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From the best calculations, only one

510. Calculations on Life. out of 3210, reach the age of 100.

Of 1000 infants, nursed by the mother, about 300 die; of the same number nursed out, 500 die.

More people live to a great age in elevated situations, than in a lower

one.

Of the children born alive, one-fourth die before eleven months, onethird before the twenty-third month, half before their eighth year, twothirds of mankind die before their thirty-ninth year, three-fourths before their fifty-first year, and of about 12,000 only 1 survives a whole century.-Buffon.

The greatest number die in March; next in August and September; fewest in November, December, and February. Married women live longer than single ones.— -Annual Register.

The average mortality through England and Wales, estimated in 1803, is one in forty persons; the births about one in thirty.

Malthus .

511. Private Vices.-The policy of drawing a public revenue from the private vices of drinking, and of gaming, is as purblind as it is pernicious; for temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest; and a gamester contributes much less to the revenue than the industrious man, because he is much sooner ruined. When Mandeville maintained that private vices were public benefits, he did not calculate the widely destructive influence of bad example. To affirm that a vicious man is only his own enemy, is about as wise as to affirm that a virtuous man is only his own friend.

Rev. C. C. Colton.

512. Reading.-History makes men wise, poetry witty, mathematics subtle, philosophy deep, morals graine, logic and rhetoric able to contend: nay, there is no impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit study, where every defect of the mind has its proper remedy. Those that have the excellent faculty of using all they know, can never know too much.--Lady Gethin.

513. Learning and Genius.—If I might speak further of Learning and Genius, I would compare Genius to virtue, and learning to riches. As riches are most wanted where there is least virtue, so learning where there is least genius.-Young.

514. Benevolence.-There cannot be a more glorious object in creation, than a human being, replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator, by doing most good to his creatures.-Fielding.

515. Intellectual Occupation.-There are under my window, two beings of a superior order, their countenances mild and benevolent, and their eyes beam with intelligence; although endowed with wonderful sagacity, and of a noble form, they are employed the whole of the day hewing stones.-Letter of a French Philosopher.

516. Progress of Knowledge.-It would be an unpardonable degree of arrogance in an assemblage of the wisest men that ever lived, supposing that they could be brought together, to circumscribe any subject whatever within the narrow boundaries of their own opinions. It would betray a total misconception of the relations of the human mind to the objects that surround it. I have contended, that men in the present day are superior in knowledge to their predecessors,—but on the same grounds those who come after us will be superior to the existing generation. It is highly probable indeed, however mortifying the reflection may be to our personal consequence, that we in this age are mere barbarians compared with the race who shall hereafter fill the earth and surely for us to erect a standard of opinion for beings likely to be so infinitely superior to ourselves, is too absurd to need exposure, and can scarcely fail to provoke many a compassionate smile in the future ages of the world.-Essays on the Pursuit of Truth, &c.

517 Liberty of Thought and Action.—Men are apt to think that they who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have most liberty to say and do what they please: but it is quite otherwise; for they have the least liberty, because they are most observed.

Archbishop Tillotson.

518. Origin of Tithes in England.-About this time (A. D. 855) Ethelwolf conferred a donation on the clergy, for which they had been contending for several ages. The Jewish law, which bestowed on the Levites the tenth of all the produce of the land, was universally regarded by the clergy as obligatory on Christians; and, notwithstanding the obvious absurdity of this application of the law of Moses, they were inclined to extend it to a tenth of all merchandise, industry, wages of labourers, and pay of soldiers. They preached with great warmth and sincerity this indispensable duty; but the interests of the laity had hitherto been too powerful for their eloquence. At length Ethelwolf granted their request: and the states of the kingdom consented to the establishment of tithes. The English doubtless imagined that this benevolence would procure them the protection of Heaven against the Danes. This was the epoch of clerical opulence in England.

Abbe de Milot's Elements of English History.

519. Principle is a passion for truth.-Hazlitt.

520. Haranguer, or a Talker.-His measure of talk is till his wind is spent, and then he is not silenced, but becalmed.

His ears have catched the itch of his tongue; and though he scratch them, like a beast with his hoof, he finds a pleasure in it.

He shakes a man by the ear as a dog does a pig, and never loses his hold till he has tired himself as well as his patient.

He is a walking pillory, and crucifies more ears than a dozen standing

ones.

He will hold any argument rather than his tongue, and maintain both sides at his own charge; for he will tell you what you will say, though perhaps he does not intend to give you leave.

His tongue is always in motion, though very seldom to the purpose; like a barber's scissors, which are kept snipping as well when they do not cut, as when they do.

He is so full of words that they run over, and are thrown away to no purpose; and so empty of things, or sense, that his dryness has made his leaks so wide, whatsoever is put in him runs out immediately. He is so long delivering himself, that those that hear him desire to be delivered too, or dispatched out of their pain.-Butler.

Herald. An herald calls himself a king because he has power and authority to hang, draw, and quarter arms.

The hang-man has a receipt to mar all his work in a moment; for by nailing the wrong end of a 'scutcheon upwards upon a gibbet, all the honour and gentility extinguishes itself, like a candle that is held with the flame downwards.-Ibid.

