book I mentioned, among other curious things, demonstrates what angle

the rudder must make with the keel, to render its influence upon the ship the most powerful. This has its merit; but a lad of fifteen, who has served a year of his time on board of a hoy, knows every thing that is useful in this demonstration, practically. Seeing the poop always answering the motion of the helm, he only minds the latter, without making the least reflection on the rudder, until in a year or two more his knowledge in sailing, and capacity of steering his vessel, become so habitual to him, that he guides her, as he does his own body, by instinct, though he is half asleep, or thinking on quite another thing.

Hor. If, as you said, and which I now believe to be true, the people who first invented, and afterwards improved upon ships and sailing, never dreamed of those reasons of Monsieur Reneau, it is impossible that they should have acted from them, as motives that induced them a priori, to put their inventions and improvements in practice, with knowledge and design, which, I suppose, is what you intended to prove.

Cleo. It is; and I verily believe, not only that the raw beginners, who made the first essays in either art, good manners as well as sailing, were ignorant of the true cause; the real foundation those arts are built upon in nature; but likewise that, even now both arts are brought to great perfection, the greatest part of those that are most expert, and daily making improvements in them, know as little of the rationale of them, as their predecessors did at first: though I believe, at the same time, Monsieur Reneau's reasons to be very just, and yours as good as his; that is, I believe, that there is as much truth and solidity in your accounting for the origin of good manners, as there is in his for the management of ships. They are very seldom the same sort of people, those that invent arts and improvements in them, and those that inquire into the reason of things: this latter is most commonly practised by such as are idle and indolent, that are fond of retirement, hate business, and take delight in speculation; whereas, none succeed oftener in the first, than active, stirring, and laborious men, such as will put their hand to the plough, try experiments, and give all their attention to what they are about.

Hor. It is commonly imagined, that speculative men are best at invention of all sorts.

Cleo. Yet it is a mistake. Soap-boiling, grain-drying, and other trades and mysteries, are, from mean beginnings, brought to great perfection; but the many improvements that can be remembered to have been made in them, have, for the generality, been owing to persons, who either were brought up to, or had long practised, and been conversant in those trades, and not to great proficients in chemistry, or other parts of philosophy, whom one would naturally expect those things from. In some of these arts, especially grain or scarlet-dying, there are processes really astonishing; and, by the mixture of various ingredients, by fire and fermentation, several operations are performed, which the most sagacious naturalist cannot account for by any system yet known; a certain sign that they were not invented by reasoning a priori. When once the generality begin to conceal the high value they have for themselves, men must become more tolerable to one another. Now, new improvements must be made every day, until some of them grow impudent enough, not only to deny the high value they have for themselves, but likewise to pretend that they have greater value for others, than they have for themselves. This will bring in complaisance; and now flattery will rush in upon them like a torrent. As soon as they are arrived at this pitch of insincerity, they will find the benefit of it, and teach it their children. The passion of shame is so general, and so early discovered in all human creatures, that no nation can be so stupid, as to be long without observing and making use of it accordingly. The same may be said of the credulity of infants, which is very inviting to many good purposes. The knowledge of parents is communicated to their offspring, and every one's experience in life being added to what he learned in his youth, every generation after this must be better taught than the preceding; by which means, in two or three centuries, good manners must be brought to great perfection.

Hor. When they are thus far advanced, it is easy to conceive the rest: For improvements, I suppose, are made in good manners, as they are in all other arts and sciences. But to commence from savages, men, I believe, would make but a small progress in good manners the first three hundred years. The Romans, who had a much better beginning, had been a nation above six centuries, and were almost masters of the world, before they could be said to be a polite people. What I am most astonished at, and which I am now convinced of, is, that the basis of all this machinery is pride. Another thing I wonder at, is, that you chose to speak of a nation that entered upon good manners before they had any notions of virtue or religion, which, I believe, there never was in the world.

Cleo. Pardon me, Horatio; I have nowhere insinuated that they had none, but I had no reason to mention them. In the first place, you asked my opinion concerning the use of politeness in this world, abstract from the considerations of a future state: Secondly, the art of good manners has nothing to do with virtue or religion, though it seldom clashes with either. It is a science that is ever built on the same steady principle in our nature, whatever the age or the climate may be in which it is practised.

Hor. How can any thing be said not to clash with virtue or religion, that has nothing to do with either, and consequently disclaims both?

Cleo. This, I confess, seems to be a paradox; yet it is true. The doctrine of good manners teaches men to speak well of all virtues, but requires no more of them in any age or country, than the outward appearance of those in fashion. And as to sacred matters, it is every where satisfied with seeming conformity in outward worship; for all the religions in the universe are equally agreeable to good manners, where they are national; and pray what opinion must we say a teacher to be of, to whom all opinions are probably alike? All the precepts of good manners throughout the world have the same tendency, and are no more than the various methods of making ourselves acceptable to others, with as little prejudice to ourselves as is possible: by which artifice we assist one another in the enjoyments of life, and refining upon pleasure; and every individual person is rendered more happy by it in the fruition of all the good things he can purchase, than he could have been without such behaviour. I mean happy, in the sense of the voluptuous. Let us look back on old Greece, the Roman empire, or the great eastern nations that flourished before them, and we shall find, that luxury and politeness ever grew up together, and were never enjoyed asunder; that comfort and delight upon earth have always employed the wishes of the beau monde; and that, as their chief study and greatest solicitude, to outward appearance, have ever been directed to obtain happiness in this world, so what would become of them in the next, seems, to the naked eye, always to have been the least of their concern.

Hor. I thank you for your lecture: you have satisfied me in several things, which I had intended to ask: But you have said some others, that I must have time to consider; after which I am resolved to wait upon you again; for I begin to believe, that, concerning the knowledge of ourselves, most books are either very defective or very deceitful.

Cleo. There is not a more copious, nor a more faithful volume than human nature, to those who will diligently peruse it; and I sincerely believe, that I have discovered nothing to you, which, if you had thought of it with attention, you would not have found out yourself. But I shall never be better pleased with myself, than when I can contribute to any entertainment you shall think diverting.

THE FOURTH DIALOGUE BETWEEN HORATIO AND CLEOMENES.

CLEOMENES.

Your servant.

Hor. What say you now, Cleomenes; is it not this without ceremony?

Cleo. You are very obliging.

Hor. When they told me where you was, I would suffer nobody to tell you who it was that wanted you, or to come up with me.

Cleo. This is friendly, indeed!

Hor. You see what a proficient I am: In a little time you will teach me to lay aside all good manners.

Cleo. You make a fine tutor of me.

Hor. You will pardon me, I know: this study of yours is a very pretty place.

Cleo. I like it, because the sun never enters it.

Hor. A very pretty room!

Cleo. Shall we sit down in it? It is the coolest room in the house.

Hor. With all my heart.

Cleo. I was in hopes to have seen you before now: you have taken a long time to consider.

Hor. Just eight days?

Cleo. Have you thought on the novelty I started?

Hor. I have, and think it not void of probability; for that there are no innate ideas, and men come into the world without any knowledge at all, I am convinced of, and therefore it is evident to me, that all arts and sciences must once have had a beginning in somebody's brain, whatever oblivion that may now be lost in. I have thought twenty times since I saw you last, on the origin of good manners, and what a pleasant scene it would be to a man who is tolerably well versed in the world, to see among a rude nation those first essays they made of concealing their pride from one another.

Cleo. You see by this, that it is chiefly the novelty of things that strikes, as well in begetting our aversion, as in gaining our approbation; and that we may look upon many indifferently, when they come to be familiar to us, though they were shocking when they were new. You are now diverting yourself with a truth, which eight days ago you would have given an hundred guineas not to have known.

Hor. I begin to believe there is nothing so absurd, that it would appear to us to be such, is we had been accustomed to it very young.

Cleo. In a tolerable education, we are so industriously and so assiduously instructed, from our most early infancy, in the ceremonies of bowing, and pulling off hats, and other rules of behaviour, that even before we are men we hardly look upon a mannerly deportment as a thing acquired, or think conversation to be a science. Thousand things are called easy and natural in postures and motions, as well as speaking and writing, that have caused infinite pains to others as well as ourselves, and which we know to be the product of art. What awkward lumps have I known, which the dancing-master has put limbs to!

Hor. Yesterday morning as I sat musing by myself, an expression of yours which I did not so much reflect upon at first, when I heard it, came into my head, and made me smile. Speaking of the rudiments of good manners in an infant nation, when they once entered upon concealing their pride, you said, that improvements would be made every day, "till some of them grew impudent enough, not only to deny the high value they had for themselves, but likewise to pretend that they had greater value for others than they had for themselves."

Cleo. It is certain, that this every where must have been the forerunner of flattery.

Hor. When you talk of flattery and impudence, what do you think of the first man that had the face to tell his equal, that he was his humble servant?

Cleo. If that had been a new compliment, I should have wondered much more at the simplicity of the proud man that swallowed, than I would have done at the impudence of the knave that made it.

Hor. It certainly once was new: which pray do you believe more ancient, pulling off the hat, or saying, your humble servant?

Cleo. They are both of them Gothic and modern.

Hor. I believe pulling off the hat was first, it being the emblem of liberty.

Cleo. I do not think so: for he who pulled of his hat the first time, could not have been understood, if saying your servant had not been practised: and to show respect, a man as well might have pulled off one of his shoes, as his hat; if saying, your servant, had not been an established and well-known compliment.

Hor. So he might, as you say, and had a better authority for the first, than he could have for the latter.

Cleo. And to this day, taking of the hat is a dumb show of a known civility in words: Mind now the power of custom, and imbibed notions. We both laugh at this Gothic absurdity, and are well assured, that it must have had its origin from the basest flattery; yet neither of us, walking with our hats on, could meet an acquaintance with whom we are not very familiar, without showing this piece of civility; nay, it it would be a pain to us not to do it. But we have no reason to think, that the compliment of saying, your servant, began among equals; but rather that, flatterers having given it to princes, it grew afterwards more common: for all those postures and flexions of body and limbs, had in all probability their rise from the adulation that was paid to conquerors and tyrants; who, having every body to fear, were always alarmed at the least shadow of opposition, and never better pleased than with submissive and defenceless postures: and you see, that they have all a tendency that way; they promise security, and are silent endeavours to ease and rid them, not only of their fears, but likewise every suspicion of harm approaching them: such as lying prostrate on our faces, touching the ground with our heads, kneeling, bowing low, laying our hands upon our breasts, or holding them behind us, folding our arms together, and all the cringes that can be made to demonstrate that we neither indulge our ease, nor stand upon our guard. These are evident signs and convincing proofs to a superior, that we have a mean opinion of ourselves in respect to him, that we are at his mercy, and have no thought to resist, much less to attack him; and therefore it is highly probable, that saying, your servant, and pulling off the hat, were at first demonstrations of obedience to those that claimed it.

Hor. Which in tract of time became more familiar, and were made use of reciprocally in the way of civility.

Cleo. I believe so; for as good manners increase, we see, that the highest compliments are made common, and new ones to superiors invented instead of them.

Hor. So the word grace, which not long ago was a title, that none but our kings and queens were honoured with, is devolved upon archbishops and dukes.

Cleo. It was the same with highness, which is now given to the children, and even the grandchildren of kings.

Hor. The dignity that is annexed to the signification of the word lord, has been better preserved with us, than in most countries: in Spanish, Italian, high and low Dutch, it is prostituted to almost every body.

Cleo. It has had better fate in France; where likewise the word sire has lost nothing of its majesty, and is only used to the monarch: whereas, with us, it is a compliment of address, that may be made to a cobbler, as well as to a king.

Hor. Whatever alterations may be made in the sense of words, by time; yet, as the world grows more polished, flattery becomes less barefaced, and the design of it upon man's pride is better disguised than it was formerly. To praise a man to his face, was very common among the ancients: considering humility to be a virtue particularly required of Christians, I have often wondered how the fathers of the church could suffer those acclamations and applauses, that were made to them whilst they were preaching; and which, though some of them spoke against them, many of them appear to have been extremely fond of.

Cleo. Human nature is always the same; where men exert themselves to the utmost, and take uncommon pains, that spend and waste the spirits, those applauses are very reviving the fathers who spoke against them, spoke chiefly against the abuse of them.

Hor. It must have been very odd to hear people bawling out, as often the greatest part of an audience did, Sophos, divinitus, non potest melius, mirabiliter, acriter, ingeniose: they told the preachers likewise that they were orthodox, and sometimes called them, apostolus decimus tertius.

Cleo. These words at the end of a period might have passed, but the repetitions of them were often so loud and so general, and the noise they made with their hands and feet, so disturbing in and out of season, that they could not hear a quarter of the the sermon; yet several fathers owned that it was highly delightful, and soothing human frailty.

Hor. The behaviour at churches is more decent, as it is now.

Cleo. Since paganism has been quite extinct in the old western world, the zeal of Christians is much diminished from what it was, when they had many opposers: the want of fervency had a great hand in abolishing that fashion.

Hor. But whether it was the fashion or not, it must always have been shocking.

Cleo. Do you think, that the repeated acclamations, the clapping, stamping, and the most extravagant tokens of applause, that are now used at our several theatres, were ever shocking to a favourite actor; or that the huzzas of the mob, or the hideous shouts of soldiers, were ever shocking to persons of the highest distinction, to whose honour they were made?

