.
The value of several circumstances in story lessens very much by
distance of time, though some minute circumstances are very
valuable; and it requires great judgment in a writer to
distinguish.
It is grown a word of course for writers to say, "This critical
age," as divines say, "This sinful age."
It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying
taxes on the next. FUTURE AGES SHALL TALK OF THIS; THIS SHALL BE
FAMOUS TO ALL POSTERITY. Whereas their time and thoughts will be
taken up about present things, as ours are now.
The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, hath, of
all animals, the nimblest tongue.
When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a
temporal, his Christian name.
It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false
lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them
more numerous and strong than they really are.
Some men, under the notions of weeding out prejudices, eradicate
virtue, honesty, and religion.
In all well-instituted commonwealths, care has been taken to limit
men's possessions; which is done for many reasons, and among the
rest, for one which perhaps is not often considered: that when
bounds are set to men's desires, after they have acquired as much
as the laws will permit them, their private interest is at an end,
and they have nothing to do but to take care of the public.
There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the
censure of the world: to despise it, to return the like, or to
endeavour to live so as to avoid it. The first of these is usually
pretended, the last is almost impossible; the universal practice is
for the second.
I never heard a finer piece of satire against lawyers than that of
astrologers, when they pretend by rules of art to tell when a suit
will end, and whether to the advantage of the plaintiff or
defendant; thus making the matter depend entirely upon the
influence of the stars, without the least regard to the merits of
the cause.
The expression in Apocrypha about Tobit and his dog following him I
have often heard ridiculed, yet Homer has the same words of
Telemachus more than once; and Virgil says something like it of
Evander. And I take the book of Tobit to be partly poetical.
I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very
serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial
on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers,
but not the owner within.
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics,
religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth and so go on to
old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would
appear at last!
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are
told expressly: that they neither marry, nor are given in
marriage.
It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of a
spider.
The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our
desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the
same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life
and death.
The reason why so few marriages are happy, is, because young ladies
spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will
find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
Nothing more unqualifies a man to act with prudence than a
misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the
happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing
is performed in the same posture with creeping.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet
perhaps as few know their own strength. It is, in men as in soils,
where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not
of.
Satire is reckoned the easiest of all wit, but I take it to be
otherwise in very bad times: for it is as hard to satirise well a
man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of
distinguished virtues. It is easy enough to do either to people of
moderate characters.
Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age; so that our
judgment grows harder to please, when we have fewer things to offer
it: this goes through the whole commerce of life. When we are
old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less
concerned whether we be pleased or no.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an
inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or
bad, may he resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love
of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of
others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the
great distinction between virtue and vice. Religion is the best
motive of all actions, yet religion is allowed to be the highest
instance of self-love.
Old men view best at a distance with the eyes of their
understanding as well as with those of nature.
Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly.
Anthony Henley's farmer, dying of an asthma, said, "Well, if I can
get this breath once OUT, I'll take care it never got IN again."
The humour of exploding many things under the name of trifles,
fopperies, and only imaginary goods, is a very false proof either
of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions.
For instance, with regard to fame, there is in most people a
reluctance and unwillingness to be forgotten. We observe, even
among the vulgar, how fond they are to have an inscription over
their grave. It requires but little philosophy to discover and
observe that there is no intrinsic value in all this; however, if
it be founded in our nature as an incitement to virtue, it ought
not to be ridiculed.
Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest
part of our devotion.
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing
to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a
master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in
speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common
speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe
them in, and these are always ready at the mouth. So people come
faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd
is at the door.
Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men's
power to be agreeable. The reason, therefore, why conversation
runs so low at present, is not the defect of understanding, but
pride, vanity, ill-nature, affectation, singularity, positiveness,
or some other vice, the effect of a wrong education.
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men
delight in telling what honours have been done them, what great
company they have kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess
that these honours were more than their due, and such as their
friends would not believe if they had not been told: whereas a man
truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and
consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a maxim,
that whoever desires the character of a proud man, ought to conceal
his vanity.
Law, in a free country, is, or ought to be, the determination of
the majority of those who have property in land.
