ESSAY VI. Πολυμαθίη κάρτα μὲν ωφελέει, κάρτα γὲ βλάπτει τὸν ἔχοντα ωφελέει μὲν τὸν δεξιὸν ανδρα, βλάπτει δὲ τὸν ῥηϊδίως φωνεῦντα πᾶν ἔπος καὶ ἐν παντὶ δήμῳ· Χρη δὲ καιροῦ μέτρα ἐιδέναι· σοφίης γὰρ οὗτος, πορος, οι δὲ ἔξω καιροῦ ῥησιν μουσικὴν πεπνυμένως αεισωσιν, ου παραδέχονται ἐν αργίῃ γνώ μην, αἰτεῖν δ' (melius αἰτίην) ἔχουσι μωρίας. HERACLITUS apud Stobaum, (Serm. xxxiv. (Translation.) - General Knowledge and ready Talent may be of very great benefit, but they may likewise be of very great disservice to the possessor. They are highly advantageous to the man of sound judgment, and dexterous in applying them; but they injure your fluent holder forth on all subjects in all companies. It is necessary to know the measures of the time and occasion: for this is the very boundary of wisdom-(that by which it is defined, and distinguished from mere ability.) But he, who without regard to the unfitness of the time and the audience" will soar in the high reason of his fancies with his garland and singing robes about him," will not acquire the credit of seriousness amidst frivolity, but will be condemned for his silliness, as the greatest idler of the company because the most unseasonable. THE Moral Law, it has been shown, permits an inadequate communication of unsophisticated truth, on the condition that it alone is practicable, and binds us to silence when neither is in our power. We must first inquire then, What is necessary to constitute, and what may allowably accompany, a right though inadequate notion? And secondly, what are the circumstances, from which we may deduce the impracticability of conveying even a right notion; the presence or absence of which circumstances it therefore becomes our duty to ascertain? In answer to the first question, the conscience demands: 1. That it should be the wish and design of the mind to convey the truth only; that if in addition to the negative loss implied in its inadequateness, the notion communicated should lead to any positive error, the cause should lie in the fault or defect of the Recipient, not of the Communicator, whose paramount duty, whose inalienable right it is to preserve his own Integrity, the integral character of his own moral Being. Self-respect; the reverence which he owes to the presence of Humanity in the person of his neighbor; the reverential upholding of the faith of man in man; gratitude for the particular act of con *The best and most forcible sense of a word is often that, which is contained in its Etymology. The Author of the Poems (The Synagogue) frequently affixed to Herbert's "Temple." gives the original purport of the word Integrity, in the following lines (fourth stanza of the eighth Poem.) Next to Sincerity, remember still, Thou must resolve upon Integrity, God will have all thou hast, thy mind, thy will, fidence; and religious awe for the divine purposes in the gift of language; are duties too sacred and important to be sacrificed to the guesses of an individual concerning the advantages to be gained by the breach of them. 2. It is further required, that the supposed error shall not be such as will pervert or materially vitiate the imperfect truth, in communicating which we had unwillingly, though not perhaps unwittingly, occasioned it. A Barbarian so instructed in the power and intelligence of the Infinite Being as to be left wholly ignorant of his moral attributes, would have acquired none but erroneous notions even of the former. At the very best, he would gain only a theory to satisfy his curiosity with: but more probably, would deduce the belief of a Moloch or a Baal. (For the idea of an irresistible invisible Being naturally produces terror in the mind of uninstructed and unprotected man, and with terror there will be associated whatever had been accustomed to excite it, as anger, vengeance, &c.; as is proved by the Mythology of all barbarous nations.) This must be the case with all organized truths; the component parts derive their significance from the idea of the whole. Bolingbroke removed Love, Justice, and Choice, from Power and Intelligence, and pretended to have left unimpaired the conviction of a Deity. He might as consistently have paralyzed the optic nerve, and then excused himself by affirming, that he had, however, not touched the eye. The third condition of a right though inadequate notion is, that the error occasioned be greatly outweighed by the importance of the truth communicated. The rustic would have little reason to thank the philosopher, who should give him true conceptions of the folly of believing in ghosts, omens, dreams, &c. at the price of abandoning his faith in Providence and in the continued existence of his fellow-creatures after their death. The teeth of the old serpent planted by the Cadmuses of French Literature, under Lewis XV. produced a plenteous crop of Philosophers and Truth-trumpeters of this kind, in the reign of his Successor. They taught many truths, historical, political, physiological, and ecclesiastical, and diffused their notions