Hor. I have known princes that were very much tired with them.

Cleo. When they had too much of them; but never at first. In working a machine, we ought to have regard to the strength of its frame: limited creatures are not susceptible of infinite delight; therefore we see, that a pleasure protracted beyond its due bounds becomes a pain: but where the custom of the country is not broken in upon, no noise, that is palpably made in our praise, and which we may hear with decency, can ever be ungrateful, if it do not outlast a reasonable time; but there is no cordial so sovereign, that it may not become offensive, by being taken to excess.

Hor. And the sweeter and more delicious liquors are, the sooner they become fulsome, and the less fit they are to sit by.

Cleo. Your simile is not amiss; and the same acclamations that are ravishing to a man at first, and perhaps continue to give him an unspeakable delight for eight or nine minutes, may become more moderately pleasing, indifferent, cloying, troublesome, and even so offensive as to create pain, all in less than three hours, if they were to continue so long without intermission.

Hor. There must be great witchcraft in sounds, that they should have such different effects upon us, as we often see they have.

Cleo. The pleasure we receive from acclamations, is not in the hearing; but proceeds from the opinion we form of the cause that produces those sounds, the approbation of others. At the theatres all over Italy you have heard, that, when the whole audience demands silence and attention, which there is an established mark of benevolence and applause, the noise they make comes very near, and is hardly to be distinguished from our hissing, which with us is the plainest token of dislike and contempt: and without doubt the cat-calls to affront Faustina were far more agreeable to Cozzoni, than the most artful sounds she ever heard from her triumphant rival.

Hor. That was abominable!

Cleo. The Turks show their respects to their sovereigns by a profound silence, which is strictly kept throughout the seraglio, and still more religiously observed the nearer you come to the Sultan's apartment.

Hor. This latter is certainly the politer way of gratifying one's pride.

Cleo. All that depends upon mode and custom.

Hor. But the offerings that are made to a man's pride in silence, may be enjoyed without the loss of his hearing, which the other cannot.

Cleo. That is a trifle, in the gratification of that passion: we never enjoy higher pleasure, from the appetite we would indulge, than when we feel nothing from any other.

Hor. But silence expresses greater homage, and deeper veneration, than noise.

Cleo. It is good to sooth the pride of a drone; but an active man loves to have that passion roused, and as it were kept awake, whilst it is gratified; and approbation from noise is more unquestionable than the other: however, I will not determine between them; much may be said on both sides. The Greeks and Romans used sounds, to stir up men to noble actions, with great success; and the silence observed among the Ottomans has kept them very well in the slavish submission which their sovereigns require of them: perhaps the one does better where absolute power is lodged in one person, and the other where there is some show of liberty. Both are proper tools to flatter the pride of man, when they are understood and made use of as such. I have known a very brave man used to the shouts of war, and highly delighted with loud applause, be very angry with his butler, for making a little rattling with his plates.

Hor. An old aunt of mine the other day turned away a very clever fellow, for not walking upon his toes; and I must own myself, that the stamping of footmen, and all unmannerly loudness of servants, are very offensive to me; though I never entered into the reason of it before now. In our last conversation, when you described the symptoms of self-liking, and what the behaviour would be of an uncivilized man, you named laughing: I know it is one of the characteristics of our species; pray do you take that to be likewise the result of pride?

Cleo. Hobbes is of that opinion, and in most instances it might be derived from thence; but there are some phenomena not to be explained by that hypothesis; therefore I would choose to say, that laughter is a mechanical motion, which we are naturally thrown into when we are unaccountably pleased. When our pride is feelingly gratified; when we hear or see any thing which we admire or approve of; or when we are indulging any other passion or appetite, and the reason why we are pleased seems to be just and worthy, we are then far from laughing: but when things or actions are odd and out of the way, and happen to please us when we can give no just reason why they should do so, it is then, generally speaking, that they make us laugh.

Hor. I would rather side with what you said was Hobbes's opinion: for the things we commonly laugh at are such as are some way or other mortifying, unbecoming, or prejudicial to others.

Cleo. But what will you say to tickling, which will make an infant laugh that is deaf and blind?

Hor. Can you account for that by your system?

Cleo. Not to my satisfaction; but I will tell you what might be said for it. We know by experience, that the smoother, the softer, and the more sensible the skin is, the more ticklish persons are, generally speaking: we know likewise, that things rough, sharp, and hard, when they touch the skin, are displeasing to us, even before they give pain and that, on the contrary, every thing applied to the skin that is soft and smooth, and not otherwise offensive, is delightful. It is possible that gentle touches being impressed on several nervous filaments at once, every one of them producing a pleasing sensation, may create that confused pleasure which is the occasion of laughter.

Hor. But how came you to think of mechanic motion, in the pleasure of a free agent?

Cleo. Whatever free agency we may pretend to in the forming of ideas, the effect of them upon the body is independent of the will. Nothing is more directly opposite to laughing than frowning: the one draws wrinkles on the fore-head, knits the brows, and keeps the mouth shut: the other does quite the reverse; exporrigere frontem, you know, is a Latin phrase for being merry. In sighing, the muscles of the belly and breast are pulled inward, and the diaphragm is pulled upward more than ordinary; and we seem to endeavour, though in vain, to squeeze and compress the heart, whilst we draw in our breath in a forcible manner; and when, in that squeezing posture, we have taken in as much air as we can contain, we throw it out with the same violence we sucked it in with, and at the same time give a sudden relaxation to all the muscles we employed before. Nature certainly designed this for something in the labour for self-preservation which she forces upon us. How mechanically do all creatures that can make any sound, cry out, and complain in great afflictions, as well as pain and imminent danger! In great torments, the efforts of nature are so violent that way, that, to disappoint her, and prevent the discovery of what we feel by sounds, and which she bids us make, we are forced to draw our mouth into a purse, or else suck in our breath, bite our lips, or squeeze them close together, and use the most effectual means to hinder the air from coming out. In grief we sigh, in mirth we laugh: in the latter little stress is laid upon the respiration, and this is performed with less regularity than it is at any other time; all the muscles without, and every thing within feel loose, and seem to have no other motion than what is communicated to them by the convulsive shakes of laughter.

Hor. I have seen people laugh till they lost all their strength.

Cleo. How much is all this the reverse of what we observe in sighing! When pain or depth of woe make us cry out, the mouth is drawn round, or at least into an oval; the lips are thrusted forward without touching each other, and the tongue is pulled in, which is the reason that all nations, when they exclaim, cry, Oh!

Hor. Why pray!

Cleo. Because whilst the mouth, lips, and tongue, remain in those postures, they can sound no other vowel, and no consonant at all. In laughing, the lips are pulled back, and strained to draw the mouth in its fullest length.

Hor. I would not have you lay a great stress upon that, for it is the same in weeping, which is an undoubted sign of sorrow.

Cleo. In great afflictions, where the heart is oppressed, and anxieties which we endeavour to resist, few people can weep; but when they do, it removes the oppression, and sensibly relieves them: for then their resistance is gone; and weeping in distress is not so much a sign of sorrow as it is an indication that we can bear our sorrow no longer; and therefore it is counted unmanly to weep, because it seems to give up our strength, and is a kind of yielding to our grief. But the action of weeping itself is not more peculiar to grief than it is to joy in adult people; and there are men who show great fortitude in afflictions, and bear the greatest misfortunes with dry eyes, that will cry heartily at a moving scene in a play. Some are easily wrought upon by one thing, others are sooner affected with another; but whatever touches us so forcibly, as to overwhelm the mind, prompts us to weep, and is the mechanical cause of tears; and therefore, besides grief, joy, and pity, there are other things no way relating to ourselves, that may have this effect upon us; such as the relations of surprising events and sudden turns of Providence in behalf of merit; instances of heroism, of generosity; in love, in friendship in an enemy; or the hearing or reading of noble thoughts and sentiments of humanity; more especially if these things are conveyed to us suddenly, in an agreeable manner, and unlooked for, as well as lively expressions. We shall observe, likewise, that none are more subject to this frailty of shedding tears on such foreign accounts, than persons of ingenuity and quick apprehension; and those among them that are most benevolent, generous, and open-hearted; whereas, the dull and stupid, the cruel, selfish, and designing, are very seldom troubled with it. Weeping, therefore, in earnest, is always a sure and involuntary demonstration that something strikes and overcomes the mind, whatever that be which affects it. We find likewise, that outward violence, as sharp winds and smoke, the effluvia of onions, and other volatile salts, &c. have the same effect upon the external fibres of the lachrymal ducts and glands that are exposed, which the sudden swelling and pressure of the spirits has upon those within. The Divine Wisdom is in nothing more conspicuous than in the infinite variety of living creatures of different construction; every part of them being contrived with stupendous skill, and fitted with the utmost accuracy for the different purposes they were designed for. The human body, above all, is a most astonishing master piece of art: the anatomist may have a perfect knowledge of all the bones and their ligaments, the muscles and their tendons, and be able to dissect every nerve and every membrane with great exactness; the naturalist, likewise, may dive a great way into the inward economy, and different symptoms of health and sickness: they may all approve of, and admire the curious machine; but no man can have a tolerable idea of the contrivance, the art, and the beauty of the workmanship itself, even in those things he can see, without being likewise versed in geometry and mechanics.

Hor. How long is it ago that mathematics were brought into physic? that art, I have heard, is brought to great certainty by them.

Cleo. What you speak of is quite another thing. Mathematics never had, nor ever can have, any thing to do with physic, if you mean by it the art of curing the sick. The structure and motions of the body, may perhaps be mechanically accounted for, and all fluids are under the laws of hydrostatics; but we can have no help from any part of the mechanics in the discovery of things, infinitely remote from sight, and entirely unknown as to their shapes and bulks. Physicians, with the rest of mankind, are wholly ignorant of the first principles and constituent parts of things, in which all the virtues and properties of them consist; and this, as well of the blood and other juices of the body, as the simples, and consequently all the medicines they make use of. There is no art that has less certainty than theirs, and the most valuable knowledge in it arises from observation, and is such, as a man of parts and application, who has fitted himself for that study, can only be possessed of after a long and judicious experience. But the pretence to mathematics, or the usefulness of it in the cure of diseases, is a cheat, and as arrant a piece of quackery as a stage and a Merry-Andrew.

Hor. But since there is so much skill displayed in the bones, muscles, and grosser parts, is it not reasonable to think, that there is no less art bestowed on those that are beyond the reach of our senses?

Cleo. I nowise doubt it: Microscopes have opened a new world to us, and I am far from thinking, that nature should leave off her work where we can trace her no further. I am persuaded that our thoughts, and the affections of the mind, have a more certain and more mechanical influence upon several parts of the body than has been hitherto or, in all human probability, ever will be discovered. The visible effect they have on the eyes and muscles of the face, must show the least attentive the reason I have for this assertion. When in mens company we are upon our guard, and would preserve our dignity, the lips are shut and the jaws meet; the muscles of the mouth are gently braced, and the rest all over the face are kept firmly in their places: turn away from these into another room, where you meet with a fine young lady that is affable and easy; immediately, before you think on it, your countenance will be strangely altered; and without being conscious of having done any thing to your face, you will have quite another look; and every body that has observed you, will discover in it more sweetness and less severity than you had the moment before. When we suffer the lower jaw to sink down, the mouth opens a little: if in this posture we look straight before us, without fixing our eyes on any thing, we may imitate the countenance of a natural; by dropping, as it were, our features, and laying no stress on any muscle of the face. Infants, before they have learned to swallow their spittle, generally keep their mouths open, and are always drivelling: in them, before they show any understanding, and whilst it is yet very confused, the muscles of the face are, as it were, relaxed, the lower jaw falls down, and the fibres of the lips are unbraced; at least, these phenomena we observe in them, during that time, more often than we do afterwards. In extreme old age, when people begin to doat, those symptoms return; and in most idiots they continue to be observed, as long as they live: Hence it is that we say, that a man wants a slabbering-bib, when he behaves very sillily or talks like a natural fool. When we reflect on all this, on the one hand, and consider on the other, that none are less prone to anger than idiots, and no creatures are less affected with pride, I would ask, whether there is not some degree of self-liking, that mechanically influences, and seems to assist us in the decent wearing of our faces.

Hor. I cannot resolve you; what I know very well is, that by these conjectures on the mechanism of man, I find my understanding very little informed: I wonder how we came upon the subject.

Cleo. You inquired into the origin of risibility, which nobody can give an account of, with any certainty; and in such cases every body is at liberty to make guesses, so they draw no conclusions from them to the prejudice of any thing better established. But the chief design I had in giving you these indigested thoughts, was to hint to you, how really mysterious the works of nature are; I mean, how replete they are every where, with a power glaringly conspicuous, and yet incomprehensible beyond all human reach; in order to demonstrate, that more useful knowledge may be acquired from unwearied observation, judicious experience, and arguing from facts a posteriori, than from the haughty attempts of entering into first causes, and reasoning a priori. I do not believe there is a man in the world of that sagacity, if he was wholly unacquainted with the nature of a spring-watch, that he would ever find out by dint of penetration the cause of its motion, if he was never to see the inside: but every middling capacity may be certain, by seeing only the outside, that its pointing at the hour, and keeping to time, proceed from the exactness of some curious workmanship that is hid; and that the motion of the hands, what number of resorts soever it is communicated by, is originally owing to something else that first moves within. In the same manner we are sure, that as the effects of thought upon the body are palpable, several motions are produced by it, by contact, and consequently mechanically: but the parts, the instruments which that operation is performed with, are so immensely far remote from our senses; and the swiftness of the action is so prodigious, that it infinitely surpasses our capacity to trace them.