One argument used to the disadvantage of Providence I take to be a
very strong one in its defence. It is objected that storms and
tempests, unfruitful seasons, serpents, spiders, flies, and other
noxious or troublesome animals, with many more instances of the
like kind, discover an imperfection in nature, because human life
would be much easier without them; but the design of Providence may
clearly be perceived in this proceeding. The motions of the sun
and moon - in short, the whole system of the universe, as far as
philosophers have been able to discover and observe, are in the
utmost degree of regularity and perfection; but wherever God hath
left to man the power of interposing a remedy by thought or labour,
there he hath placed things in a state of imperfection, on purpose
to stir up human industry, without which life would stagnate, or,
indeed, rather, could not subsist at all: CURIS ACCUUNT MORTALIA
CORDA.
Praise is the daughter of present power.
How inconsistent is man with himself!
I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public
affairs and counsels governed by foolish servants.
I have known great Ministers, distinguished for wit and learning,
who preferred none but dunces.
I have known men of great valour cowards to their wives.
I have known men of the greatest cunning perpetually cheated.
I knew three great Ministers, who could exactly compute and settle
the accounts of a kingdom, but were wholly ignorant of their own
economy.
The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the
course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious.
Princes usually make wiser choices than the servants whom they
trust for the disposal of places: I have known a prince, more than
once, choose an able Minister, but I never observed that Minister
to use his credit in the disposal of an employment to a person whom
he thought the fittest for it. One of the greatest in this age
owned and excused the matter from the violence of parties and the
unreasonableness of friends.
Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy when great ones
are not in the way. For want of a block he will stumble at a
straw.
Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary
to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are
otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.
Love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they
have of themselves; in women from the contrary.
If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty
years past, I am in some concern for future ages how any man will
be learned, or any man a lawyer.
Kings are commonly said to have LONG HANDS; I wish they had as LONG
EARS.
Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth are said to discover
prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and
astonish. Strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful
kings! If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies
of wisdom and virtue. If they live, they are often prodigies
indeed, but of another sort.
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but
corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good
ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.
A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of diseases. Both
wore originally the same trade, and still continue.
Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their
long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
A person was asked at court, what he thought of an ambassador and
his train, who were all embroidery and lace, full of bows, cringes,
and gestures; he said, it was Solomon's importation, gold and apes.
Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals, is an
imitation of fighting.
Augustus meeting an ass with a lucky name foretold himself good
fortune. I meet many asses, but none of them have lucky names.
If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is he keeps his at
the same time.
Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of truth when we see
them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of
their zeal to truth, although they contradict themselves every day
of their lives?
That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an
author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there
I pronounce him to be mistaken.
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing
to live another time.
Laws penned with the utmost care and exactness, and in the vulgar
language, are often perverted to wrong meanings; then why should we
wonder that the Bible is so?
Although men are accused for not knowing their weakness, yet
perhaps as few know their own strength.
A man seeing a wasp creeping into a vial filled with honey, that
was hung on a fruit tree, said thus: "Why, thou sottish animal,
art thou mad to go into that vial, where you see many hundred of
your kind there dying in it before you?" "The reproach is just,"
answered the wasp, "but not from you men, who are so far from
taking example by other people's follies, that you will not take
warning by your own. If after falling several times into this
vial, and escaping by chance, I should fall in again, I should then
but resemble you."
An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of
money, and hide them in a hole, which the cat observing, asked why
he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no
use of? "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chest
full, and makes no more use of them than I."
Men are content to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their
folly.
If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in
their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know
that they ever had any.
After all the maxims and systems of trade and commerce, a stander-
by would think the affairs of the world were most ridiculously
contrived.
There are few countries which, if well cultivated, would not
support double the number of their inhabitants, and yet fewer where
one-third of the people are not extremely stinted even in the
necessaries of life. I send out twenty barrels of corn, which
would maintain a family in bread for a year, and I bring back in
return a vessel of wine, which half a dozen good follows would
drink in less than a month, at the expense of their health and
reason.
A man would have but few spectators, if he offered to show for
threepence how he could thrust a red-hot iron into a barrel of
gunpowder, and it should not take fire.
