Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

767. State Church.--It does not follow that we must have bishops still, because we have had them so long. They are equally mad who say bishops are so jure divino, that they must be continued, and they who say that they are so antichristian that they must be put away. All is as the State pleases.-Selden.

-

de

768. Decline of Monarchies.-The causes of the ruin or decline of monarchies are, exorbitant subsidies, monopolies, chiefly those relating to corn; neglect of merchandise, trade, agriculture, arts, and manufactories; the great number of public employments, the fees, and excessive authority of men in office; the cost, the delay, and the injustice of tribunals; idleness, luxury, and all that is connected with it, bauchery and corruption of manners, confusion of ranks, changes of the value of money, unjust and imprudent wars, the despotic power of sovereigns, their blind adherence to particular persons, their prejudice in favour of particular conditions, or professions; the greediness of ministers and favourites; the degradations of persons of quality; contempt or neglect of men of letters; the connivance at bad customs, and infraction of good laws; and obstinate adherence to customs, either mischievous or indifferent; and the multiplicity of edicts and useless regulations. Sully.

769. A Royal Law.-Henry VIII. made a law that all men might read the Scriptures, except servants; but no women, except ladies and gentlewomen, who had leisure, and might ask somebody the meaning.

Selden.

770. On Originality and the Affectation of Singularity.-There are but very few in any country entertaining thought and opinions that ought really to be termed singular. For, although there be nothing too absurd for men to believe conjointly with others, they dread to embrace it alone, in silence and solitude. Men have always thought and believed in masses, under the standard of intellectual despots, in the same manner as they fight in masses, beneath the banners of political despots. Throughout the whole earth you may observe opinions and ideas, like swarms of bees, clustering together upon particular spots, or as if, like certain trees and plants, they were indigenous to the soil. So that it is not less natural to a Hindoo to believe in Crishua and Brahma, than it is for him to abstain from beef and feed on rice. It is reserved for one man in many thousand years to plant a new root of opinion created by his own solitary reflections. There is philanthropy, however, as well as greatness of mind, in conforming with prevailing customs and prejudices unconquerable, so long as they are indifferent as to vice or virtue. For all opposition ruffles the tranquillity of life, and love for our species should dispose us, unless when political rights are concerned, to fall in with the customs and observances of our coun

try, that we may give our neighbours the pleasure, however small, of our countenance and fellowship. Littleness of mind, and intemperate zeal, its usual concomitant, are incapable of this forbearance. They subsist upon strife and contention. But although singularity, as well as the affectation of it, is in general disagreeable to mankind, they have always shown a disposition to admire it, under the name of originality, in the character and productions of the mind. When nature imprints any peculiar features on the intellect of an individual, she always takes care so to harmonize them with each other, that they may appear rather the marks of a new specie than of a monstrous singularity. And, therefore, real originality is pleasing, as the common experience of life sufficiently proves. Original ideas are in fact the proper dress of the aristocracy of intellect, which distinguishes them from the vulgar, as the rich brocade, and cloth of gold, and embroidered vests of our ancestors, marked gentility of blood. All originality of mind is singularity; but while it keeps within the circle that bounds the idea of the age, though beating constantly about the extreme circumference, it is relished and admired. It is only when it flies beyond the central attraction of fashion, and revolves in another orbit, that it becomes an object of distrust and fear, or at least of neglect, to the rest of mankind.

Anon.

771. Independence.—It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.

Cobbett.

772. A Good Cause receives more injury from a weak defence, than from a frivolous accusation; and the ill that does a man no harm is to be preferred before the good that creates him a prejudice.

Andrew Marvel.

773. Great Men.-The common people generally think that great men (or men of wealth and power) have great minds, and scorn base actions; which judgment is so false that the basest and worst of all actions have been done by great men.-Knox.

774. Opposition.--There are secret workings in human affairs, which overrule all human contrivance, and counterplot the wisest of our councils, in so strange and unexpected a manner, as to cast a damp upon our best schemes and warmest endeavours.-Sterne's Sermons.

775. Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business, which are signs of being weary of themselves. Sir W. Temple.

776. Quarrels of Friends.-I think I have observed universally, that the quarrels of friends in the latter part of life are never truly reconciled. Male sarta gratia nequicquam coit et rescinditur. A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancour, towards the latter part of life.—Shenstone.

777. Public Men.-Very few public men but look upon the public as their debtors, and their prey: so much for their pride and honesty. Zimmerman.