Hor. But is not thinking the business of the soul? What has mechanism to do with that?

Cleo. The soul, whilst in the body, cannot be said to think, otherwise than an architect is said to build a house, where the carpenters, bricklayers, &c. do the work, which he chalks out and superintends.

Hor. Which part of the brain do you think the soul to be more immediately lodged in; or do you take it to be diffused through the whole?

Cleo. I know nothing of it more than what I have told you already.

Hor. I plainly feel that this operation of thinking is a labour, or at least something that is transacting in my head, and not in my leg nor my arm: what insight or real knowledge have we from anatomy concerning it?

Cleo. None at all a priori: the most consummate anatomist knows no more of it than a butcher's apprentice. We may admire the curious duplicate of coats, and close embroidery of veins and arteries that environ the brain: but when dissecting it we have viewed the several pairs of nerves, with their origin, and taken notice of some glands of various shapes and sizes, which differing from the brain in substance, could not but rush in view; when these, I say, have been taken notice of, and distinguished by different names, some of them not very pertinent, and less polite, the best naturalist must acknowledge, that even of these large visible parts there are but few, the nerves and blood-vessels excepted, at the use of which he can give any tolerable guesses: but as to the mysterious structure of the brain itself, and the more abstruse economy of it, that he knows nothing; but that the whole seems to be a medullary substance, compactly treasured up in infinite millions of imperceptible cells, that, disposed in an unconceivable order, are cluttered together in a perplexing variety of folds and windings. He will add, perhaps, that it is reasonable to think this to be the capacious exchequer of human knowledge, in which the faithful senses deposit the vast treasure of images, constantly, as through their organs they receive them; that it is the office in which the spirits are separated from the blood, and afterwards sublimed and volatilized into particles hardly corporeal; and that the most minute of these are always, either searching for, or variously disposing the images retained, and shooting through the infinite meanders of that wonderful substance, employ themselves, without ceasing, in that inexplicable performance, the contemplation of which fills the most exalted genius with amazement.

Hor. These are very airy conjectures; but nothing of all this can be proved: The smallness of the parts, you will say, is the reason; but if greater improvements were made in optic glasses, and microscopes could be invented that magnified objects three or four millions of times more than they do now, then certainly those minute particles, so immensely remote from the senses you speak of, might be observed, if that which does the work is corporeal at all.

Cleo. That such improvements are impossible, is demonstrable; but if it was not, even then we could have little help from anatomy. The brain of an animal cannot be looked and searched into whilst it is alive. Should you take the main spring out of a watch, and leave the barrel that contained it standing empty, it would be impossible to find out what it had been that made it exert itself, whilst it showed the time. We might examine all the wheels, and every other part belonging either to the movement or the motion, and, perhaps, find out the use of them, in relation to the turning of the hands; but the first cause of this labour would remain a mystery for ever.

Hor. The main spring in us is the soul, which is immaterial and immortal: but what is that to other creatures that have a brain like ours, and no such immortal substance distinct from body? Do not you believe that dogs and horses think?

Cleo. I believe they do, though in a degree of perfection far inferior to us.

Hor. What is it that superintends thought in them? where must we look for it? which is the main spring?

Cleo. I can answer you no otherwise, than life.

Hor. What is life?

Cleo. Every body understands the meaning of the word, though, perhaps, nobody knows the principle of life, that part which gives motion to all the rest.

Hor. Where men are certain that the truth of a thing is not to be known, they will always differ, and endeavour to impose upon one another.

Cleo. Whilst there are fools and knaves, they will; but I have not imposed upon you: what I said of the labour of the brain, I told you, was a conjecture, which I recommend no farther to you than you shall think it probable. You ought to expect no demonstration of a thing, that from its nature can admit of none. When the breath is gone, and the circulation ceased, the inside of an animal is vastly different from what it was whilst the lungs played, and the blood and juices were in full motion through every part of it. You have seen those engines that raise water by the help of fire; the steam you know, is that which forces it up; it is as impossible to see the volatile particles that perform the labour of the brain, when the creature is dead, as in the engine it would be to see the steam (which yet does all the work), when the fire is out and the water cold. Yet if this engine was shown to a man when it was not at work, and it was explained to him, which way it raised the water, it would be a strange incredulity, or great dullness of apprehension, not to believe it; if he knew perfectly well, that by heat, liquids may be rarified into vapour.

Hor. But do not you think there is a difference in souls; and are they all equally good or equally bad?

Cleo. We have some tolerable ideas of matter and motion; or, at least, of what we mean by them, and therefore we may form ideas of things corporeal, though they are beyond the reach of our senses; and we can conceive any portion of matter a thousand times less than our eyes, even by the help of the best microscopes, are able to see it: but the soul is altogether incomprehensible, and we can determine but little about it, that is not revealed to us. I believe that the difference of capacities in men, depends upon, and is entirely owing to the difference there is between them, either in the fabric itself, that is, the greater or lesser exactness in the composure of their frame, or else in the use that is made of it. The brain of a child, newly born, is carte blanche; and, as you have hinted very justly, we have no ideas, which we are not obliged for to our senses. I make no question, but that in this rummaging of the spirits through the brain, in hunting after, joining, separating, changing, and compounding of ideas with inconceivable swiftness, under the superintendency of the soul, the action of thinking consists. The best thing, therefore, we can do to infants after the first month, besides feeding and keeping them from harm, is to make them take in ideas, beginning by the two most useful senses, the sight and hearing; and dispose them to set about this labour of the brain, and by our example encourage them to imitate us in thinking; which, on their side, is very poorly performed at first. Therefore the more an infant in health is talked to and jumbled about, the better it is for it, at least, for the first two years; and for its attendance in this early education, to the wisest matron in the world, I would prefer an active young wench, whose tongue never stands still, that should run about, and never cease diverting and playing with it whilst it was awake; and where people can afford it, two or three of them, to relieve one another when they are tired, are better than one.

Hor. Then you think children reap great benefit from the nonsensical chat of nurses?

Cleo. It is of inestimable use to them, and teaches them to think, as well as speak, much sooner and better, than with equal aptitude of parts they would do without. The business is to make them exert those faculties, and keep infants continually employed about them; for the time which is lost then, is never to be retrieved.

Hor. Yet we seldom remember any thing of what we saw or heard, before we were two years old: then what would be lost, if children should not hear all that impertinence?

Cleo. As iron is to be hammered whilst it is hot and ductile, so children are to be taught when they are young: as the flesh and every tube and membrane about them, are then tenderer, and will yield sooner to slight impressions, than afterwards; so many of their bones are but cartilages, and the brain itself is much softer, and in a manner fluid. This is the reason, that it cannot so well retain the images it receives, as it does afterwards, when the substance of it comes to be of a better consistence. But as the first images are lost, so they are continually succeeded by new ones; and the brain at first serves as a slate to cypher, or a sampler to work upon. What infants should chiefly learn, is the performance itself, the exercise of thinking, and to contract a habit of disposing, and with ease and agility managing the images retained, to the purpose intended; which is never attained better than whilst the matter is yielding, and the organs are most flexible and supple. So they but exercise themselves in thinking and speaking, it is no matter what they think on, or what they say, that is inoffensive. In sprightly infants, we soon see by their eyes the efforts they are making to imitate us, before they are able; and that they try at this exercise of the brain, and make essays to think, as well as they do to hammer out words, we may know from the incoherence of their actions, and the strange absurdities they utter: but as there are more degrees of thinking well, than there are of speaking plain, the first is of the greatest consequence.

Hor. I wonder you should talk of teaching, and lay so great a stress on a thing that comes so naturally to us, as thinking: no action is performed with greater velocity by every body: as quick as thought, is a proverb, and in less than a moment a stupid peasant may remove his ideas from London to Japan, as easily as the greatest wit.

Cleo. Yet there is nothing, in which men differ so immensely from one another, as they do in the exercise of this faculty: the differences between them in height, bulk, strength, and beauty, are trifling in comparison to that which I speak of; and there is nothing in the world more valuable, or more plainly perceptible in persons, than a happy dexterity of thinking. Two men may have equal knowledge, and yet the one shall speak as well off-hand, as the other can after two hours study.

Hor. I take it for granted, that no man would study two hours for a speech, if he knew how to make it in less; and therefore I cannot see what reason you have to suppose two such persons to be of equal knowledge.

Cleo. There is a double meaning in the word knowing, which you seem not to attend to. There is a great difference between knowing a violin when you see it, and knowing how to play upon it. The knowledge I speak of is of the first sort; and if you consider it in that sense, you must be of my opinion; for no study can fetch any thing out of the brain that is not there. Suppose you conceive a short epistle in three minutes, which another, who can make letters and join them together as fast as yourself, is yet an hour about, though both of you write the same thing, it is plain to me, that the slow person knows as much as you do; at least it does not appear that he knows less. He has received the same images, but he cannot come at them, or at least not dispose them in that order, so soon as yourself. When we see two exercises of equal goodness, either in prose or verse, if the one is made ex tempore, and we are sure of it, and the other has cost two days labour, the author of the first is a person of finer natural parts than the other, though their knowledge, for ought we know, is the same. You see, then, the difference between knowledge, as it signifies the treasure of images received, and knowledge, or rather skill, to find out those images when we want them, and work them readily to our purpose.

Hor. When we know a thing, and cannot readily think of it, or bring it to mind, I thought that was the fault of the memory.

Cleo. So it may be in part: but there are men of prodigious reading, that have likewise great memories, who judge ill, and seldom say any thing a propos, or say it when it is too late. Among the belluones librorum, the cormorants of books, there are wretched reasoners, that have canine appetites, and no digestion. What numbers of learned fools do we not meet with in large libraries; from whose works it is evident, that knowledge must have lain in their heads, as furniture at an upholder's; and the treasure of the brain was a burden to them instead of an ornament! All this proceeds from a defect in the faculty of thinking; an unskilfulness, and want of aptitude in managing, to the best advantage, the ideas we have received. We see others, on the contrary, that have very fine sense, and no literature at all. The generality of women are quicker of invention, and more ready at repartee, than the men, with equal helps of education; and it is surprising to see, what a considerable figure some of them make in conversation, when we consider the small opportunities they have had of acquiring knowledge.

Hor. But sound judgment is a great rarity among them.

Cleo. Only for want of practice, application, and assiduity. Thinking on abstruse matters, is not their province in life; and as the stations they are commonly placed in find them other employment; but there is no labour of the brain which women are not as capable of performing, at least as well as the men, with the same assistance, if they set about, and persevere in it: sound judgment is no more than the result of that labour: he that uses himself to take things to pieces, to compare them together, to consider them abstractly and impartially; that is, he who of two propositions he is to examine seems not to care which is true; he that lays the whole stress of his mind on every part alike, and puts the same thing in all the views it can be seen in: he, I say, that employs himself most often in this exercise, is most likely caeteris paribus to acquire what we call a sound judgment. The workmanship in the make of women seems to be more elegant, and better finished: the features are more delicate, the voice is sweeter, the whole outside of them is more curiously wove, than they are in men; and the difference in the skin between theirs and ours is the same, as there is between fine cloth and coarse. There is no reason to imagine, that nature should have been more neglectful of them out of sight, than she has where we can trace her; and not have taken the same care of them in the formation, of the brain, as to the nicety of the structure, and superior accuracy in the fabric, which is so visible in the rest of their frame.

Hor. Beauty is their attribute, as strength is ours.

Cleo. How minute soever those particles of the brain are, that contain the several images, and are assisting in the operation of thinking, there must be a difference in the justness, the symmetry, and exactness of them between one person and another, as well as there is in the grosser parts: what the women excel us in, then, is the goodness of the instrument, either in the harmony or pliableness of the organs, which must be very material in the art of thinking, and is the only thing that deserves the name of natural parts, since the aptitude I have spoke of, depending upon exercise, is notoriously acquired.

Hor. As the workmanship in the brain is rather more curious in women than it is in men, so, in sheep and oxen, dogs and horses, I suppose it is infinitely coarser.

Cleo. We have no reason to think otherwise,

Hor. But after all, that self, that part of us that wills and wishes, that chooses one thing rather than another, must be incorporeal: For if it is matter, it must either be one single particle, which I can almost feel it is not, or a combination of many, which is more than inconceivable.

Cleo. I do not deny what you say; and that the principle of thought and action is inexplicable in all creatures I have hinted already: But its being incorporeal does not mend the matter, as to the difficulty of explaining or conceiving it. That there must be a mutual contact between this principle, whatever it is, and the body itself, is what we are certain of a posteriori; and a reciprocal action upon each other, between an immaterial substance and matter, is as incomprehensible to human capacity, as that thought should be the result of matter and motion.

Hor. Though many other animals seem to be endued with thought, there is no creature we are acquainted with, besides man, that shows or seems to feel a consciousness of his thinking.