so widely, that the very ladies and hair-dressers of Paris became fluent Encyclopædists: and the sole price which their scholars paid for these treasures of new information, was to believe Christianity an imposture, the Scriptures a forgery, the worship (if not the belief) of God a superstition, hell a fable, heaven a dream, our life without Providence, and our death without hope. They became as gods as soon as the fruit of this Upas tree of knowledge and liberty had opened their eyes to perceive that they were no more than beasts-somewhat more cunning perhaps, and abundantly more mischievous. What can be conceived more natural than the result, that self Having mentioned the name of Herbert, that model of a And again, after some verses on Constancy and Humility, man, a Gentleman, and a Clergyman, let me add, that the the Poem concludes with- He that desires to see The face of God, in his religion must Sincere, entire, constant and humble be. quaintness of some of his thoughts not of his dution, than which nothing can be more pure, manly, and unaffected, bas blinded modern readers to the great general merit of his Poems, which are for the most part exquisite in their kind. relation to the habits of reasoning as well as to the previous knowledge requisite for the due comprehension of the subject) and hindrances from predominant acknowledged beasts should first act, and next suffer To Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood My feelings have led me on, and in my illustration I had almost lost from my view the subject to be illustrated. One condition yet remains: that the error foreseen shall not be of a kind to prevent or impede the after acquirement of that knowledge which will remove it. Observe, how graciously Nature instructs her human children. She cannot give us the knowledge derived from sight without occasioning us at first to mistake images of reflection for substances. But the very consequences of the delusion lead inevitably to its detection; and out of the ashes of the error rises a new flower of knowledge. We not only see, but are enabled to discover by what means we see. So too we are under the necessity, in given circumstances, of mistaking a square for a round object: but ere the mistake can have any practical consequences, it is not only removed, but its removal gives us the symbol of a new fact, that of distance. In a similar train of thought, though more fancifully, I might have elucidated the preceding condition, and have referred our hurrying enlighteners and revolutionary amputators to the gentleness of Nature, in the oak and the beech, the dry foliage of which she pushes off only by the propulsion of the new buds, that supply its place. My friends! a clothing even of withered leaves is better than bareness. Having thus determined the nature and conditions of a right notion, it remains to determine the circumstances which tend to render the communication of it impracticable, and oblige us of course, to abstain from the attempt-oblige us not to convey falsehood under the pretext of saying truth. These circumstances, it is plain, must consist either in natural or moral impediments. The former, including the obvious gradations of constitutional insensibility and derangement, preclude all temptation to misconduct, as well as all probability of ill-consequences from accidental oversight, on the part of the communicator. Far otherwise is it with the impediments from moral causes. These demand all the attention and forecast of the genuine lovers of truth in the matter, the manner, and the time of their communications, public and private and these are the ordinary materials of the vain and the factious, determine them in the choice of their audiences and of their arguments, and to each argument give powers not its own. They are distinguishable into two sources, the streams from which, however, must often become confluent, viz. hindrances from ignorance (I here use the word in From both these the law of conscience commands us to abstain, because such being the ignorance and such the passions of the supposed auditors, we ought to deduce the impracticability of conveying not only adequate but even right notions of our own convictions: much less does it permit us to avail ourselves of the causes of this impracticability in order to procure nominal proselytes, each of whom will have a different, and all a false, conception of those notions that were to be conveyed for their truth's sake alone. Whatever is (or but for some defect in our moral character would have been) foreseen as preventing the conveyance of our thoughts, makes the attempt an act of self-contradiction: and whether the faulty cause exist in our choice of unfit words or our choice of unfit auditors, the result is the same and so is the guilt. We have voluntarily communicated falsehood. Thus (without reference to consequences, if only one short digression be excepted) from the sole principle of self-consistence or moral integrity, we have evolved the clue of right