ment to perceive the combination, when it occurs, of wit with sound reasoning. The ivy-wreath conceals from his view the point of the Thyrsus. His is not the wisdom that can laugh at what is ludicrous, and, at the same time, preserve a clear discernment of sound and unsound reasoning.

6

6

Again-Some of these seeming wise men pride themselves on their scorn for all systematic knowledge, and on their reliance on what they call common sense and experience. They depend on their experience' and their common sense' for everything, and are continually obtruding what may be called the pedantry of experience and common sense on the most abstruse subjects. They meet all scientific and logical argument with— 'Common sense tells me I am right,' and 'My every-day's experience confirms me in the opinion I have formed.' If they are spoken to of Political Economy, they will immediately reply, ‘Ah, I know nothing of the dreams of Political Economy' (this is the very phrase I have heard used)—'I never studied it-I never troubled myself about it; but there are some points upon which I have made up my mind, such as the question of free trade and protection, and poor-laws.' I do not pro

fess'—a man will perhaps say-'to know anything of Medicine, or Pharmacy, or Anatomy, or any of those things; but I know by experience that so and so is wholesome for sick people.'

In former times men knew by experience that the earth stands still, and the sun rises and sets. Common sense taught them that there could be no antipodes, since men could not stand with their heads downwards, like flies on the ceiling. Experience taught the King of Bantam that water can never become solid. And-to come to the case of human affairsthe experience and common sense of the most intelligent of the Roman historians, Tacitus, taught him that for a mixed government to be established, combining the elements of royalty, aristocracy, and democracy, would be next to impossible; and that if it were established, it must speedily be dissolved. Yet, had he lived to the present day, he would have learned that the establishment and continuance of such a form of government was not impossible. So much for experience! The experience of these wise men resembles the learning of a man who has turned over the pages of a great many

books without ever having learned to read; and their so-called 'common sense' is often, in reality, nothing else than common prejudice.

Yet these very persons 'pass for wise, or, as Bacon expresses it, 'get opinion,' by the oracular decisions they are continually pronouncing on the most difficult scientific questions. For instance, decisions on questions concerning taxation, tithes, the national debt, the poor-laws, the wages which labourers earn or ought to earn, the comparative advantages of different modes of charity, and numberless other questions of Political Economy, are boldly pronounced by them, while not only ignorant, but professedly ignorant, and designing to continue so, of the whole subject: neither having, nor pretending to have, nor seeking for, any fixed principles by which to regulate their judgment on each point. That gentleman equals them in wisdom, while certainly surpassing them in the modesty of his doubt, who, on being asked whether he could play on the violin, made answer that he really did not know whether he could or not, because he had never tried.

It is somewhat remarkable that this claim to be thought wise, founded on the adherence to so-called common sense, should be so generally allowed as it is. For it is not consistent with the universal, though unconscious, and often unwilling, testimony of mankind-that systematic knowledge is preferable to conjectural judgments, and that common sense is only our secondbest guide. This testimony is borne in the fact that the sailor, the architect, the physician, and every other practitioner, each in his own department, gives the preference to unassisted common sense only in those points where he himself has nothing else to trust to, and invariably resorts to the rules of art wherever he possesses the knowledge of them.1 But most people are apt to give credit for wisdom to those, not whose views are, on the whole, most reasonable, but those whose common sense consists in common notions, and who are free from all errors, except vulgar errors.

Another mode in which men set up for being wise is, by being fastidious. They are so excessively acute at detecting imperfections, that in looking at a peacock's train, they would

1 Sec Elements of Logic, Preface, p. xv.

fix on every spot where the feathers were worn, or the colours faded, and see nothing else.

Again-It is a characteristic of some of these seeming wise men, that not only are 'little things great' to them, as the poet says they are to 'little men,' but great things are little to them. With writers of the 'seeming-wise' class, it is the commonest artifice to adopt that style of mysterious grandiloquence which was adverted to in the Preface to this volume. Let a writer on science-suppose, Logic, or Metaphysics-bring forward what knowledge he does possess, in dark hints, insinuating that he has a vast store of wisdom unrevealed, and that great discoveries may be expected, some day or other, from himself or some of his disciples, when the world is ripe for them; and let him speak of all other writers on the subject with insolent contempt; and it is likely that a large portion of that numerous class, the credulous, will give him credit for being a great philosopher.

Such persons may remind one of a story told of a certain Banker who bequeathed to his son a flourishing business, together with a large and very strong iron chest, securely locked, and which had always been supposed full of gold. 'To ' tell you the truth,' said he, 'the chest is empty: but if you keep the secret, the secret will keep you.'

As to this, and other tricks by which men (in the modern phrase) 'puff themselves,' they might have been introduced by Bacon in the essay 'On Cunning.' But it is worth noticing, that those who assume an imposing demeanour, and seek to puff themselves off for something beyond what they are (and often succeed), are, not unfrequently, as much under-rated by some, as they are over-rated by others. For, as a man (according to what Bacon says in the essay 'On Discourse') by keeping back some knowledge which he is believed to possess, may gain credit for knowing something of which he is really ignorant, so, if he is once or twice detected in pretending to know what he does not, he is likely to be set down as a mere pretender, and as ignorant of what he does know.

Silver gilt will often pass

Either for gold or else for brass.''

See Proverbs and Precepts, as Copy-pieces for National Schools.

'You were better take for business a man somewhat absurd than over-formal.'

By absurd' Bacon probably means what we express by 'inconsiderate'; what the French call 'étourdi."

The 'over-formal' often impede, and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog, which cannot lie down till he has made three circuits round the spot.

1 See Essay XLVII.

IT

ESSAY XXVII. OF FRIENDSHIP.

T had been hard for him that spake it, to have put more truth and untruth together in few words, than in that speech, 'Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god;'1 for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards2 society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except3 it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation; such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathens-as Epimenides, the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the Sicilian; and Apollonius, of Tyana; and truly, and really, in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: 'Magna civitas, magna solitudo,'-because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods. But we may go farther, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this scene also of solitude, whosoever, in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity."

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause

1 Aristotle, Eth. B. 8.

2 Aversation towards. Aversion to. There is such a general aversation in human nature towards contempt, that there is scarcely anything more exasperating.'— Government of the Tongue.

3 Except. Unless. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'-John iii. 3.

4 Conversation. Course of life. 'What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness.'-2 Pet, iii,

5A great city, a great solitude.'

6 Mere. Absolute. See 'Merely,' page 25.

7 Humanity. Human nature.

-Sir Philip Sidney.

Look to thyself; reach not beyond humanity.'