Cleo. It is not easy to determine what instincts, properties, or capacities other creatures are either possessed or destitute of, when those qualifications fall not under our senses: But it is highly probable, that the principal and most necessary parts of the machine are less elaborate in animals, that attain to all the perfection they are capable of in three, four, five, or six years at furthest, than they are in a creature that hardly comes to maturity, its full growth and strength in five and twenty. The consciousness of a man of fifty, that he is the same man that did such a thing at twenty, and was once the boy that had such and such masters, depends wholly upon the memory, and can never be traced to the bottom: I mean, that no man remembers any thing of himself, or what was transacted before he was two years old, when he was but a novice in the art of thinking, and the brain was not yet of a due consistence to retain long the images it received: But this remembrance, how far soever it may reach, gives us no greater surety of ourselves, than we should have of another that had been brought up with us, and never above a week or a month out of sight. A mother, when her son is thirty years old, has more reason to know that he is the same whom she brought into the world than himself; and such a one, who daily minds her son, and remembers the alterations of his features from time to time, is more certain of him that he was not changed in the cradle, than she can be of herself. So that all we can know of this consciousness, is, that it consists in, or is the result of the running and rummaging of the spirits through all the mazes of the brain, and their looking there for facts concerning ourselves: He that has lost his memory, though otherwise in perfect health, cannot think better than a fool, and is no more conscious that he is the same he was a-year ago, than he is of a man whom he has known but a fortnight. There are several degrees of losing our memory; but he who has entirely lost it becomes, ipso facto, an idiot.

Hor. I am conscious of having been the occasion of our rambling a great way from the subject we were upon, but I do not repent of it: What you have said of the economy of the brain, and the mechanical influence of thought upon the grosser parts, is a noble theme for contemplation on the infinite unutterable wisdom with which the various instincts are so visibly planted in all animals, to fit them for the respective purposes they were designed for; and every appetite is so wonderfully interwove with the very substance of their frame. Nothing could be more seasonable, after you had showed me the origin of politeness, and in the management of self-liking, set forth the excellency of our species beyond all other animals so conspicuously in the superlative docility and indefatigable industry, by which all multitudes are capable of drawing innumerable benefits, as well for the ease and comfort, as the welfare and safety of congregate bodies, from a most stubborn and an unconquerable passion, which, in its nature, seems to be destructive to sociableness and society, and never fails, in untaught men, to render them insufferable to one another.

Cleo. By the same method of reasoning from facts a posteriori, that has laid open to us the nature and usefulness of self-liking, all the rest of the passions may easily be accounted for, and become intelligible. It is evident, that the necessaries of life stand not every where ready dished up before all creatures; therefore they have instincts that prompt them to look out for those necessaries, and teach them how to come at them. The zeal and alacrity to gratify their appetites, is always proportioned to the strength, and the degree of force with which those instincts work upon every creature: But, considering the disposition of things upon earth, and the multiplicity of animals that have all their own wants to supply, it must be obvious, that these attempts of creatures, to obey the different calls of nature, will be often opposed and frustrated, and that, in many animals, they would seldom meet with success, if every individual was not endued with a passion, that, summoning all his strength, inspired him with a transporting eagerness to overcome the obstacles that hinder him in his great work of self-preservation. The passion I describe is called anger. How a creature possessed of this passion and self-liking, when he sees others enjoy what he wants, should be affected with envy, can likewise be no mystery. After labour, the most savage, and the most industrious creature seeks rest: Hence we learn, that all of them are furnished, more or less, with a love of ease: Exerting their strength tires them; and the loss of spirits, experience teaches us, is best repaired by food and sleep. We see that creatures, who, in their way of living, must meet with the greatest opposition, have the greatest share of anger, and are born with offensive arms. If this anger was to employ a creature always, without consideration of the danger he exposed himself to, he would soon be destroyed: For this reason, they are all endued with fear; and the lion himself turns tail, if the hunters are armed, and too numerous. From what we observe in the behaviour of brutes, we have reason to think, that among the more perfect animals, those of the same species have a capacity, on many occasions, to make their wants known to one another; and we are sure of several, not only that they understand one another, but likewise that they may be made to understand us. In comparing our species with that of other animals, when we consider the make of man, and the qualifications that are obvious in him, his superior capacity in the faculties of thinking and reflecting beyond other creatures, his being capable of learning to speak, and the usefulness of his hands and fingers, there is no room to doubt, that he is more fit for society than any other animal we know.

Hor. Since you wholly reject my Lord Shaftsbury's system, I wish you would give me your opinion at large concerning society, and the sociableness of man; and I will hearken to you with great attention.

Cleo. The cause of sociableness in man, that is, his fitness for society, is no such abstruse matter: A person of middling capacity, that has some experience, and a tolerable knowledge of human nature, may soon find it out, if his desire of knowing the truth be sincere, and he will look for it without prepossession; but most people that have treated on this subject, had a turn to serve, and a cause in view, which they were resolved to maintain. It is very unworthy of a philosopher to say, as Hobbes did, that man is born unfit for society, and allege no better reason for it, than the incapacity that infants come into the world with; but some of his adversaries have as far overshot the mark, when they asserted, that every thing which man can attain to, ought to be esteemed as a cause of his fitness for society.

Hor. But is there in the mind of man a natural affection, that prompts him to love his species beyond what other animals have for theirs; or, are we born with hatred and aversion, that makes us wolves and bears to one another?

Cleo. I believe neither. From what appears to us in human affairs, and the works of nature, we have more reason to imagine, that the desire, as well as aptness of man to associate, do not proceed from his love to others, than we have to believe that a mutual affection of the planets to one another, superior to what they feel to stars more remote, is not the true cause why they keep always moving together in the same solar system.

Hor. You do not believe that the stars have any love for one another, I am sure: Then why more reason?

Cleo. Because there are no phenomena plainly to contradict this love of the planets; and we meet with thousands every day to convince us, that man centres every thing in himself, and neither loves nor hates, but for his own sake. Every individual is a little world by itself, and all creatures, as far as their understanding and abilities will let them, endeavour to make that self happy: This, in all of them, is the continual labour, and seems to be the whole design of life. Hence it follows, that in the choice of things, men must be determined by the perception they have of happiness; and no person can commit, or set about an action, which, at that then present time, seems not to be the best to him.

Hor. What will you then say to, video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor?

Cleo. That only shows the turpitude of our inclinations. But men may say what they please: Every motion in a free agent, which he does not approve of, is either convulsive, or it is not his; I speak of those that are subject to the will. When two things are left to a person's choice, it is a demonstration that he thinks that most eligible which he chooses, how contradictory, impertinent, or pernicious soever his reason for choosing it may be: Without this, there could be no voluntary suicide; and it would be injustice to punish men for their crimes.

Hor. I believe every body endeavours to be pleased; but it is inconceivable that creatures of the same species should differ so much from one another, as men do in their notions of pleasure; and that some of them should take delight in what is the greatest aversion to others: All aim at happiness; but the question is, Where is it to be found?

Cleo. It is with complete felicity in this world, as it is with the philosopher's stone: Both have been sought after many different ways, by wise men as well as fools, though neither of them has been obtained hitherto: But in searching after either, diligent inquirers have often stumbled by chance on useful discoveries of things they did not look for, and which human sagacity, labouring with design a priori, never would have detected. Multitudes of our species may, in any habitable part of the globe, assist one another in a common defence, and be raised into a politic body, in which men shall live comfortably together for many centuries, without being acquainted with a thousand things, that if known, would every one of them be instrumental to render the happiness of the public more complete, according to the common notions men have of happiness. In one part of the world, we have found great and flourishing nations that knew nothing of ships; and in others, traffic by sea had been in use above two thousand years, and navigation had received innumerable improvements, before they knew how to sail by the help of the loadstone: It would be ridiculous to allege this piece of knowledge, either as a reason why man first chose to go to sea, or as an argument to prove his natural capacity for maritime affairs. To raise a garden, it is necessary that we should have a soil and a climate fit for that purpose. When we have these, we want nothing besides patience, but the seeds of vegetables and proper culture. Fine walks and canals, statues, summer-houses, fountains, and cascades, are great improvements on the delights of nature; but they are not essential to the existence of a garden. All nations must have had mean beginnings; and it is in those, the infancy of them, that the sociableness of man is as conspicuous as it can be ever after. Man is called a sociable creature chiefly for two reasons: First, because it is commonly imagined that he is naturally more fond and desirous of society, than any other creature. Secondly, because it is manifest, that associating in men turns to better account than it possibly could do in other animals, if they were to attempt it.

Hor. But why do you say of the first, that it is commonly imagined; is it not true then?

Cleo. I have a very good reason for this caution. All men born in society, are certainly more desirous of it than any other animal; but whether man be naturally so, that is a question: But, if he was, it is no excellency, nothing to brag of: The love man has for his ease and security, and his perpetual desire of meliorating his condition, must be sufficient motives to make him fond of society, concerning the necessitous and helpless condition of his nature.

Hor. Do not you fall into the same error, which, you say, Hobbes has been guilty of, when you talk of man's necessitous and helpless condition?

Cleo. Not at all; I speak of men and women full grown; and the more extensive their knowledge is, the higher their quality, and the greater their possessions are, the more necessitous and helpless they are in their nature. A nobleman of twenty-five or thirty thousand pounds a-year, that has three or four coaches and six, and above fifty people to serve him, is in his person considered singly, abstract from what he possesses, more necessitous than an obscure man that has but fifty pounds a-year, and is used to walk a-foot; so a lady, who never stuck a pin in herself, and is dressed and undressed from head to foot like a jointed baby by her woman, and the assistance of another maid or two, is a more helpless creature than doll the diary-maid, who, all the winter long, dresses herself in the dark in less time than the other bestows in placing of her patches.

Hor. But is the desire of meliorating our condition which you named, so general, that no man is without it?

Cleo. Not one that can be called a sociable creature; and I believe this to be as much a characteristic of our species as any can be named: For there is not a man in the world, educated in society, who, if he could compass it by wishing, would not have something added to, taken from, or altered in his person, possessions, circumstances, or any part of the society he belongs to. This is what is not to be perceived in any creature but man; whose great industry in supplying what he calls his wants, could never have been known so well as it is, if it had not been for the unreasonableness, as well as multiplicity of his desires. From all which, it is manifest, that the most civilized people stand most in need of society, and consequently, none less than savages. The second reason for which I said man was called sociable, is, that associating together turned to better account in our species than it would do in any other, if they were to try it. To find out the reason of this, we must search into human nature for such qualifications as we excel all other animals in, and which the generality of men are endued with, taught or untaught: But in doing this, we should neglect nothing that is observable in them, from their most early youth to their extreme old age.

Hor. I cannot see why you use this precaution, of taking in the whole age of man; would it not be sufficient to mind those qualifications which he is possessed of, when he is come to the height of maturity, or his greatest perfection?

Cleo. A considerable part of what is called docility in creatures, depends upon the pliableness of the parts, and their fitness to be moved with facility, which are either entirely lost, or very much impaired, when they are full grown. There is nothing in which our species so far surpasses all others, than in the capacity of acquiring the faculty of thinking and speaking well: that this is a peculiar property belonging to our nature is very certain, yet it is as manifest, that this capacity vanishes, when we come to maturity, if till then it has been neglected. The term of life likewise, that is commonly enjoyed by our species, being longer than it is in most other animals, we have a prerogative above them in point of time; and man has a greater opportunity of advancing in wisdom, though not to be acquired but by his own experience, than a creature that lives but half his age, though it had the same capacity. A man of threescore, caeteris paribus, knows better what is to be embraced or avoided in life, than a man of thirty. What Mitio, in excusing the follies of youth, said to his brother Demea, in the Adelphi, ad omnia alia AEtate sapimus rectius, holds among savages, as well as among philosophers. It is the concurrence of these, with other properties, that together compose the sociableness of man.

Hor. But why may not the love of our species be named, as one of these properties?

Cleo. First, because, as I have said already, it does not appear, that we have it beyond other animals: secondly, because it is out of the question: for if we examine into the nature of all bodies politic, we shall find, that no dependance is ever had, or stress laid on any such affection, either for the raising or maintaining of them.

Hor. But the epithet itself, the signification of the word, imports this love to one another; as is manifest from the contrary. One who loves solitude, is averse to company, or of a singular, reserved, and sullen temper, is the very reverse of a sociable man.