reason, which we are bound to follow in the communication of truth. Now then we appeal to the judgment and experience of the reader, whether he who most faithfully adheres to the letter of the law of conscience will not likewise act in the strictest correspondence to the maxims of prudence and sound policy. I am at least unable to recollect a single instance, either in history or in my personal experience, of a preponderance of injurious consequences from the publication of any truth, under the observance of the moral conditions above stated: much less can I even imagine any case, in which truth, as truth, can be pernicious. But if the asserter of the indifferency of truth and falsehood in their own natures, attempt to justify his position by confining the word truth, in the first instance, to the correspondence of given words to given facts, without reference to the total impression left by such words; what is this more than to assert, that articulated sounds are things of moral indifferency? and that we may relate a fact accurately and nevertheless deceive grossly and wickedly? Blifil related accurately Tom Jones's riotous joy during his benefactor's illness, only omitting that this joy was occasioned by the physician's having pronounced him out of danger. Blifil was not the less a liar for being an accurate matter-of-fact liar. Tell-truths in the service of falsehood we find every where, of various names and various occupations, from the elderly-young women that discuss the love-affairs of their friends and acquaintance at the village tea-tables, to the anonymous calumniators of literary merit in reviews, and the more daring malignants, who dole out discontent, innovation and panic, in political journals: and a most pernicious race of liars they are! But who ever doubted it? Why should our moral feelings be shocked, and the holiest words with all their vene See the Author's Second Lay Sermon. COLERIDGE'S PROSE WORKS. rable associations be profaned, in order to bring forth a Truism? But thus it is for the most part with the venders of startling paradoxes. In the sense in which they are to gain for their author the character of a bold and original thinker, they are false even to absurdity; and the sense in which they are true and harmless, conveys so mere a Truism, that it even borders on Nonsense. How often have we heard "THE Rights of Man-HURRA!—THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE-HURRA!" roared out by men who, if called upon in another place and before another audience, to explain themselves, would give to the words a meaning, in which the most monarchical of their political opponents would admit them to be true, but which would contain nothing new, or strange, or stimulant, nothing to flatter the pride or kindle the passions of the populace. ESSAY VII. slave of impure desires will turn the pages of Cato, not to say, I am well aware, that words will appear to many as ineffi cacious medicines when administered to minds agitated with charm over bodily ailments. But neither does it escape me, manifold passions, as when they are muttered by way of on the other hand, that as the diseases of the mind are invisi ble, invisible must the remedies likewise be. Those who have vincing truths: that thus having imbibed the poison through been entrapped by false opinions are to be liberated by conthe ear, they may receive the antidote by the same channel. sive, quoted to excess, it would be the very blindness THAT our elder writers, to Jeremy Taylor incluof partiality to deny. tioned, whose works might be characterized in the More than one might be menwords of Milton, as"a paroxysm of citations, pampered metaphors, and aphorisming pedantry." On the other hand, it seems to me that we now avoid quotations with an anxiety that offends in the contrary extreme. Yet it is the beauty and independent worth of the citations far more than their appropriateness which At profanum vulgus lectorum quomodo arcendem est? Li- reading book-and the mottos with the translations have made Johnson's Dictionary popular even as a brisne nostris jubeamus, ut coram indignis obmutescant? Si linguis, ut dicitur, emortuis utamur, eheu! ingenium of them are known to add considerably to the value quoque nobis emortuum jacet: sin aliter, Minervæ secreta crassis ludibrium divulgamus, et Dianam nostrum impuris more than common pains in the selection of the mot of the Spectator. With this conviction I have taken hujus sæculi Actæonibus nudam proferimus. Respondeo:ad incommoditates hujusmodi evitandas, nec Grace nec tos for the Friend: and of two mottos equally approLatine scribere opus est. Sufficiet, nos sicca luce usos priate prefer always that from the book which is least fuisse et strictiore argumentandi methodo. Sufficiet, inno- likely to have come into my Reader's hands. For I center, utiliter scripsisse: eventus est apud lectorem. Nuper often please myself with the fancy, now that I may emptum est a nobis Ciceronianum istud "de officis," opus have saved from oblivion