521. Detraction. In some unlucky dispositions there is such an envious kind of pride, that they cannot endure that any but themselves should be set forth for excellent; so that when they hear one justly praised, they will either seek to dismount his virtues, or, if they be like a clear light, they will stab him with a but of detraction; as if there were something yet so foul as did obnubilate even his brightest glory. When their tongue cannot justly condemn him, they will leave him suspected by their silence.

Surely, if we considered Detraction to be bred of Envy, and only in deficient minds, we should find that the applauding of virtue would win us far more honour than the seeking slily to disparage it. That would show we loved what we commended; while this tells the world we grudge at what we want in ourselves.-Feltham.

522. Benefits. He that loves his neighbour as himself, is at the extent of the commandment: he that does more, breaks it. I would so serve others, as I might not injure myself; but so myself, as I might be helpful to others.-Ibid.

523. Liberty of the Press.-As the chief happiness as well as dignity of rational creatures consists in having the liberty of thinking on what subjects they please, and of as freely communicating their thoughts, so all good governments that have allowed this freedom, were so far from suffering by it, that it wonderfully endeared them to their people. And no ministry can be hurt by the liberty of the press, since they have a number of dependents ready on all occasions to write in justification of their conduct,-nay to gild over the worst of their actions, and give a fair colour to their most pernicious designs; and at the same time so to misrepresent the true patriots of their country, that the people, (their real friends being deprived of the liberty of publicly justifying themselves,) may mistake them for their enemies, and caress those that are truly so.-Dr. Tyndal.

524. The Mind ought to be excited by the exquisite Subtlety of Nature.-Light passes from the sun to the earth, a space of ninety-five millions of miles, in eight minutes, and the beams of the smallest taper are visible at sea, in a dark night, for at least three miles: so that the particles of light instantaneously fill a spherical space of six miles in diameter, or 1130,976 cubical miles.

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Instances of the exquisite subtlety of nature are infinite. That so small a drop of ink in a pen should be drawn out into so many letters or lines, as we find it; that silver gilt upon its external surface, should be drawn to such a vast length of gilded wire; that so very small a worm as that found in the skin, should have a spirit, and a peculiar structure and organization of different parts; that a little saffron should tinge a whole hogshead of water; that a little civet or musk should fill a large chamber with its odour; that such a great cloud of smoke should be raised from a little incense; that the exact differences of sounds, should be every way conveyed through the air, and even through the holes and pores of wood and water, (though much weakened, indeed, in the sage,) and be reflected with great distinctness and velocity; that light and colour should so suddenly pass through such a bulk of solid matter, as glass, or of a fluid, as water; yet so as at the same time to convey a great and exquisite variety of images, even though the light suffers refraction and reflection: that the loadstone should operate through all kinds of bodies, even the most compact and solid; and what is still more wonderful, that in all these cases the action of one thing does not greatly hinder the action of another, in a neutral or indifferent medium, such as the air is. Thus cold, heat, and magnetical virtues, all pass through the air at once, without obstructing one another, as if each of them had its own separate way or passage, so as to prevent impingeing against, meeting with, or obstructing one another.-Bacon.

LONDON: Printed and Published by J. H. STARIE, 59, Museum Street, and to be had of all Booksellers.

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Materials for Thinking,

EXTRACTED FROM THE WORKS OF

ANCIENT AND MODERN AUTHORS.

'WHATEVER CHARITY WE OWE TO MEN'S PERSONS, WE OWE NONE TO THEIR ERRORS."-Bishop Burnet.

No. XX1.

Published Weekly.

[Price One Penny .

525. Inefficacy of Restraints on the Publication of Opinions.-Even if restraints partially succeed in their object, they will only retard the consummation which they cannot prevent: they will only detain the community longer amidst that struggle of truth and falsehood which must inevitably take place. Since there is a sort of regular process which must be gone through,- -a course of doubts, and difficulties, and objections, before any disputable truth can be firmly settled in the minds of thinking men -the sooner this is accomplished the better; the sooner the objections and their answers, the difficulties and their solutions, are put on record, the greater the number of people who will be saved from uncertainty, and from the trouble of winding through all the intricacies of the dispute. The interference of power cannot obviate this necessity, nor can it prevent the operation of those general causes which are constantly at work on the understanding of men, and produce certain opinions in certain states of society and stages of civilization. The utmost, then, that authority can do, is to retard the action of these general causes, to prolong the period of hesitation and uncertainty, and to disturb the natural progress of human improvement. It even sometimes happens (as we have already had occasion to notice) that restrictive measures defeat their own object, and accelerate the event they are intended to arrest or counteract. The mere attempt to suppress a doctrine has often been found to disseminate it more widely. There is a charm in secrecy which often attracts the public mind to proscribed opinions. The curiosity roused by their being prohibited, a repugnance to oppression, an undefined suspicion or tacit inference that what requires the arm of power to suppress it must have some strong claims to credence, and various other circumstances, draw the attention of numbers, in whose eyes the matter in controversy, had it been freely discussed, would have been totally destitute of interest. Whatever is the severity of the law, some bold spirit every now and

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