Cleo. When we compare some men to others, the word, I own, is often used in that sense: but when we speak of a quality peculiar to our species, and say, that man is a sociable creature, the word implies no more, than that in our nature we have a certain fitness, by which great multitudes of us cooperating, may be united and formed into one body; that endued with, and, able to make use of, the strength, skill and prudence of every individual, shall govern itself, and act on all emergencies, as if it was animated by one soul, and actuated by one will. I am willing to allow, that among the motives that prompt man to enter into society, there is a desire which he has naturally after company; but he has it for his own sake, in hopes of being the better for it; and he would never wish for either company or any thing else, but for some advantage or other he proposes to himself from it. What I deny is, that man naturally has such a desire, out of a fondness of his species, superior to what other animals have for theirs. It is a compliment which we commonly pay to ourselves, but there is no more reality in it, than in our being one another's humble servants; and I insist upon it, that this pretended love of our species, and natural affection we are said to have for one another, beyond other animals, is neither instrumental to the erecting of societies, nor ever trusted to in our prudent commerce with one another when associated, any more than if it had no existence. The undoubted basis of all societies is government: this truth, well examined into, will furnish us with all the reasons of man's excellency as to sociableness. It is evident from it, that creatures, to be raised into a community, must, in the first place, be governable: This is a qualification that requires fear, and some degree of understanding; for a creature not susceptible of fear, is never to be governed; and the more sense and courage it has, the more refractory and untractable it will be, without the influence of that useful passion: and again, fear without understanding puts creatures only upon avoiding the danger dreaded, without considering what will become of themselves afterwards: so wild birds will beat out their brains against the cage, before they will save their lives by eating. There is a great difference between being submissive, and being governable; for he who barely submits to another, only embraces what he dislikes, to shun what he dislikes more; and we may be very submissive, and be of no use to the person we submit to: but to be governable, implies an endeavour to please, and a willingness to exert ourselves in behalf of the person that governs: but love beginning every where at home, no creature can labour for others, and be easy long, whilst self is wholly out of the question: therefore a creature is then truly governable, when reconciled to submission, it has learned to construe his servitude to his own advantage; and rests satisfied with the account it finds for itself, in the labour it performs for others. Several kind of animals are, or may, with little trouble, be made thus governable; but there is not one creature so tame, that it can be made to serve its own species, but man; yet without this he could never have been made sociable.

Hor. But was not man by nature designed for society?

Cleo. We know from revelation that man was made for society.

Hor. But if it had not been revealed, or you had been a Chinese, or a Mexican, what would you answer me as a philosopher?

Cleo. That nature had designed man for society, as she has made grapes for wine.

Hor. To make wine is an invention of man, as it is to press oil from olives and other vegetables, and to make ropes of hemp.

Cleo. And so it is to form a society of independent multitudes; and there is nothing that requires greater skill.

Hor. But is not the sociableness of man the work of nature, or rather of the author of nature, Divine Providence?

Cleo. Without doubt: But so is the innate virtue and peculiar aptitude of every thing; that grapes are fit to make wine, and barley and water to make other liquors, is the work of Providence; but it is human sagacity that finds out the uses we make of them: all the other capacities of man likewise, as well as his sociableness, are evidently derived from God, who made him: every thing therefore that our industry can produce or compass, is originally owing to the Author of our being. But when we speak of the works of nature, to distinguish them from those of art, we mean such as were brought forth without our concurrence. So nature, in due season produces peas; but in England you cannot have them green in January, without art and uncommon industry. What nature designs, she executes herself: there are creatures, of whom it is visible, that nature has designed them for society, as is most obvious in bees, to whom she has given instincts for that purpose, as appears from the effects. We owe our being and every thing else to the great Author of the universe; but as societies cannot subsist without his preserving power, so they cannot exist without the concurrence of human wisdom: all of them must have a dependance either on mutual compact, or the force of the strong exerting itself upon the patience of the weak. The difference between the works of art, and those of nature, is so immense, that it is impossible not to know them asunder. Knowing, a priori, belongs to God only, and Divine Wisdom acts with an original certainty, of which, what we call demonstration, is but an imperfect borrowed copy. Amongst the works of nature, therefore, we see no trials nor essays; they are all complete, and such as she would have them, at the first production; and, where she has not been interrupted, highly finished, beyond the reach of our understanding, as well as senses. Wretched man, on the contrary is sure of nothing, his own existence not excepted, but from reasoning, a posteriori. The consequence of this is, that the works of art and human invention are all very lame and defective, and most of them pitifully mean at first: our knowledge is advanced by slow degrees, and some arts and sciences require the experience of many ages, before they can be brought to any tolerable perfection. Have we any reason to imagine that the society of bees, that sent forth the first swarm, made worse wax or honey than any of their posterity have produced since? And again the laws of nature are fixed and unalterable: in all her orders and regulations there is a stability, no where to be met with in things of human contrivance and approbation;

Quid placet aut odio est, quod non mutabile credas?

Is it probable, that amongst the bees, there has ever been any other form of government than what every swarm submits to now? What an infinite variety of speculations, what ridiculous schemes have not been proposed amongst men, on the subject of government; what dissentions in opinion, and what fatal quarrels has it not been the occasion of! and which is the best form of it, is a question to this day undecided. The projects, good and bad, that have been stated for the benefit, and more happy establishment of society, are innumerable; but how short sighted is our sagacity, how fallible human judgment! What has seemed highly advantageous to mankind in one age, has often been found to be evidently detrimental by the succeeding; and even among contemporaries, what is revered in one country, is the abomination of another. What changes have ever bees made in their furniture or architecture? have they ever made cells that were not sexangular, or added any tools to those which nature furnished them with at the beginning? What mighty structures have been raised, what prodigious works have been performed by the great nations of the world! Toward all these nature has only found materials: the quarry yields marble, but it is the sculptor that makes a statue of it. To have the infinite variety of iron tools that have been invented, nature has given us nothing but the oar, which she has hid in the bowels of the earth.

Hor. But the capacity of the workmen, the inventors of arts, and those that improved them, has had a great share in bringing those labours to perfection; and their genius they had from nature.

Cleo. So far as it depended upon the make of their frame, the accuracy of the machine they had, and no further; but this I have allowed already; and if you remember what I have said on this head, you will find, that the part which nature contributed toward the skill and patience of every single person, that had a hand in those works, was very inconsiderable.

Hor. If I have not misunderstood you, you would insinuate two things: First, that the fitness of man for society, beyond other animals, is something real; but that it is hardly perceptible in individuals, before great numbers of them are joined together, and artfully managed. Secondly, that this real something, this sociableness, is a compound that consists in a concurrence of several things, and not in any one palpable quality, that man is endued with, and brutes are destitute of.

Cleo. You are perfectly right: every grape contains a small quantity of juice, and when great heaps of them are squeezed together, they yield a liquor, which by skilful management may be made into wine: but if we consider how necessary fermentation is to the vinosity of the liquor, I mean, how essential is it to its being wine, it will be evident to us, that without great impropriety of speech, it cannot be said, that in every grape there is wine.

Hor. Vinosity, so far as it is the effect of fermentation, is adventitious; and what none of the grapes could ever have received whilst they remained single; and, therefore, if you would compare the sociableness of man to the vinosity of wine, you must show me, that in society there is an equivalent for fermentation; I mean something that individual persons are not actually possessed of, whilst they remain single, and which likewise is palpably adventitious to multitudes when joined together; in the same manner as fermentation is to the juice of grapes, and as necessary and essential to the completing of society as that is, that same fermentation, to procure the vinosity of wine.

Cleo. Such an equivalent is demonstrable in mutual commerce: for if we examine every faculty and qualification, from and for which we judge and pronounce man to be a sociable creature beyond other animals, we shall find, that a very considerable, if not the greatest part of the attribute is acquired, and comes upon multitudes, from their conversing with one another. Fabricando fabri simus. Men become sociable, by living together in society. Natural affection prompts all mothers to take care of the offspring they dare own; so far as to feed and keep them from harm, whilst they are helpless: but where people are poor, and the women have no leisure to indulge themselves in the various expressions of their fondness for their infants, which fondling of them ever increases, they are often very remiss in tending and playing with them; and the more healthy and quiet such children are, the more they are neglected. This want of prattling to, and stirring up the spirits in babes, is often the principal cause of an invincible stupidity, as well as ignorance, when they are grown up; and we often ascribe to natural incapacity, what is altogether owing to the neglect of this early instruction. We have so few examples of human creatures, that never conversed with their own species, that it is hard to guess, what man would be, entirely untaught; but we have good reason to believe, that the faculty of thinking would be very imperfect in such a one, if we consider, that the greatest docility can be of no use to a creature, whilst it has nothing to imitate, nor any body to teach it.

Hor. Philosophers therefore are very wisely employed, when they discourse about the laws of nature; and pretend to determine what a man in the state of nature would think, and which way he would reason concerning himself and the creation, uninstructed.

Cleo. Thinking, and reasoning justly, as Mr. Locke has rightly observed, require time and practice. Those that have not used themselves to thinking, but just on their present necessities, make poor work of it, when they try beyond that. In remote parts, and such as are least inhabited, we shall find our species come nearer the state of nature, than it does in and near great cities and considerable towns, even in the most civilized nations. Among the most ignorant of such people, you may learn the truth of my assertion; talk to them about any thing, that requires abstract thinking, and there is not one in fifty that will understand you, any more than a horse would; and yet many of them are useful labourers, and cunning enough to tell lies and deceive. Man is a rational creature, but he is not endued with reason when he comes into the world; nor can he afterwards put it on when he pleases, at once, as he may a garment. Speech likewise is a characteristic of our species, but no man is born with it; and a dozen generations proceeding from two savages would not produce any tolerable language; nor have we reason to believe, that a man could be taught to speak after five-and-twenty, if he had never heard others before that time.

Hor. The necessity of teaching, whilst the organs are supple, and easily yield to impression, which you have spoke of before, I believe is of great weight, both in speaking and thinking; but could a dog, or a monkey, ever be taught to speak?

Cleo. I believe not; but I do not think, that creatures of another species had ever the pains bestowed upon them, that some children have, before they can pronounce one word. Another thing to be considered is, that though some animals perhaps live longer than we do, there is no species that remains young so long as ours; and besides what we owe to the superior aptitude to learn, which we have from the great accuracy of our frame and inward structure, we are not a little indebted for our docility, to the slowness and long gradation of our increase, before we are full grown: the organs in other creatures grow stiff, before ours are come to half their perfection.

Hor. So that in the compliment we make to our species, of its being endued with speech and sociableness, there is no other reality, than that by care and industry men may be taught to speak, and be made sociable, if the discipline begins when they are very young.

Cleo. Not otherwise. A thousand of our species all grown up, that is above five-and-twenty, could never be made sociable, if they had been brought up wild, and were all strangers to one another.

Hor. I believe they could not be civilized, if their education began so late.

Cleo. But I mean barely sociable, as it is the epithet peculiar to man; that is, it would be impossible by art to govern them, any more than so many wild horses, unless you had two or three times that number to watch and keep them in awe. Therefore it is highly probable, that most societies, and beginnings of nations, were formed in the manner Sir William Temple supposes it; but nothing near so fast: and I wonder how a man of his unquestionable good sense, could form an idea of justice, prudence, and wisdom, in an untaught creature; or think of a civilized man, before there was any civil society, and even before men had commenced to associate.

Hor. I have read it, I am sure, but I do not remember what it is you mean.

Cleo. He is just behind you; the third shelf from the bottom; the first volume: pray reach it me, it is worth your hearing.----It is in his Essay on Government. Here it is. "For if we consider man multiplying his kind by the birth of many children, and his cares by providing even necessary food for them, until they are able to do it for themselves (which happens much later to the generations of men, and makes a much longer dependence of children upon parents, than we can observe among any other creatures); if we consider not only the cares, but the industry he is forced to, for the necessary sustenance of his helpless brood, either in gathering the natural fruits, or raising those which are purchased with labour and toil: if he be forced for supply of this stock, to catch the tamer creatures, and hunt the wilder, sometimes to exercise his courage in defending his little family, and fighting with the strong and savage beasts (that would prey upon him, as he does upon the weak and mild): if we suppose him disposing with discretion and order, whatever he gets among his children, according to each of their hunger or need; sometimes laying up for to-morrow, what was more than enough for to-day; at other times pinching himself, rather than suffering any of them should want.----"

Hor. This man is no savage, or untaught creature; he is fit to be a justice of peace.

Cleo. Pray let me go on, I shall only read this paragraph: "And as each of them grows up, and able to share in the common support, teaching them, both by lesson and example, what he is now to do, as the son of his family, and what hereafter, as the father of another; instructing them all, what qualities are good, and what are ill, for their health and life, or common society (which will certainly comprehend whatever is generally esteemed virtue or vice among men), cherishing and encouraging dispositions to the good, disfavouring and punishing those to the ill: And lastly, among the various accidents of life, lifting up his eyes to Heaven, when the earth affords him no relief; and having recourse to a higher and a greater nature, whenever he finds the frailty of his own: we must needs conclude, that the children of this man cannot fail of being bred up with a great opinion of his wisdom, his goodness, his valour, and his piety. And if they see constant plenty in the family, they believe well of his fortune too."

Hor. Did this man spring out of the earth, I wonder, or did he drop from the sky?

Cleo. There is no manner of absurdity in supposing----.

Hor. The discussion of this would too far engage us: I am sure, I have tired you already with my impertinence.

Cleo. You have pleased me extremely: the questions you have asked have all been very pertinent, and such as every man of sense would make, that had not made it his business to think on these things. I read that passage on purpose to you, to make some use of it; but if you are weary of the subject, I will not trespass upon your patience any longer.

Hor. You mistake me; I begin to be fond of the subject: but before we talk of it any further, I have a mind to run over that Essay again; it is a great while since I read it: and after that I shall be glad to resume the discourse; the sooner the better. I know you are a lover of fine fruit, if you will dine with me to-morrow, I will give you an ananas.

Cleo. I love your company so well, that I can refuse no opportunity of enjoying it.

Hor. A revoir then.

Cleo. Your servant.

THE FIFTH DIALOGUE BETWEEN HORATIO AND CLEOMENES.

CLEOMENES.

