Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

during a life of no extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose more books, than most studious men, though blest with the greatest leisure and application, have in more fortunate ages made the object of their uninterrupted industry.

all

Brutus, when a soldier under Pompey in the civil wars, employed his leisure in study; and the very day before the battle of Pharsalia, though it was in the middle of summer, and the camp under many privations, spent all his time till the evening in writing an epitome of Polybius.-Bazil Montagu.

626. Sources of Differences of Opinion.-A great portion of the opinions of mankind are notoriously propagated by transmission from one generation to another, without any possible option on the part of those into whose minds they are instilled. A child regards as true whatever his teachers choose to inculcate, and whatever he discovers to be believed by those around him. His creed is thus insensibly formed, and he will continue in after-life to believe the same things, without any proof, provided his knowledge and experience do not happen to impinge on their falsehood. Mere instillation is sufficient to make him believe any proposition, although he should be utterly ignorant of the foundation on which it rests, or the evidence by which it is supported. It may create in his mind a belief of the most palpable absurdities; things, as it appears to others, not only contradicted by his reason, but at variance with the testimony of his senses; and in the boundless field, which the senses do not reach, there is nothing too preposterous to be palmed on his credulity. The religious opinions of the majority of mankind are necessarily acquired in this way: from the nature of the case they cannot be otherwise than derivative, and they are as firmly believed, without the least particle of evidence, as the theorems of Euclid by those who understand the demonstrations. Men do not suspect their religious creed to be false, because the grounds of its truth or its falsity lie altogether without the pale of their knowledge and remote from the path of their experience, and because, when they have been accustomed to connect certain ideas together in their infancy, it grows beyond the power of their imagination to disjoin them. Nor is it merely definite opinions which are acquired in this manner, but a thousand associations are established in the mind, which influence their judgments in matters with which they subsequently become conversant.

Thus the external circumstances in which men are placed unavoidably occasion, without any choice on their part, the chief diversities of opinion existing in the world.

Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions.

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

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. XXV.

Published Weekly.

[Price One Penny.

627. Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the Graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar, or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned. Complaisance renders a superior amiable, equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable. It smooths distinction, sweetens conversation, and makes every one in company pleased with himself. It produces good nature and mutual benevolence, encourages the timorous, soothes the turbulent, humanizes the fierce, and distinguishes a society of civilized persons from a confusion of savages.

628. Night.

Each river, every hill,

an

Addison

Sent up their vapours to attend her will,
These pitchy curtaines drew 'twixt earth and heaven,
And as Night's Chariot through the ayre was driven,
Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song,
And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue
Talked to the echo: satyres broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance.
Onely the curled streams soft chidings kept;
And little gales that from the greene leafe swept
Dry Summer's dust, in fearfull whisp'rings stir'd

As loath to waken any singing bird.-Brown's Pastoral.

629. The advantages of Learning.-Neither is certainly that other merit of learning, in repressing the inconveniences which grow from man to man, much inferior to the former, of relieving the necessities which

arise from nature, which merit was lively set forth by the ancients in that feigned relation of Orpheus's theatre, where all beasts and birds assembled; and forgetting their several appetites--some of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stand all sociably together, listening to the airs and accords of the harp; the sound whereof no sooner ceased or was drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men, who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge; which as long as they give to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion.-Bacon.

630. Advice Gratis.-During the late western circuit, an eminent barrister was examining an old woman, and endeavouring to persuade her to his way of thinking, by a few what lawyers call 'leading questions.' After several attempts to induce her memory to recur to a particular fact-a few 'surely you remember this' and 'surely you must recollect that'the witness answered 'I ha' tauld ye I can't tell, but if ye know so much mair about it than I do (pointing to the judge), do'e tell maister yerself.'

631. Effects of Civilization.-Dr. Hall whose work was published in 1805, speaking of the Irish, says: "Their lean cattle are sent to all the ports of the western coast of England, Bristol channel, &c. to be fed by English graziers throughout the whole kingdom; their fat cattle are slaughtered to victual the English ships of war and merchant ships, and also for the consumption of the inhabitants of their sea-coast, and of many other parts of the world; their butter, tallow, skins, are in a great part exported; and the money arising from all these things sent to the absentees and others for rent and tithes. Thus the inhabitants of the country are almost wholly deprived of the produce of the land they inhabit; and they live, if they can be said to live, on a very small part of it, by raising potatoes in corners of fields and other small unoccupied places. And here let me ask the lawyer, civilian, or divine, whether the inhabitants of a country have not a right to make use of the produce of it for their subsistence; and whether any human laws can justly prevent them from doing it. "Behold," exclaims Dr. Crump "an Irish farmer going forth to his work, barefoot, covered with rags, behold his ruinous hovel, built of mud, covered with weeds, and pervious to every shower that falls, every pinching gale that blows: behold him seated after his hard labour, surrounded by naked children, sharing with them his dry and scanty meal!" Thousands have no house at all to live in-but, as was observed by a member of a great assembly a few winters ago, "may be seen huddling together under bridges, archways, ricks, and in any place where a shelter over head can be had,

