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ESSAY XXVI. OF SEEMING WISE.

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T hath been an opinion, that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and man; for, as the Apostle saith of godliness, Having a show of godliness, but denying the power thereof," so certainly there are, in points of wisdom and sufficiency, that do nothing or little, very solemnly, Magno conatu nugas. It is a ridiculous thing, and fit for a satire to persons of judgment, to see what shifts these formalists have, and what prospectives' to make superficies to seem body that hath depth and bulk. Some are so close and reserved, as they will not show their wares but by a dark light, and seem always to keep back somewhat; and when they know within themselves they speak of that they do not well know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of that which they may not well speak. Some help themselves with countenance and gesture, and are wise by signs; as Cicero saith of Piso, that when he answered him he fetched one of his brows up to his forehead, and bent the other down to his chin; 'Respondes, altero ad frontem sublato, altero ad mentum depresso supercilio, crudelitatem tibi non placere.' to bear it by speaking a great word, and being peremptory; and go on, and take by admittance that which they cannot make good. Some, whatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem to despise, or make light of it, as impertinent' or curious, and so would have their ignorance seem judgment. Some are never

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1 2 Timothy iii. 5.

Some think

2 Sufficiency. Ability; adequate power. 'Our sufficiency is of God.'-2 Cor.

iii. 5

3 Trifles with great effort.

4 Prospectives. Perspective glasses.

In Pis. 6.

" They speke of Alhazen and Vitellon,

Of queinte mirrours, and of prospectives.'-Chaucer.

Bear. To manage; to contrive.

'We'll direct her how 'tis best to bear it.'-Shakespere.

7 Impertinent. Irrelevant.

Without the which, this story

Were most impertinent.'— Shakespere.

8 Curious.

Over-nice. See page 91.

without a difference,' and commonly by amusing men with a subtlety, blanch the matter; of whom A. Gellius saith,' Hominem delirum, qui verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera." Of which kind also Plato, in his Protagoras, bringeth in Prodicus in scorn, and maketh him make a speech that consisteth of distinctions from the beginning to the end. Generally, such men, in all deliberations, find ease to be of the negative side, and affect a credit to object and foretell difficulties; for when propositions are denied, there is an end of them; but if they be allowed, it requireth a new work; which false point of wisdom is the bane of business. To conclude, there is no decaying merchant, or inward beggar, hath so many tricks to uphold the credit of their wealth, as these empty persons have to maintain the credit of their sufficiency. Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion; but let no man chuse them for employment; for, certainly, you were better take for business a man somewhat absurd than over-formal.

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ANNOTATIONS.

'Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion.'

There is a way in which some men seem, to themselves, and often to others also, to be much wiser than they are; by acting as a wise man does, only, on wrong occasions, and altogether under different circumstances. Such a man has heard that it

is a wise thing to be neither too daring nor too timid; neither too suspicious nor too confiding; too hasty nor too slow, &c.,

1 Difference. A subtle distinction.

2 Blanch. To evade. A man horribly cheats his own soul, who upon any pretence whatever, or under any temptation, forsakes or blanches the true principles of religion.'-Goodman's Conference.

3A senseless man who fritters away weighty matters by trifling with words.' (This expression not in Aulus Gellius. A passage like it occurs in Quintilianix. 1.)

1 Plato, Protag. i. 337.

5 Inward beggar. One secretly a bankrupt.

To the sight unfold

His secret gems, and all the inward gold.'—Lansdowne.

and he ventures and holds back, trusts and distrusts, hastens and delays, spends and spares, &c., just in the same degree that a wise man does,-only, he is venturesome where there is real danger, and cautious where there is none; hasty where there is no cause, and dilatory when everything turns on dispatch; trusting those unworthy of confidence, and suspicious of the trustworthy; parsimonious towards worthy objects, and profuse towards the worthless; &c.

Such a character may be called 'the reflection of a wise man.' He is the figure of a wise man shown by a mirror; which is an exact representation, except that it is left-handed.

The German child's-story of Hans und Grettel, like many other childish tales, contains, under a surface of mere foolery, an instructive picture of real life. Hans stuck a knife in his sleeve, having been told that was the proper place for the needle; and put a kid in his pocket, because that was the place for a knife, &c.

It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter, it is deceptive.

One way in which many a man aims at and pretends to wisdom, who has it not in him,' is this: he has heard that 'the middle course is always the best;' that 'extremes are to be avoided,' &c.; and so he endeavours in all cases to keep at an equal distance from the most opposite parties. As was observed in 'Annotation' the second on Essay XI., he will never quite agree, nor very widely disagree with either: and thus, as almost always each party is right in something, he misses the truth on both sides; and while afraid of being guided by either party, he is in fact guided by both. His mimic wisdom consists in sliding alternately towards each extreme. But if your orbit be a true circle, independent of the eccentric elliptical orbits of others, this will make sundry nodes with theirs; sometimes falling within and sometimes without the same eccentric orbit. That is, in some points you will approach nearer to the one than to the other; in some you will wholly agree with one party, and in some with another; in some you will differ equally from both; and in some you will even go further from the one party than the opposite one does. For, true wisdom

does not depend on another's extravagance and folly. The varieties of human error have no power to fix the exact place of truth.

Another exemplification of the golden mean upon which this seeming wise man prides himself, is the adoption of the conclusion that where a great deal is said, something must be true; imagining that he is showing a most judicious and laudable caution in believing only part of what is said,-doing what is called 'splitting the difference.' This is the wisdom of the clown, who thinks he has bought a great bargain of a Jew, because he has beat down the price from a guinea to a crown for some article that is not really worth a groat.

Another of these pretenders to being, or being thought to be, wise, prides himself on what he calls his consistency,—on his never changing his opinions or plans; which, as long as Man is fallible, and circumstances change, is the wisdom of one either too dull to detect his mistakes, or too obstinate to own them.

Another, having been warned that 'wisdom and wit' are not the same thing, makes it a part of wisdom to distrust everything that can possibly be regarded as witty; not having judgment 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.

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 profess' —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