It excels every thing; it is extremely rich without being luscious, and I know nothing to which I can compare the taste of it: to me it seems to be a collection of different fine flavours, that puts me in mind of several delicious fruits, which yet are all outdone by it.

Hor. I am glad it pleased you.

Cleo. The scent of it likewise is wonderfully reviving. As you was paring it, a fragrancy, I thought, perfumed the room that was perfectly cordial.

Hor. The inside of the rhind has an oiliness of no disagreeable smell, that upon handling of it sticks to ones fingers for a considerable time; for though now I have washed and wiped my hands, the flavour of it will not be entirely gone from them by to-morrow morning.

Cleo. This was the third I ever tasted of our own growth; the production of them in these northern climates, is no small instance of human industry, and our improvements in gardening. It is very elegant to enjoy the wholesome air of temperate regions, and at the same time be able to raise fruit to its highest maturity, that naturally requires the sun of the Torrid Zone.

Hor. It is easy enough to procure heat, but the great art consists in finding out, and regulating the degrees of it at pleasure; without which it would be impossible to ripen an ananas here, and to compass this with that exactness, as it is done by the help of thermometers, was certainly a fine invention.

Cleo. I do not care to drink any more.

Hor. Just as you please; otherwise I was going to name a health, which would not have come mal a propos.

Cleo. Whose is that, pray?

Hor. I was thinking on the man to whom we are in a great measure obliged for the production and culture of the exotic, we were speaking of, in this kingdom; Sir Matthew Decker, the first ananas or pine-apple, that was brought to perfection in England, grew in his garden at Richmond.

Cleo. With all my heart; let us finish with that; he is a beneficent, and, I believe, a very honest man.

Hor. It would not be easy to name another, who, with the same knowledge of the world, and capacity of getting money, is equally disinterested and inoffensive.

Cleo. Have you considered the things we discoursed of yesterday?

Hor. I have thought on nothing else since I saw you: This morning I went through the whole Essay, and with more attention than I did formerly: I like it very well; only that passage which you read yesterday, and some others to the same purpose, I cannot reconcile with the account we have of man's origin from the Bible: Since all are descendants from Adam, and consequently of Noah and his posterity, how came savages into the world?

Cleo. The history of the world, as to very ancient times, is very imperfect: What devastations have been made by war, by pestilence, and by famine; what distress some men have been drove to, and how strangely our race has been dispersed and scattered over the earth since the flood, we do not know.

Hor. But persons that are well instructed themselves, never fail of teaching their children; and we have no reason to think, that knowing, civilized men, as the sons of Noah were, should have neglected their offspring; but it is altogether incredible, as all are descendants from them, that succeeding generations, instead of increasing in experience and wisdom, should learn backward, and still more and more abandon their broods in such a manner, as to degenerate at last to what you call the state of nature.

Cleo. Whether you intend this as a sarcasm or not, I do not know; but you have raised no difficulty that can render the truth of the sacred history suspected. Holy writ has acquainted us with the miraculous origin of our species, and the small remainder of it after the deluge: But it is far from informing us of all the revolutions that have happened among mankind since: The Old Testament hardly touches upon any particulars that had no relation to the Jews; neither does Moses pretend to give a full account of every thing that happened to, or was transacted by our first parents: He names none of Adam's daughters, and takes no notice of several things that must have happened in the beginning of the world, as is evident from Cain's building a city, and several other circumstances; from which it is plain, that Moses meddled with nothing but what was material, and to his purpose; which, in that part of his history, was to trace the descent of the Patriarchs, from the first man. But that there are savages is certain: Most nations of Europe have met with wild men and women in several parts of the world, that were ignorant of the use of letters, and among whom they could observe no rule or government.

Hor. That there are savages, I do not question; and from the great number of slaves that are yearly fetched from Africa, it is manifest, that in some parts there must be vast swarms of people, that have not yet made a great hand of their sociableness: But how to derive them from all the sons of Noah, I own, is past my skill.

Cleo. You find it as difficult to account for the loss of the many fine arts, and useful inventions of the ancients, which the world has certainly sustained. But the fault I find with Sir William Temple, is in the character of his savage. Just reasoning, and such an orderly way of proceeding, as he makes him act in, are unnatural to a wild man: In such a one, the passions must be boisterous, and continually jostling, and succeeding one another; no untaught man could have a regular way of thinking, or pursue any one design with steadiness.

Hor. You have strange notions of our species: But has not a man, by the time that he comes to maturity, some notions of right and wrong, that are natural?

Cleo. Before I answer your question, I would have you consider, that, among savages, there must be always a great difference as to the wildness or tameness of them. All creatures naturally love their offspring whilst they are helpless, and so does man: But in the savage state, men are more liable to accidents and misfortunes than they are in society, as to the rearing of their young ones; and, therefore, the children of savages must very often be put to their shifts, so as hardly to remember, by the time that they are grown up, that they had any parents. If this happens too early, and they are dropt or lost before they are four or five years of age, they must perish; either die for want, or be devoured by beasts of prey, unless some other creature takes care of them. Those orphans that survive, and become their own masters very young, must, when they are come to maturity, be much wilder than others, that have lived many years under the tuition of parents.

Hor. But would not the wildest man you can imagine, have from nature some thoughts of justice and injustice?

Cleo. Such a one, I believe, would naturally, without much thinking in the case, take every thing to be his own that he could lay his hands on.

Hor. Then they would soon be undeceived, if two or three of them met together.

Cleo. That they would soon disagree and quarrel, is highly probable; but I do not believe they ever would be undeceived.

Hor. At this rate, men could never be formed into an aggregate body: How came society into the world?

Cleo. As I told you, from private families; but not without great difficulty, and the concurrence of many favourable accidents; and many generations may pass before there is any likelihood of their being formed into a society.

Hor. That men are formed into societies, we see: But if they are all born with that false notion, and they can never be undeceived, which way do you account for it?

Cleo. My opinion concerning this matter, is this: Self-preservation bids all creatures gratify their appetites, and that of propagating his kind never fails to affect a man in health, many years before he comes to his full growth. If a wild man and a wild woman would meet very young, and live together for fifty years undisturbed, in a mild wholesome climate, where there is plenty of provisions, they might see a prodigious number of descendants: For, in the wild state of nature, man multiplies his kind much faster, than can be allowed of in any regular society: No male at fourteen would be long without a female, if he could get one; and no female of twelve would be refractory, if applied to, or remain long uncourted, if there were men.

Hor. Considering that consanguinity would be no bar among these people, the progeny of two savages might soon amount to hundreds: All this I can grant you; but as parents, no better qualified, could teach their children but little, it would be impossible for them to govern these sons and daughters when they grew up, if none of them had any notions of right or wrong; and society is as far off as ever; the false principle, which you say all men are born with, is an obstacle never to be surmounted.

Cleo. From that false principle, as you call it, the right men naturally claim to every thing they can get, it must follow, that man will look upon his children as his property, and make such use of them as is most consistent with his interest.

Hor. What is the interest of a wild man that pursues nothing with steadiness.

Cleo. The demand of the predominant passion for the time it lasts.

Hor. That may change every moment, and such children would be miserably managed.

Cleo. That is true; but still managed they would be; I mean they would be kept under, and forced to do as they they were bid, at least till they were strong enough to resist. Natural affection would prompt a wild man to love and cherish his child; it would make him provide food, and other necessaries for his son, till he was ten or twelve years old, or perhaps longer: But this affection is not the only passion he has to gratify; if his son provokes him by stubbornness, or doing otherwise than he would have him, this love is suspended; and if his displeasure be strong enough to raise his anger, which is as natural to him as any other passion, it is ten to one but he will knock him down: If he hurts him very much, and the condition he has put his son in, moves his pity, his anger will cease; and, natural affection returning, he will fondle him again, and be sorry for what he has done. Now, if we consider that all creatures hate and endeavour to avoid pain, and that benefits beget love in all that receive them, we shall find, that the consequence of this management would be, that the savage child would learn to love and fear his father: These two passions, together with the esteem which we naturally have for every thing that far excels us, will seldom fail of producing that compound which we call reverence.

Hor. I have it now; you have opened my eyes, and I see the origin of society, as plain as I do that table.

Cleo. I am afraid the prospect is not so clear yet as you imagine.

Hor. Why so? The grand obstacles are removed: Untaught men, it is true, when they are grown up, are never to be governed; and our subjection is never sincere where the superiority of the governor is not very apparent: But both these are obviated; the reverence we have for a person when we are young, is easily continued as long as we live; and where authority is once acknowledged, and that acknowledgment well established, it cannot be a difficult matter to govern. If thus a man may keep up his authority over his children, he will do it still with greater ease over his grand-children: For a child that has the least reverence for his parents, will seldom refuse homage to the person to whom he sees his father pay it. Besides, a man's pride would be a sufficient motive for him to maintain the authority once gained; and, if some of his progeny proved refractory, he would leave no stone unturned, by the help of the rest to reduce the disobedient. The old man being dead, the authority from him would devolve upon the eldest of his children, and so on.

Cleo. I thought you would go on too fast. If the wild man had understood the nature of things, and been endued with general knowledge, and a language ready made, as Adam was by miracle, what you say might have been easy; but an ignorant creature that knows nothing but what his own experience has taught him, is no more fit to govern than he is fit to teach the mathematics.

Hor. He would not have above one or two children to govern at first; and his experience would increase by degrees, as well as his family. This would require no such consummate knowledge.

Cleo. I do not say it would: An ordinary capacity of a man tolerably well educated, would be sufficient to begin with; but a man who never had been taught to curb any of his passions, would be very unfit for such a task. He would make his children, as soon as they were able, assist him in getting food, and teach them how and where to procure it. Savage children, as they got strength, would endeavour to imitate every action they saw their parents do, and every sound they heard them make; but all the instructions they received, would be confined to things immediately necessary. Savage parents would often take offence at their children, as they grew up, without a cause; and as these increased in years, so natural affection would decrease in the other. The consequence would be, that the children would often suffer for failings that were not their own. Savages would often discover faults in the conduct of what was past; but they would not be able to establish rules for future behaviour, which they would approve of themselves for any continuance; and want of foresight would be an inexhaustible fund for changes in their resolutions. The savage's wife, as well as himself, would be highly pleased to see their daughters impregnated and bring forth; and they would both take great delight in their grand-children.

Hor. I thought, that in all creatures the natural affection of parents had been confined to their own young ones.

Cleo. It is so in all but man; there is no species but ours, that are so conceited of themselves, as to imagine every thing to be theirs. The desire of dominion is a never-failing consequence of the pride that is common to all men; and which the brat of a savage is as much born with as the son of an emperor. This good opinion we have of ourselves, makes men not only claim a right to their children, but likewise imagine, that they have a great share of jurisdiction over their grandchildren. The young ones of other animals, as soon as they can help themselves, are free; but the authority which parents pretend to have over their children, never ceases: How general and unreasonable this eternal claim is naturally in the heart of man, we may learn from the laws; which, to prevent the usurpation of parents, and rescue children from their dominion, every civil society is forced to make; limiting paternal authority to a certain term of years. Our savage pair would have a double title to their grandchildren, from their undoubted property in each parent of them; and all the progeny being sprung from their own sons and daughters, without intermixture of foreign blood, they would look upon the whole race to be their natural vassals; and I am persuaded, that the more knowledge and capacity of reasoning this first couple acquired, the more just and unquestionable their sovereignty over all their descendants would appear to them, though they should live to see the fifth or sixth generation.

Hor. Is it not strange that nature should send us all into the world with a visible desire after government, and no capacity for it at all?

Cleo. What seems strange to you, is an undeniable instance of Divine Wisdom. For, if all had not been born with this desire, all must have been destitute of it; and multitudes could never have been formed into societies, if some of them had not been possessed of this thirst of dominion. Creatures may commit force upon themselves, they may learn to warp their natural appetites, and divert them from their proper objects: but peculiar instincts, that belong to a whole species, are never to be acquired by art or discipline; and those that are born without them, must remain destitute of them for ever. Ducks run to the water as soon as they are hatched; but you can never make a chicken swim any more than you can teach it to suck.

Hor. I understand you very well. If pride had not been innate to all men, none of them could ever have been ambitious: And as to the capacity of governing, experience shows us, that it is to be acquired; but how to bring society into the world, I know no more than the wild man himself. What you have suggested to me of his unskilfulness, and want of power to govern himself, has quite destroyed all the hopes I had conceived of society from this family. But would religion have no influence upon them? Pray, how came that into the world?

Cleo. From God, by miracle.

Hor. Obscurum per obscurius. I do not understand miracles, that break in upon, and subvert the order of nature; and I have no notion of things that come to pass, en depit de bon sens, and are such; that judging from sound reason and known experience, all wise men would think themselves mathematically sure that they could never happen.

Cleo. It is certain, that by the word miracle, is meant an interposition of the Divine Power, when it deviates from the common course of nature.

Hor. As when matters, easily combustible, remain whole and untouched in the midst of a fire fiercely burning, or lions in vigour, industriously kept hungry, forbear eating what they are most greedy after. These miracles are strange things.

Cleo. They are not pretended to be otherwise; the etymology of the word imports it; but it is almost as unaccountable, that men should disbelieve them, and pretend to be of a religion that is altogether built upon miracles.

Hor. But when I asked you that general question, why did you confine yourself to revealed religion?