632. Example better than Precept.-The late Rev. Rowland Hill was a very humane man and very considerate of his horses, Going to dine with a family at the distance of seven miles from London, on a sultry day in July, he did not arrive till after the dinner hour, and consequently, was received with, 'Why Mr. Hill, we were afraid that some accident had happened, you are more than half an hour beyond the time ! and we fear the dinner is quite spoiled!—the distance is only seven short miles!' 'Never mind' says he, 'the weather is so hot-the hills are so steep-and, you know, I never suffer my horses to be driven out of a gospel pace!'-Voice of Humanity.

633. Evil Speaking.—It is not good to speake evill of all whom wee know bad; it is worse to judge evill of any who may prove good. Το speake ill upon knowledge shews a want of charity; to speake ill upon suspition shewes a want of honesty. I will not speake so bad as I know of many; I will not speake worse than I knowe of any. To know evil by others and not speake it, is sometimes discretion: to speake evil by others, and not know it, is always dishonesty. He may be evill himselfe who speakes good of others upon knowledge, but he can never be good himselfe, who speakes evill of others upon suspition.

Warwick.

634. Love of Country.-Lord Bute, who was a Scotchman, was so enamoured of every thing that came from Scotland, that a person whom his Lordship was desirous of favouring, and whom he asked what he could do for him, replied 'If your Lordship would but make a Scotchman of me, I should be the happiest fellow in the world.'—Anon.

635. Want of Union.-The more numerous men are, the more difficult it is for them to agree in any thing, and so they are governed. There is no doubt that if the poor should reason,-"we'll be poor no longer,—we'll make the rich take their turn,"-they could easily do it, were it not that they can't agree; so the common soldiers, though much more numerous than their officers, are governed by them for the same reason.-Dr Johnson.

636. Impossibilities.-Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself what you wish to be.-Thomas a Kempis.

637. Force of Prejudice.-As the petty fish which is fabled to possess the property of arresting the progress of the largest vessel to which it clings, even so may a single prejudice, unnoticed or despised, more. than the adverse blast, or the dead calm, delay the bark of knowledge in the vast seas of time.-Anon.

638. Progressive Stages of Life.-The prerogative of infancy, is innocency; of childhood, reverence; of manhood, maturity; and of old age, wisdom.---Sir Walter Raleigh.

639. Logician.-

He was in Logic a great critic,
Profoundly skilled in analytic,
He could distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west side,
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute.
He'd undertake to prove, by force
Of argument, a man's no horse.
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl,
A calf an alderman, a goose a justice,
And rooks committee-men and trustees.
He'd run in debt by disputation,

And pay with ratiocination.

All this by syllogism, true

In mood and figure, he would do.

For Rhetoric, he could not ope

His mouth, but out there flew a trope.—Butler.

640. Modesty of True Wisdom.-There is, among the records of Newton, a sentence in the spirit of Shakspeare, :-" I don't know what I may seem to the world; but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting himself in now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a prettyer shell, than ordinary, whilst the great Ocean of Truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Buckingham's Parliamentary Review.

641. Indications of a Great Mind.-To set out in the world with no other principle than a crafty intention to interest, betokens one who is destined for creeping through the inferior walks of life; but to give an early preference to honour above gain, when they stand in competition : to despise every advantage which cannot be attained without dishonest arts; to brook no meanness, to stoop to no dissimulation; are the indications of a great mind, the presages of future eminence and distinction in life. At the same time, this virtuous sincerity is perfectly consistent with the most prudent vigilance and caution. It is opposed to cunning, not to true wisdom. It is not the simplicity of a weak and imprudent, but the candour of an enlarged and noble mind, of one who scorns deceit, because he accounts it both base and unprofitable; and who seeks no disguise, because he needs none to hide him.-Blair.

« PoprzedniaDalej »