778. Differences of the Effects produced by free and arbitrary Governments. On a comparison of free with arbitrary Governments, we perceive the former are distinguished from the latter by their imparting a much greater share of happiness to those who live under them; and this in a manner too uniform to be imputed to chance or secret causes. who wills the end, must will the means which ascertain it.

779. Truth, its Excellency not appreciated.-
No great act was ever done,
Nor ever can, with Truth alone;
If nothing else but Truth w' allow,
'Tis no great matter what we do.
For Truth is too reserved and nice,
T'appear in mix'd societies:
Delights in solit'ry abodes
And never shews herself in crowds;
A sullen little thing, below

All matters of pretence and shew,

That deal in novelty and change,

Not of things true, but rare and strange,

To treat the world with what is fit
And proper to its nat'ral wit;

The world that never sets esteem

On what things are but what they seem:
And. if they be not strange and new,

He

Robert Hall.

They're ne'er the better for being true.-Butler.

780. Persecution appears in many shapes; we have it at home and abroad; sometimes it addresses us with a voice of mildness, or imperious cammand; at others it comes from relatives, friends, or suitors.

Zimmerman.

781. Noble Example of National Education.-Alfred the Great appears to have been the first person who ever set vigorously about the task of introducing the elements of learning among the English people. He complains, that on his accession, he knew not one person south of the Thames, who could so much as interpret the Service Book, and very few in the northern parts who had even reached that pitch of erudition. To remedy the evil, he established schools every where, for the instruction of all classes, and enjoined by law "all freeholders possessed of two hydes of land or more," to send their children to them for instruction. Not content with this, he himself undertook to supply with books the schools he had opened, either by furnishing original compositions, or by making translations from the Greek; in each case seeking to convey instruction, not so much in the way of didactic essay, as by parables, stories, and apophthegms, at one time clothed in plain prose, at another couched in poetry. The civil dissensions which broke out at his death put an early end to these excellent designs.-Eclectic Review.

782. Sophists are persons who, keeping a look out for the weaknesses and mistakes of philosophers, try to turn them to their own account or to employ them for some unworthy and unphilosophical purpose. So that, in fact, such people have nothing to do with philosophy. If they profess to be unphilosophical from principle, they are to be regarded as the enemies of philosophy and to be treated as such. The most dangerous class amongst them are those who are sceptics out of pure hatred for philosophy. Other sceptics may in part be very estimable persons, the forerunners of the third period. They have a genuine gift of philosophical analysis, and only want a spiritual mastery and commendation; they have the requisite capacity, but not the self impelling force; they feel the insufficiency of preceeding systems; no one of these is able to vivify the whole of their spiritual nature; they have a correct taste, but are devoid of the needful energy of a productive imagination. They are of necessity polemical. All eclectics are sceptics at the bottom; the more they embrace, the more sceptical are they, which last remark is confirmed by the fact, that the men of the greatest and soundest learning in former times have confessed at the end of their lives that they knew the least.-Novalis.

83. Old Age. To a good man, who has wisely spent his days, years will steal on him insensibly: he will grow old by degrees, and without feeling it: nay, when he comes to break at last, the house will crumble gently, and fall down so slowly, as not to give him any great pain. Cicero.

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. XXXI.

Published Weekly.

[Price One Penny.

784. Bankruptcies.-A series of investigations into the cause of every bankruptcy, would indeed form a valuable part of national knowledge; and the fantacies of distress which occupy most minds, would soon be found to be resolvable into unskilfulness, ignorance, impunctuality, and imprudence; besides the untoward consequences of the measures of the government. Whether a man failed from having traded with insufficient capital, or uporn borrowed capital at a too high rate of interest in relation to the amount of profits, or with too expensive an establishment either in fixtures or in clerks, or from inability to sell off stock accumulated in a period of high prices, or from ignorance of the state of trade in general, and his own in particular, or from the delay, or cost, or ambiguity of the law, or from the severity of taxation, or from the dissipation of a son or member of the family, or from the sudden fall in the price of fixed property, with obligations of old date at a high rate, or the introduction of new inventions, or the great fall in the price of peculiar machinery, so that other competitors come into the field upon more favourable terms, or from becoming security for others, or from the falling off of that particular branch of trade by reason of the retail trader dealing directly with the manufacturer instead of the merchant, or from the trade going to another place of more convenient locality; all these and a hundred other circumstances might be elicited in a series of investigations into the causes of particular bankruptcies, and the result would be an amount of useful learning, which might save the fortunes of thousands in time to come.

Westminster Review.

785. Progress in Knowledge. He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as youth, the latter growth as well as the first fruits, at the altar of truth.-Berkeley.

« PoprzedniaDalej »