the only striking passage in quod semper pæne Christiano dignum putabamus. Mirum! libellus factum fuerat famosissimus. Credisne? Vix: at quomodo? Muligna quodam, nescio quem, plena margine notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten. If this a whole volume, and now that I may have attracted et super tergo, annotatum est et exemplis, calumniis potius, should be attributed to a silly ambition in the display superfætatum! Sic et qui introrsum uritur inflammationes animi vel Catonianis (ne dicam, sacrosanctis) paginis acci- of various reading, I can do no more than deny any pit. Omni aura mons, omnibus scriptis mens, ignita vesci-consciousness of having been so actuated: and for — RUDOLFHI LANGI Epist: ad Amicum quemdam Italicum in qua Linguæ patrie et hodierne usum defendit et eruditis commendat. tur. Nec me fallit, ut in corporibus hominum sic in animis multiplici passione affectis, medicamenta verborum multis inefficacia visum iri. Sed nec illud quoque me præterit, ut invisibiles animorum morbus, sic invisibilia esse remedia. Falsis opinionibus circumventi veris sententiis liberandi sunt, ut qui audiendo ceciderant audiendo consurgant. PETRARCHA:Prefat. in lib. de remed. utriusque fortuna. (Translation.) But how are we to guard against the herd of promiscuous Readers? Can we bid our books be silent in the presence of the unworthy? If we employ what are called the dead languages, our own genius, alas! becomes flat and dead and if we embody our thoughts in the words native to them or in which they were conceived, we divulge the secrets of Minerva to the ridicule of blockheads, and expose our Diana to the Actions of a sensual age. I reply: that in order to avoid inconveniences of this kind, we need write neither in Greek or in Latin. It will be enough, if we abstain from appealing to the bad passions and low appetites, and confine ourselves to a strictly consequent method of reasoning. To have written innocently, and for wise purposes, is all that can be required of us: the event lies with the Reader. I purchased lately Cicero's work, de officiis, which I had always considered as almost worthy of a Christian. To my surprise it had become a most flagrant libel. Nay! but how? -Some one, I know not who, out of the fruitfulness of his own malignity had filed all the margins and other blank spaces with annotations-a true superfætation of examples, that is, of false and slanderous tales! In like manner, the the rest, I must console myself by the reflection, that if it be one of the most foolish, it is at the same time one of the most harmless, of human vanities. The passages prefixed lead at once to the question, which will probably have more than once occurred to the reflecting reader of the preceding Essay. How will these rules apply to the most important mode of communication? to that, in which one man may ut ter his thoughts to myriads of men at the same time. and to myriads of myriads at various times and through successions of generations? How do they ap ply to authors, whose foreknowledge assuredly does not inform them who, or how many, or of what de scription their Readers will be? How do these rules apply to books, which once published, are as likely to fall in the way of the incompetent as of the judicious, and will be fortunate indeed if they are not many times looked at through the thick mists of ignoWe answer in the first place, that this is not univer rance, or amid the glare of prejudice and passion?--sally true. The readers are not seldom picked and chosen. Relations of certain pretenced miracles per formed a few years ago, at Holywell, in consequence of prayers to the Virgin Mary, on female servants, and these relations moralized by the old Roman Catholic arguments without the old protestant answers, have to my knowledge been sold by travelling pedlars in villages and farm-houses, not only in a form which placed them within the reach of the narrowest me. 18, but sold at a price less than their prime cost, and doubtless thrown in occasionally as the make weight in a bargain of pins and stay-tape. Shall I be told, that the publishers and reverend authorizers of these base and vulgar delusions had exerted no choice as to the purchasers and readers? But waiving this, or rather having first pointed it out, as an important exception, we further reply: that if the Author have clearly and rightly established in his own mind the class of readers, to which he means to address his communications; and if both in this choice, and in the particulars of the manner and matter of his work, he conscientiously observes all the conditions which reason and conscience have been shown to diciate, in relation to those for whom the work was designed; he will, in most instances, have effected his design and realized the desired circumscription. The posthumous work of Spinoza (Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata) may, indeed, accidentally fall into the hands of an incompetent reader. But, (not to mention, that it is written in a dead