Cleo. Because nothing, in my opinion, deserves the name of religion, that has not been revealed: The Jewish was the first that was national, and the Christian the next.

Hor. But Abraham, Noah, and Adam himself, were no Jews, and yet they had religion.

Cleo. No other than what was revealed to them. God appeared to our first parents, and gave them commands immediately after he had created them: The same intercourse was continued between the Supreme Being and the Patriarchs; but the father of Abraham was an idolater.

Hor. But the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans had religion, as well as the Jews.

Cleo. Their gross idolatry, and abominable worship, I call superstition.

Hor. You may be as partial as you please, but they all called their worship religion, as well as we do ours. You say, man brings nothing with him, but his passions; and when I asked you, how religion came into the world, I meant what is there in man's nature that is not acquired, from which he has a tendency to religion; what is it that disposes him to it?

Cleo. Fear.

Hor. How! Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor; Are you of that opinion?

Cleo. No man upon earth less: But that noted Epicurean axiom, which irreligious men are so fond of, is a very poor one; and it is silly, as well as impious to say, that fear made a God; you may as justly say, that fear made grass, or the sun and the moon: but when I am speaking of savages, it is not clashing either with good sense, nor the Christian religion, to assert, that, whilst such men are ignorant of the true Deity, and yet very defective in the art of thinking and reasoning, fear is the passion that first gives them an opportunity of entertaining some glimmering notions of an invisible Power; which afterwards, as by practice and experience they grow greater proficients, and become more perfect in the labour of the brain, and the exercise of their highest faculty, will infallibly lead them to the certain knowledge of an Infinite and Eternal Being; whose power and wisdom will always appear the greater, and more stupendous to them, the more they themselves advance in knowledge and penetration, though both should be carried on to a much higher pitch, than it is possible for our limited nature ever to arrive at.

Hor. I beg your pardon for suspecting you; though I am glad it gave you an opportunity of explaining yourself. The word fear, without any addition, sounded very harsh; and even now I cannot conceive how an invisible cause should become the object of a man's fear, that should be so entirely untaught, as you have made the first savage: which way can any thing invisible, and that affects none of the senses, make an impression upon a wild creature?

Cleo. Every mischief and every disaster that happens to him, of which the cause is not very plain and obvious; excessive heat and cold; wet and drought, that are offensive; thunder and lightning, even when they do no visible hurt; noises in the dark, obscurity itself, and every thing that is frightful and unknown, are all administering and contributing to the establishment of this fear. The wildest man that can be conceived, by the time that he came to maturity, would be wise enough to know, that fruits and other eatables are not to be had, either always, or every where: this would naturally put him upon hoarding, when he had good store: his provision might be spoiled by the rain: he would see that trees were blasted, and yielded not always the same plenty: he might not always be in health, or his young ones might grow sick, and die, without any wounds or external force to be seen. Some of these accidents might at first escape his attention, or only alarm his weak understanding, without occasioning much reflection for some time; but as they come often, he would certainly begin to suspect some invisible cause; and, as his experience increased, be confirmed in his suspicion. It is likewise highly probable, that a variety of different sufferings, would make him apprehend several such causes; and at last induce him to believe, that there was a great number of them, which he had to fear. What would very much contribute to this credulous disposition, and naturally lead him into such a belief, is a false notion we imbibe very early, and which we may observe in infants, as soon as by their looks, their gestures, and the signs they make, they begin to be intelligible to us.

Hor. What is that, pray?

Cleo. All young children seem to imagine, that every thing thinks and feels in the same manner as they do themselves; and, that they generally have this wrong opinion of things inanimate, is evident, from a common practice among them; whenever they labour under any misfortune, which their own wildness, and want of care have drawn upon them. In all such cases, you see them angry at and strike, a table, a chair, the floor, or any thing else, that can seem to have been accessary to their hurting themselves, or the production of any other blunder, they have committed. Nurses we see, in compliance to their frailty, seem to entertain the same ridiculous sentiments; and actually appease wrathful brats, by pretending to take their part: Thus you will often see them very serious, in scolding at and beating, either the real object of the baby's indignation, or something else, on which the blame of what has happened, may be thrown, with any show of probability. It is not to be imagined, that this natural folly should be so easily cured in a child, that is destitute of all instruction and commerce with his own species, as it is in those that are brought up in society, and hourly improved by conversing with others that are wiser than themselves; and I am persuaded, that a wild man would never get entirely rid of it whilst he lived.

Hor. I cannot think so meanly of human understanding.

Cleo. Whence came the Dryades and Hama-Dryades? How came it ever to be thought impious to cut down, or even to wound large venerable oaks or other stately trees; and what root did the Divinity spring from, which the vulgar, among the ancient heathens, apprehended to be in rivers and fountains?

Hor. From the roguery of designing priests, and other impostors, that invented those lies, and made fables for their own advantage.

Cleo. But still it must have been want of understanding; and a tincture, some remainder of that folly which is discovered in young children, that could induce, or would suffer men to believe those fables. Unless fools actually had frailties, knaves could not make use of them.

Hor. There may be something in it; but, be that as it will, you have owned, that man naturally loves those he receives benefits from; therefore, how comes it, that man, finding all the good things he enjoys to proceed from an invisible cause, his gratitude should not sooner prompt him to be religious, than his fear?

Cleo. There are several substantial reasons, why it does not. Man takes every thing to be his own, which he has from nature: sowing and reaping, he thinks, deserve a crop, and whatever he has the least hand in, is always reckoned to be his. Every art, and every invention, as soon as we know them, are our right and property; and whatever we perform by the assistance of them, is, by the courtesy of the species to itself, deemed to be our own. We make use of fermentation, and all the chemistry of nature, without thinking ourselves beholden to any thing but our own knowledge. She that churns the cream, makes the butter; without inquiring into the power by which the thin lymphatic particles are forced to separate themselves, and slide away from the more unctuous. In brewing, baking, cooking, and almost every thing we have a hand in, nature is the drudge that makes all the alterations, and does the principal work; yet all, forsooth, is our own. From all which, it is manifest, that man, who is naturally for making every thing centre in himself, must, in his wild state, have a great tendency, and be very prone to look upon every thing he enjoys as his due; and every thing he meddles with, as his own performance. It requires knowledge and reflection; and a man must be pretty far advanced in the art of thinking justly, and reasoning consequentially, before he can, from his own light, and without being taught, be sensible of his obligations to God. The less a man knows, and the more shallow his understanding is, the less he is capable either of enlarging his prospect of things, or drawing consequences from the little which he does know. Raw, ignorant, and untaught men, fix their eyes on what is immediately before, and seldom look further than, as it is vulgarly expressed, the length of their noses. The wild man, if gratitude moved him, would much sooner pay his respects to the tree he gathers his nuts from, than he would think of an acknowledgment to him who had planted it; and there is no property so well established, but a civilized man would suspect his title to it sooner, than a wild one would question the sovereignty he has over his own breath. Another reason, why fear is an elder motive to religion than gratitude, is, that an untaught man would never suspect that the same cause, which he received good from, would ever do him hurt; and evil, without doubt, would always gain his attention first.

Hor. Men, indeed, seem to remember one ill turn, that is served them, better than ten good ones; one month's sickness better than ten years health.

Cleo. In all the labours of self-preservation, man is intent on avoiding what is hurtful to him; but in the enjoyment of what is pleasant, his thoughts are relaxed, and he is void of care: he can swallow a thousand delights, one after another, without asking questions; but the least evil makes him inquisitive whence it came, in order to shun it. It is very material, therefore, to know the cause of evil; but to know that of good, which is always welcome, is of little use; that is, such a knowledge seems not to promise any addition to his happiness. When a man once apprehends such an invisible enemy, it is reasonable to think, that he would be glad to appease, and make him his friend, if he could find him out; it is highly probable, likewise, that in order to this, he would search, investigate, and look every where about him; and that finding all his inquiries upon earth in vain, he would lift up his eyes to the sky.

Hor. And so a wild man might; and look down and up again long enough before he would be the wiser. I can easily conceive, that a creature must labour under great perplexities, when it actually fears something, of which it knows neither what it is, nor where it is; and that, though a man had all the reason in the world to think it invisible, he would still be more afraid of it in the dark, than when he could see.

Cleo. Whilst a man is but an imperfect thinker, and wholly employed in furthering self preservation in the most simple manner, and removing the immediate obstacles he meets with in that pursuit, this affair, perhaps, affects him but little; but when he comes to be a tolerable reasoner, and has leisure to reflect, it must produce strange chimeras and surmises; and a wild couple would not converse together long, before they would endeavour to express their minds to one another concerning this matter; and, as in time they would invent and agree upon, certain sounds of distinction for several things, of which the ideas would often occur, so I believe, that this invisible cause would be one of the first, which they would coin a name for. A wild man and a wild woman would not take less care of their helpless brood than other animals; and it is not to imagined, but the children that were brought up by them, though without instruction or discipline, would, before they were ten years old, observe in their parents this fear of an invisible cause. It is incredible likewise, considering, how much men differ from one another in features, complexion, and temper, that all should form the same idea of this cause; from whence it would follow, that as soon as any considerable number of men could intelligibly converse together, it would appear, that there were different opinions among them concerning the invisible cause: the fear and acknowledgment of it being universal, and man always attributing his own passions to every thing, which he conceives to think, every body would be solicitous to avoid the hatred and ill-will, and, if it was possible, to gain the friendship of such a power. If we consider these things, and what we know of the nature of man, it is hardly to be conceived, that any considerable number of our species could have any intercourse together long, in peace or otherwise, but wilful lies would be raised concerning this power, and some would pretend to have seen or heard it. How different opinions about invisible power, may, by the malice and deceit of impostors, be made the occasion of mortal enmity among multitudes, is easily accounted for. If we want rain very much, and I can be persuaded, that it is your fault we have none, there needs greater cause to quarrel; and nothing has happened in the world, of priestcraft or inhumanity, folly or abomination, on religious accounts, that cannot be solved or explained, with the least trouble, from these data, and the principle of fear.

Hor. I think I must yield to you, that the first motive of religion, among savages, was fear; but you must allow me in your turn, that from the general thankfulness that nations have always paid to their gods, for signal benefits and success; the many hecatombs that have been offered after victories; and the various institutions of games and festivals; it is evident, that when men came to be wiser, and more civilized, the greatest part of their religion was built upon gratitude.

Cleo. You labour hard, I see, to vindicate the honour of our species; but we have no such cause to boast of it: and I shall demonstrate to you, that a well-weighed consideration, and a thorough understanding of our nature, will give us much less reason to exult in our pride, than it will furnish us with, for the exercise of our humility. In the first place, there is no difference between the original nature of a savage, and that of a civilized man: they are both born with fear, and neither of them, if they have their senses about them, can live many years, but an invisible Power, will, at one time or other, become the object of that fear; and this will happen to every man, whether he be wild and alone, or in society, and under the best discipline. We know by experience, that empires, states, and kingdoms, may excel in arts and sciences, politeness, and all worldly wisdom, and at the same time be slaves to the grossest idolatry, and submit to all the inconsistencies of a false religion. The most civilized people have been as foolish and absurd in sacred worship as it is possible for any savages to be; and the first have often been guilty of studied cruelties, which the latter would never have thought of. The Carthaginians were a subtle flourishing people, an opulent and formidable nation, and Hannibal had half conquered the Romans, when still to their idols they sacrificed the children of their chief nobility. And, as to private persons, there are innumerable instances in the most polite ages of men of sense and virtue, that have entertained the most miserable, unworthy, and extravagant notions of the Supreme Being. What confused and unaccountable apprehensions must not some men have had of Providence, to act as they did! Alexander Severus, who succeeded Heliogabalus, was a great reformer of abuses, and thought to be as good a prince as his predecessor was a bad one: In his palace he had an oratory, a cabinet set aside for his private devotion, where he had the images of Appollonius Tyanaeus, Orpheus, Abraham, Jesus Christ, and such like gods, says his historian. What makes you smile?

Hor. To think how industrious priests are in concealing a man's failings, when they would have you think well of him. What you say of Severus, I had read before; when looking one day for something in Moreri, I happened to cast my eye on the article of that emperor, where no mention is made either of Orpheus or Appollonius! which, remembering the passage in Lampridius, I wondered at; and thinking that I might have been mistaken, I again consulted that author, where I found it, as you have related it. I do not question but Moreri left this out on purpose to repay the civilities of the emperor to the Christians, whom, he tells us, Severus had been very favourable to.

