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according to them; as also to distaste, detest or despise such men, whose principles or temper incline them to the practice of injury, fraud, malice and cruelty; yea, even them men generally are apt to dislike, who are so addicted to themselves, as to be backward to do good to others. Yea, no man can act according to those rules of justice and goodness without satisfaction of mind: no man can do against them without inward self-condemnation and regret. No man hardly is so savage, in whom the receiving kindnesses doth not beget a kindly sense and an inclination (eo nomine, for that cause barely) to return the like; which inclination cannot well be ascribed to any other principle than somewhat of ingenuity innate to man.

I. BARROW

255. PROPER OBJECTS OF INDUSTRY. Can vigorous industry give pleasure to the pursuit even of the most worthless prey, which frequently escapes our toils? And cannot the same industry render the cultivating of our mind, the moderating of our passions, the enlightening of our reason, an agreeable occupation; while we are every day sensible of our progress, and behold our inward features and countenance brightening incessantly with new charms? Begin by curing yourself of this lethargic indolence, the task is not difficult: you need but taste the sweets of honest labour. Proceed to learn the just value of every pursuit; long study is not requisite. Compare, though but for once, the mind to the body, virtue to fortune, and glory to pleasure. You will then perceive the advantages of industry: you will then be sensible what are the proper objects of your industry.

D. HUME

256. OF BENEFITS. We must always consider the nature of things, and govern ourselves accordingly. The wealthy man, when he has repaid you, is upon a balance with you; but the person whom you favoured with a loan, if he be a good man, will think himself in your debt after he has paid you. The wealthy and the conspicuous are not obliged by the benefit you do them: they think they conferred a benefit when they received one. Your good offices are always suspected, and it is with them the same thing to expect their favour as to receive it. But the man below you, who knows in the good you have done him, you respected himself more

than his circumstances, does not act like an obliged man only to him from whom he has received a benefit, but also to all who are capable of doing him one. And whatever little offices he can do for you, he is so far from magnifying it, that he will labour to extenuate it in all his actions and expressions. Moreover, the regard to what you do to a great man, at best is taken notice of no further than by himself or his family: but what you do to a man of an humble fortune (provided always that he is a good and a modest man) raises the affections towards you (of which there are many) of all men of that character in the whole city. SIR R. STEELE

257.

COMMONWEALTHS ARE MORE ENDANGERED FROM

INTERNAL THAN FROM EXTERNAL EVILS. Bodies politic being subject as much as natural to dissolution by divers means, there are undoubtedly more estates overthrown through diseases bred within themselves than through violence from abroad, because our manner is always to cast a doubtful and a more suspicious eye towards that, over which we know we have least power; and, therefore, the fear of external dangers causeth forces at home to be the more united, it is to all sorts a kind of bridle, it maketh virtuous minds watchful, it holdeth contrary dispositions in suspense, and it setteth those wits on work in better things, which could be else employed in worse; whereas on the other side domestical evils, for that we think we can master them at all times, are often permitted to run on forward, till it be too late to recall them. In the mean while the Commonwealth is not only through unsoundness so far impaired, as those evils chance to prevail; but farther also through opposition arising between the unsound parts and the sound, where each endeavoureth to draw evermore contrary ways, till destruction in the end bring the whole to ruin.

R. HOOKER

258. TIME-SERVING POLICY OF STATESMEN. It is a work good and prudent to be able to guide one man: of larger extended virtue to order well one house; but to govern a nation piously and justly is for a spirit of the greatest size and divinest mettle. And certainly of no less mind, nor of less excellence in another way, were they who by writing laid the solid and true foundations of this science, which

being of greatest importance to the life of man, yet there is no art that hath been more cankered in her principles, than the art of policy: and that most, where a man would think should least be, in Christian commonwealths. They teach not that to govern well is to train up a nation in true wisdom, virtue and godliness. This is the masterpiece of a modern politician, how to mould the sufferance of the people to the length of that foot that is to tread on their necks; how rapine may serve itself with the fair and honourable pretences of public good; how the puny law may be brought under the wardship and control of lust and will: how to solder, how to stop a leak, how to keep the floating carcase of a crazy and diseased state, betwixt wind and water, swimming still upon her own dead legs. J. MILTON

