Thus we shall make them, in some measure, revive in ourselves; while their counsels still live and operate on us. And, as the authors of heresies are punished in another life, by the sins which they have bequeathed to those who come after them, in whom their poison still operates; so good men are recompensed in a better state, not only through what they have themselves been, but through those whom they have influenced by their precepts and example.

Man is most certainly too weak to judge justly of the course of future events. Let us hope then in God, and not weary ourselves with rash and indiscreet apprehensions. Let us commit ourselves to him for the conduct of our lives: and let not grief have the dominion over us.

St. Austin observes, that there is in every man, a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural affections are the serpent; our concupiscence is the Eve; and the Adam is our reason.

Nature tempts us continually; concupiscence is for ever craving; but sin is not complete, unless reason assent to it.

Let us then leave this serpent and this Eve, if we cannot entirely expel them; but let us pray that God by his grace will so fortify our Adam, that he may become victorious, and that Jesus Christ may be the conqueror over him, and may reign in us to all eternity.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS.

THE more discernment a man possesses, the more originals he will discover among mankind. People in common do not see this difference between men.

A man may have good sense, and yet not be able to apply it alike to all subjects: for there are those who judge correctly in a certain order of things,,and yet are quite confounded in others. Some draw consequences well from a few principles; others draw consequences as correctly from things in which there are many principles. Some, for instance, thoroughly understand the effects of water, in which there are but few principles, but the consequences of them are so fine as not to be reached without great penetration. Yet these persons would perhaps be no extraordinary geometricians: because geometry includes a great number of principles; and the nature of a man's mind may be such, as to penetrate with ease to the bottom of a few principles, and yet not to dive into things where the principles are very

numerous.

There are therefore two sorts of intellects; the one capable of penetrating quickly and deeply into the consequences of principles; and this is the genius for accuracy: the other is able to comprehend a great number of principles without confounding them; and this is the genius for geometry. One is

strength and exactness of mind, the other is extensiveness of mind. And one of these may exist without the other: for the mind may be strong, and yet contracted: or it may have a great reach, with but little strength.

There is a wide difference between a genius for geometry, and a genius for business. In the former the principles are palpable, but so far from ordinary use, that a man finds it difficult to turn his head that way, for want of practice; but if he does attend to them, though it be ever so little, he sees them in all their evidence, and must have a very distorted judgment if he draws wrong inferences from principles which are too gross to be mistaken.

But in business, the principles are in common use, and are obvious to all the world. There is no need here to turn the head, or to do ourselves any violence. The only thing wanting is a clear sight. But then it must be clear, because the principles are so unconnected and so numerous, that it is hardly possible but some of them should escape us. Now the omission of any one principle will lead us into error. So that the discernment must be very exact, to comprehend all the principles, and the mind must likewise be just, not to reason falsely from the principles when they are known.

All geometricians would, therefore, be men of business, if they were clear-sighted; for they do not reason falsely on the principles which they know. And men of business would be geometricians, if they could once turn their minds to the unaccustomed principles of geometry.

The reason then, why some very able persons are not geometricians is, because they cannot turn their minds to the principles of geometry: but the reason that geometricians are not men of business is, because they do not see that which lies before them. For being accustomed to the clear and obvious principles of geometry, and to reason only after having

clearly discerned and arranged their principles, they lose themselves in matters of business, the principles of which will not submit to any such arrangement. They are not to be discerned without difficulty; the mind rather feels than sees them; and it requires infinite labour, to make those persons see them, who do not discover them of themselves. They are things so nice and so numerous, that a man must have his understanding very subtle and clear, in order to apprehend them; for they must be perceived, in general, without the possibility of demonstrating them methodically, as may be done in geometry; because there are no such determinate principles, and it would be endless to undertake to produce them. We must see the thing at once, and at a glance, without the progress of reasoning; at least, to a certain degree. Thus it rarely happens that geometricans are men of business, or that men of business are geometricians; because geometricians will treat matters of business geometrically, and they make themselves ridiculous by beginning first with definitions, and afterward with principles, which is not the way to proceed in this kind of reasoning. Not but the mind does the very same thing, but then it does it silently, naturally, and without art; in a way that none of us can explain, and very few even perceive.

Men of business, on the other hand, having been thus accustomed to judge of things at once, are so amazed when we offer them propositions which they comprehend nothing of, and which they cannot enter into, except by means of definitions, and dry principles, that not having been accustomed to take things thus in detail, they soon become disheartened, and disgusted. But persons of false judgment are never either men of business, or geometricians.

Those, therefore, who are geometricians, and nothing more, judge correctly, but only if we explain every thing to them by definitions and principles;

for otherwise they are both erroneous and insupportable; for they only proceed rightly upon principles which are thoroughly elucidated. And those who have a genius only for business, have not patience to descend into the first principles of speculative and abstract things, which they have seen nothing of in the world and in common life.

It is more supportable to die without thinking of death, than to think of death, even when there is no danger of it.

It often happens, that in order to prove certain things, we make use of examples, which those very things might have been taken to prove. But nevertheless this is not without its use; for as we always think the difficulty lies in the thing to be proved, the examples we adduce are more clear to us. So when we would illustrate a general rule, we instance a particular case; and if we would explain a particular case, we begin with the general rule. We always find somewhat obscure in that which we are desirous to prove, and somewhat clear in that which we make use of to prove it. For when we propose a thing in order to prove it, our imagination is always possessed with the notion that it is obscure; and that on the contrary, that which we bring forward in proof of it, is clear, and thus we more easily understand it.

We fancy that all men conceive and feel alike concerning objects which are presented to them: but we imagine this without any foundation, for we have no proof it. I know very well that men employ the same words on the same occasions; and that when two men, for instance, look on the snow, both of them express their perception of this object by the same term, each of them saying it is white; and from this conformity of speech, we strongly conjecture there is a conformity of idea; but this is not absolutely demonstrative, although the chance lies on the side of the affirmative.

All our reasoning is reducible to submission to sen