language) it will be entirely harmless, because it must needs be utterly unintelligible. I venture to assert, that the whole first book, De Deo, might be read in literal English translation to any congregation in the kingdom, and that no individual, who had not been habituated to the strictest and most laborious processes of reasoning, would even suspect its orthodoxy or piety, however heavily the few who listened would complain of its obscurity and want of interest. This, it may be objected, is an extreme case. But it is not so for the present purpose. We are speaking of the probability of injurious consequences from the communication of Truth. This I have denied, if the right means have been adopted, and the necessary conditions adhered to, for its actual communication. Now the truths conveyed in a book are either evident of themselves, or such as require a train of deductions of proof: and the latter will be either such as are authorized and generally received; or such as are in opposition to received and authorized opinions; or lastly, truths presented for the appropriate test of examination, and still under trial (adhue sub lite.) of this latter class I affirm, that in neither of the three sorts can an instance be brought of a preponderance of ill-consequences, or even of an equilibrium of advantage and injury, from a work in which the understanding alone has been appealed to, by results fairly deduced from just premises, in terms strictly appropriate. Alas! legitimate reason ing is impossible without severe thinking, and, thinking is neither an easy or amusing employment. The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit and absolute principle of any one important subject, has chosen a Chamois-hunter for his guide. Our guide will, indeed, take tits the shortest way, will save us many a wearisome and perilous wandering, and warn us of many a mock road that had formerly led himself to the brink of chasms and precipices, or at best in an idle circle the spot from whence he started. But he cannot carry us on his shoulders: we must strain our own sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet. Examine the journals of our humane and zealous missionaries in Hindostan. How often and how feelingly do they describe the difficulty of making the simplest chain of reasoning intelligible to the ordinary natives: the rapid exhaustion of their whole power of attention, and with what pain and distressful effort it is exerted, while it lasts. Yet it is among this class, that the hideous practices of self-torture chiefly, indeed almost exclusively, prevail. O if folly were no easier than wisdom, it being often so very much more grievous, how certainly might not these miserable men be converted to Christianity? But alas! to swing by hooks passed through the back, or to walk on shoes with nails of iron pointed upward on the soles, all this is so much less difficult, demands so very inferior an exertion of the will than to think, and by thought to gain Knowledge and Tranquillity! It is not true, that ignorant persons have no notion of the advantages of Truth and Knowledge. They confess, they see those advantages in the conduct, the immunities, and the superior powers of the possessors. Were these attainable by Pilgrimages the most toilsome, or Penances the most painful, we should assuredly have as many Pilgrims and as many Self-tormentors in the service of true Religion and Virtue, as now exist under the tyranny of Papal or Brahman superstition. This inefficacy of legitimate Reason, from the want of fit objects, this its relative weakness and how narrow at all times its immediate sphere of action must be, is proved to us by the im postors of all professions. What, I pray, is their for tress, the rock which is both their quarry and their foundation, from which and on which they are built? The desire of arriving at the end without the effort of thought and will, which are the appointed means: Let us look backwards three or four centuries, Then, as now, the great mass of mankind were governed by three main wishes, the wish for vigor of body, including the absence of painful feelings: for wealth, or the power of procuring the internal conditions of bodily enjoyment: these during life→ and security from pain and continuance of happiness after death. Then, as now, men were desirous to attain them by some easier means than those of Temperance, Industry, and strict Justice. They gladly therefore applied to the Priest, who could ensure them happiness hereafter without the performance of their duties here; to the Lawyer, who could make money a substitute for a right cause; to the Physician, whose medicines promised to take the sting out of the tail of their sensual indulgences, and let them fondle and play with vice, as with a charmed serpent; to the Alchemist, whose gold> tincture would enrich them without toil or economy; and to the Astrologer, from whom they could pur chase foresight without knowledge or reflection. The established professions wen, without