259. ABUSE OF KINGLY POWER. It must needs seem strange, where men accustom themselves to ponder and contemplate things in their first original and institution, that kings, who, as all other officers of the public, were at first chosen and installed only by consent and suffrage of the people, to govern them as freemen by laws of their own making, and to be, in consideration of that dignity and riches bestowed upon them, the entrusted servants of the commonwealth, should, notwithstanding, grow up to that dishonest encroachment, as to esteem themselves masters, both of that great trust which they serve and of the people that betrusted them; counting what they ought to do, both in discharge of their public duty, and for the great reward of honour and revenue which they receive, as done all of mere grace and favour; as if their power over us were by nature and from themselves, or that God had sold us into their hands. J. MILTON

260. PUBLIC LIBERTY. There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to discriminate colours or recognise faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be

able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free, till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

T. B. MACAULAY

261. NOTIONS OF PLATO UPON THE PUNISHMENT OF THE VOLUPTUOUS. There is not, in my opinion, a consideration more effectual to extinguish inordinate desires in the soul of man, than the notions of Plato and his followers upon that subject. They tell us, that every passion which has been contracted by the soul during her residence in the body, remains with her in a separate state; and that the soul in the body, or out of the body, differs no more than the man does from himself when he is in the house or in open air. When therefore the obscene passions in particular have once taken root and spread themselves in the soul, they cleave to her inseparably and remain in her for ever, after the body is cast off and thrown aside. As an argument to confirm this their doctrine they observe, that a lewd youth, who goes on in a continued course of voluptuousness, advances by degrees into a libidinous old man: and that the passion survives in the mind when it is altogether dead in the body; nay, that the desire grows more violent and (like all other habits) gathers strength by age, at the same time that it has no power of executing its own purposes. If, say they, the soul is the most subject to these passions at a time when it has the least instigation from the body, we may well suppose she will still retain them when she is entirely divested of it. The very substance of the soul is festered with them, the gangrene is gone too far to be ever cured: the inflammation will rage to all eternity. In this therefore (say the Platonists) consists the punishment of a voluptuous man after death: He is tormented with desires which it is impossible for him to gratify, solicited by a passion that has neither objects nor organs adapted to it. He lives in a state of

invincible desire and impotence, and always burns in the pursuit of what he always despairs to possess. It is for this reason (says Plato) that the souls of the dead appear frequently in cemeteries, and hover about the places where their bodies are buried, as still hankering after their old brutal pleasures, and desiring again to enter the body that gave them an opportunity of fulfilling them.

262.

J. ADDISON

ADVICE ON SUSPENSION OF JUDGMENT. My son, you are yet young: time will make an alteration in your opinions and of many, which you now strongly maintain, you will hereafter advocate the very reverse: wait therefore, till time has made you a judge of matters, so deep and so important in their nature. For that, which you now regard as nothing, is in fact the concern of the very highest moment; I mean, the direction of life to good or bad purposes, by corresponding investigations into the nature of the gods. One thing and that not trivial I can at least venture, in all the confidence of truth, to assure you respecting them: the sentiments which you now entertain are not solitary, first originated by you or your friends; they are such as at all times have found advocates, more or less in number; but I speak the language of experience when I say, that not one of those, who in their youth had been led to think that there were no gods, has found his old age consistent in opinion with that of his more juvenile years.

263. DEFENCE OF LORD GEORGE GORDON. What can be added to such observations, which even if they were less clear carry their own explanation to every one of your minds? who of us all would be safe, if we were to be judged not by the regular current of our lives and conversations, but by detached and unguarded expressions picked out by malice and recorded against us without context or circumstances, though directly inconsistent with other expressions delivered at the same time on the same subject, and though repugnant to the whole tenor of our deportment and behaviour? Yet such is the only evidence, on which the prosecutor asks you to dye your hands and to stain your consciences in the innocent blood of the noble and unfortunate youth who now stands before you, on the single evidence of the words which

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