exception, no other than licensed modes of witchcraft. The Wizards, who would now find their due reward in Bridewell, and their appropriate honors in the pillory, sate then on episcopal thrones, candidates for Saintship, and already canonized in the belief of their deluded contemporaries; while the one or two real teachers and Discoverers of Truth were exposed to the hazard of fire and fagot, a dungeon the best shrine that was vouchsafed to a Roger Bacon and a Galileo! ESSAY VIII. Pray, why is it, that people say that men are not such fools now-a-days as they were in the days of yore! I would fain know, whether you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically may, that formerly men were fools, and in this generation are grown wise? How many and what dispositions made them fools? How many and what dispositions were wanting to make 'em wise? Why were those fools? How should these be wise? Pray, how came you to know that men were for merly fools? How did you find, that they are now wise? Who made them fools? Who in Heaven's name made us wise? Who d'ye think are most, those that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise? How long has it been wise? How long otherwise? Whence proceeded the foregoing folly? Whence the following wisdom? Why did the old folly end now and no later? Why did the modern wisdom begin now and no sooner? What were we the worse for the former folly? What the better for the succeeding wisdom? How should the ancient folly have come to nothing? How should this same new wisdom be started up and established? Now answer me, an't please you! FR. RABELAIS' Preface to his 5th Book. nue for upholding such temptations as men so ignorant will not withstand-yes! that even senators and officers of state hold forth the Revenue as a sufficient plea for upholding, at every fiftieth door throughout the kingdom, temptations to the most pernicious vices, which fill the land with mourning, and fit the laboring classes for sedition and religious fanaticism! Above all I must forget the first years of the French Revolution, and the millions throughout Europe who confidently expected the best and choicest results of Knowledge and Virtue, namely, Liberty and universal Peace, from the votes of a tumultuous Assembly that is, from the mechanical agitation of the air in a large room at Paris-and this too in the most light, unthinking, sensual and profligate of the European nations, a nation, the very phrases of whose language are so composed, that they can scarcely speak without lying!-No! Let us not deceive ourselves. Like the man who used to pull off his hat with great demonstration of respect whenever he spoke of himself, we are fond of styling our own the enlightened age: though as Jortin, I think, has wittily remarked, the golden age would be more appropriate. But in spite of our great scientific discoveries, for which praise be given to whom the praise is due, and in spite of that general indifference to all the truths and all the principles of truth, that belong to our permanent being, and therefore do not lie within the sphere of our senses, (that same indifference which makes toleration so easy a virtue with us, and constitutes ninetenths of our pretended illumination) it still remains the character of the mass of mankind to seek for the attainment of their necessary ends by any means rather than the appointed ones; and for this cause MONSTERS and Madmen canonized, and Galileo blind in a dungeon! It is not so in our times. Hea-only, that the latter imply the exertion of the Reason ven be praised, that in this respect, at least, we are, if not better, yet better off than our forefathers. But to what, and to whom (under Providence) do we owe the improvement? To any radical change in the moral affections of mankind in general? Perhaps the great majority of men are now fully conscious that they are born with the god-like faculty of Reason. and that it is the business of life to develope and apply it? The Jacob's ladder of Truth, let down from heaven, with all its numerous rounds, is now the common highway, on which we are content to toil upward to the object of our desires? We are ashamed of expecting the end without the means? In order to answer these questions in the affirmative, I must have forgotten the Animal Magnetists; the proselytes of Brothers, and of Joanna Southcot; and some hundred thousand fanatics less original in their creeds, but not a whit more rational in their expectations! I must forget the infamous Empirics, whose advertisements pollute and disgrace all our Newspapers, and almost paper the walls of our cities; and the vending of whose poisons and poisonous drams (with shame and anguish be it spoken) support a shop in every market-town? I must forget that other opprobrium of the nation, that Mother-vice, the Lottery! I must forget that a numerous class plead Prudence for keeping their fellow-men ignorant and incapable of intellectual enjoyments, and the Reve and the Will. But of all things this demands the |