Cleo. That is not impossible in a Roman Catholic. But what I would speak to, in the second place, is the festivals you mentioned, the hecatombs after victories, and the general thankfulness of nations to their gods. I desire you would consider, that in sacred matters, as well as all human affairs, there are rites and ceremonies, and many demonstrations of respect to be seen, that to outward appearance seem to proceed from gratitude, which, upon due examination, will be found to have been originally the result of fear. At what time the floral games were first instituted, is not well known: but they never were celebrated every year constantly, before a very unseasonable spring put the senate upon the decree that made them annual. To make up the true compound of reverence or veneration, love and esteem are as necessary ingredients as fear; but the latter alone is capable of making men counterfeit both the former; as is evident from the duties that are outwardly paid to tyrants, at the same time that inwardly they are execrated and hated. Idolators have always behaved themselves to every invisible cause they adored, as men do to a lawless arbitrary power; when they reckon it as captious, haughty, and unreasonable, as they allow it to be sovereign, unlimited, and irresistible. What motive could the frequent repetitions of the same solemnities spring from, whenever it was suspected that the least holy trifle had been omitted? You know, how often the same farce was once acted over again, because after every performance there was still room to apprehend that something had been neglected. Do but consult, I beg of you, and call to mind your own reading; cast your eyes on the infinite variety of ideas men have formed to themselves, and the vast multitude of divisions they have made of the invisible cause, which every one imagines to influence human affairs: run over the history of all ages; look into every considerable nation, their straits and calamities, as well as victories and successes; the lives of great generals, and other famous men, their adverse fortune and prosperity: mind at which times their devotion was most fervent; when oracles were most consulted, and on what accounts the gods were most frequently addressed. Do but calmly consider every thing you can remember relating to superstition, whether grave, ridiculous, or execrable, and you will find, in the first place, that the heathens, and all that have been ignorant of the true Deity, though many of them were persons otherwise of great knowledge, fine understanding, and tried probity, have represented their gods, not as wise, benign, equitable, and merciful; but, on the contrary, as passionate, revengeful, capricious, and unrelenting beings; not to mention the abominable vices and gross immoralities, the vulgar were taught to ascribe to them: In the second, that for every one instance that men have addressed themselves to an invisible cause, from a principle of gratitude, there are a thousand in every false religion to convince you, that divine worship, and men's submission to Heaven, have always proceeded from their fear. The word religion itself, and the fear of God, are synonymous; and had man's acknowledgment been originally founded in love, as it is in fear, the craft of impostors could have made no advantage of the passion; and all their boasted acquaintance with gods and goddesses, would have been useless to them, if men had worshipped the immortal powers, as they called their idols, out of gratitude.

Hor. All lawgivers and leaders of people gained their point, and acquired what they expected from those pretences, which is reverence; and which to produce, you have owned yourself, love and esteem to be as requisite as fear.

Cleo. But from the laws they imposed on men, and the punishments they annexed to the breach and neglect of them, it is easily seen which of the ingredients they most relied upon.

Hor. It would be difficult to name a king, or other great man, in very ancient times, who attempted to govern an infant nation that laid no claim to some commerce or other with an invisible power, either held by himself or his ancestors. Between them and Moses, there is no other difference, than that he alone was a true prophet, and really inspired, and all the rest were impostors.

Cleo. What would you infer from this?

Hor. That we can say no more for ourselves, than what men of all parties and persuasions have done in all ages, every one for their cause, viz. That they alone were in the right, and all that differed from them in the wrong.

Cleo. Is it not sufficient that we can say this of ourselves with truth and justice, after the strictest examination; when no other cause can stand any test, or bear the least inquiry? A man may relate miracles that never were wrought, and give an account of things that never happened; but a thousand years hence, all knowing men will agree, that nobody could have wrote Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, unless he had been a great mathematician. When Moses acquainted the Israelites with what had been revealed to him, he told them a truth, which nobody then upon earth knew but himself.

Hor. You mean the unity of God, and his being the Author of the universe.

Cleo. I do so.

Hor. But is not every man of sense capable of knowing this from his reason?

Cleo. Yes, when the art of reasoning consequentially is come to that perfection, which it has been arrived at these several hundred years, and himself has been led into the method of thinking justly. Every common sailor could steer a course through the midst of the ocean, as soon as the use of the loadstone, and the mariners compass were invented. But before that, the most expert navigator would have trembled at the thoughts of such an enterprise. When Moses acquainted, and imbued the posterity of Jacob with this sublime and important truth, they were degenerated into slaves, attached to the superstition of the country they dwelled in; and the Egyptians, their masters, though they were great proficients in many arts and sciences, and more deeply skilled in the mysteries of nature than any other nation then was, had the most abject and abominable notions of the Deity, which it is possible to conceive; and no savages could have exceeded their ignorance and stupidity, as to the Supreme Being, the invisible cause that governs the world. He taught the Israelites a priori; and their children, before they were nine or ten years old, knew what the greatest philosophers did not attain to, by the light of nature, till many ages after.

Hor. The advocates for the ancients will never allow, that any modern philosophers have either thought or reasoned better, than men did in former ages.

Cleo. Let them believe their eyes: What you say every man of sense may know, by his own reason, was in the beginning of Christianity contested, and denied with zeal and vehemence by the greatest men in Rome. Celsus, Symmachus, Porphyry, Hierocles, and other famous rhetoricians, and men of unquestionable good sense, wrote in defence of idolatry, and strenuously maintained the plurality and multiplicity of their gods. Moses lived about fifteen hundred years before the reign of Augustus. If in a place where I was very well assured that nobody understood any thing of colouring or drawing, a man should tell me, that he had acquired the art of painting by inspiration, I should be more ready to laugh at him than to believe him; but if I saw him draw several fine portraits before my face, my unbelief would cease, and I should think it ridiculous any longer to suspect his veracity. All the accounts that other lawgivers and founders of nations have given of the deities, which they or their predecessors conversed with, contained ideas that were unworthy of the Divine Being; and by the light of nature only, it is easily proved, that they must have been false: But the image which Moses gave the Jews of the Supreme Being, that He was One, and had made heaven and earth, will stand all tests, and is a truth that will outlast the world. Thus, I think, I have fully proved, on the one hand, that all true religion must be revealed, and could not have come into the world without miracle; and, on the other, that what all men are born with towards religion, before they receive any instruction, is fear.

Hor. You have convinced me many ways, that we are poor creatures by nature; but I cannot help struggling against those mortifying truths, when I hear them started first. I long to hear the origin of society, and I continually retard your account of it myself with new questions.

Cleo. Do you remember where we left off?

Hor. I do not think we have made any progress yet; for we have nothing towards it but a wild man, and a wild woman, with some children and grandchildren, which they are not able either to teach or govern.

Cleo. I thought that the introduction of the reverence, which the wildest son must feel, more or less, for the most savage father, if he stays with him, had been a considerable step.

Hor. I thought so too, till you destroyed the hopes I had conceived of it yourself, by showing me the incapacity of savage parents to make use of it: And since we are still as far from the origin of society as ever we were, or ever can be, in my opinion, I desire, that before you proceed to that main point, you would answer what you have put off once already, which is my question concerning the notions of right and wrong: I cannot be easy before I have your sentiments on this head.

Cleo. Your demand is very reasonable, and I will satisfy you as well as I can. A man of sense, learning, and experience, that has been well educated, will always find out the difference between right and wrong in things diametrically opposite; and there are certain facts, which he will always condemn, and others which he will always approve of: To kill a member of the same society that has not offended us, or to rob him, will always be bad; and to cure the sick, and be beneficent to the public, he will always pronounce to be good actions: and for a man to do as he will be done by, he will always say is a good rule in life; and not only men of great accomplishments, and such as have learned to think abstractly, but all men of middling capacities, that have been brought up in society, will agree in this, in all countries and in all ages. Nothing likewise seems more true to all, that have made any tolerable use of their faculty of thinking, than that out of the society, before any division was made, either by contract or otherwise, all men would have an equal right to the earth: But do you believe that our wild man, if he had never seen any other human creature but his savage consort and his progeny, would ever have entertained the same notions of right and wrong?

Hor. Hardly; his small capacity in the art of reasoning, would hinder him from doing it so justly; and the power he found he had over his children, would render him very arbitrary.

Cleo. But without that incapacity, suppose that at threescore he was, by a miracle, to receive a fine judgment, and the faculty of thinking and reasoning consequentially, in as great a perfection as the wisest man ever did, do you think he would ever alter his notion of the right he had to every thing he could manage, or have other sentiments in relation to himself and his progeny, than from his behaviour it appeared he entertained, when he seemed to act almost altogether by instinct?

Hor. Without doubt: For, if judgment and reason were given him, what could hinder him from making use of those faculties, as well as others do?

Cleo. You seem not to consider, that no man can reason but a posteriori, from something that he knows, or supposes to be true: What I said of the difference between right and wrong, I spoke of persons who remembered their education, and lived in society; or, at least, such as plainly saw others of their own species, that were independent of them, and either their equals or superiors.

Hor. I begin to believe you are in the right: But at second thoughts, why might not a man, with great justice, think himself the sovereign of a place, where he knew no human creature but his own wife, and the descendents of both?

Cleo. With all my heart: But may there not be an hundred such savages in the world with large families, that might never meet, nor ever hear of one another?

Hor. A thousand, if you will, and then there would be so many natural sovereigns.

Cleo. Very well: what I would have you observe, is, that there are things which are commonly esteemed to be eternal truths, that an hundred or a thousand people of fine sense and judgment, could have no notion of. What if it should be true, that every man is born with this domineering spirit, and that we cannot be cured of it, but by our commerce with others, and the experience of facts, by which we are convinced that we have no such right? Let us examine a man's whole life, from his infancy to his grave, and see which of the two seems to be most natural to him; a desire of superiority, and grasping every thing to himself, or a tendency to act according to the reasonable notions of right and wrong; and we shall find, that, in his early youth, the first is very conspicuous; that nothing appears of the second before he has received some instructions, and that this latter will always have less influence upon his actions, the more uncivilized he remains: From whence I infer, that the notions of right and wrong are acquired; for if they were as natural, or if they affected us as early as the opinion, or rather the instinct we are born with, of taking every thing to be our own, no child would ever cry for his eldest brother's play-things.

Hor. I think there is no right more natural, nor more reasonable, than that which men have over their children; and what we owe our parents can never be repaid.

Cleo. The obligations we have to good parents for their care and education, is certainly very great.

Hor. That is the least. We are indebted to them for our being; we might be educated by an hundred others, but without them we could never have existed.

Cleo. So we could have no malt liquor, without the ground that bears the barley: I know no obligations for benefits that never were intended. Should a man see a fine parcel of cherries, be tempted to eat, and devour them accordingly with great satisfaction, it is possible he might swallow some of the stones, which we know by experience do not digest: If twelve or fourteen months after, he should find a little sprig of a cherry-tree growing in a field, where nobody would expect it, if he recollected the time, he had been there before, it is not improbable that he might guess at the true reason how it came there. It is possible, likewise, that for curiosity's sake, this man might take up this plant, and take care of it; I am well assured, that whatever became of it afterwards, the right he would have to it from the merit of his action, would be the same which a savage would have to his child.

Hor. I think there would be a vast difference between the one and the other: the cherry-stone was never part of himself, nor mixed with his blood.

Cleo. Pardon me; all the difference, as vast as you take it to be, can only consist in this, That the cherry-stone was not part of the man who swallowed it, so long, nor received so great an alteration in its figure, whilst it was, as some other things which the savage swallowed, were, and received in their figure, whilst they stayed with him.

Hor. But he that swallowed the cherry-stone, did nothing to it; it produced a plant as a vegetable, which it might have done as well without his swallowing it.

Cleo. That is true; and I own, that as to the cause to which the plant owes its existence, you are in the right: but I plainly spoke as to the merit of the action; which in either case could only proceed from their intentions as free agents; and the savage might, and would in all probability act with as little design, to get a child, as the other had eat cherries in order to plant a tree. It is commonly said, that our children are our own flesh and blood: but this way of speaking is strangely figurative. However, allow it to be just, though rhetoricians have no name for it, what does it prove, what benevolence in us, what kindness to others in the intention?

Hor. You shall say what you please, but I think, that nothing can endear children to their parents more, than the reflection that they are their own flesh and blood.

Cleo. I am of your opinion; and it is a plain demonstration of the superlative value we have for our own selves, and every thing that comes from us, if it be good, and counted laudable; whereas, other things that are offensive, though equally our own, are in compliment to ourselves, industriously concealed; and, as soon as it is agreed upon that any thing is unseemly, and rather a disgrace to us than otherwise, presently it becomes ill manners to name, or so much as to hint at it. The contents of the stomach are variously disposed of, but we have no hand in that; and whether they go to the blood, or elsewhere, the last thing we did to them voluntarily, and with our knowledge, was swallowing them; and whatever is afterwards performed by the animal economy, a man contributes no more to, than he does to the going of his watch. This is another instance of the unjust claim we lay to every performance we are but in the least concerned in, if good comes of it, though nature does all the work; but whoever places a merit in his prolific faculty, ought likewise to expect the blame, when he has the stone, or a fever. Without this violent principle of innate folly, no rational creature would value himself on his free agency, and at the same time accept of applause for actions that are visibly independent of his will. Life in all creatures is a compound action, but the share they have in it themselves, is only passive. We are forced to breathe before we know it; and our continuance palpably depends upon the guardianship and perpetual tutelage of nature; whilst every part of her works, ourselves not excepted, is an impenetrable secret to us, that eludes all inquiries. Nature furnishes us with all the substance of our food herself, nor does she trust to our wisdom for an appetite to crave it; to chew it, she teaches us by instinct, and bribes us to it by pleasure. This seeming to be an action of choice, and ourselves being conscious of the performance, we perhaps may be said to have a part in it; but the moment after, nature resumes her care, and again withdrawn from our knowledge, preserves us in a mysterious manner, without any help or concurrence of ours, that we are sensible of. Since, then, the management of what we have eat and drank remains entirely under the direction of nature, what honour or shame ought we to receive from any part of the product, whether it is to serve as a doubtful means toward generation, or yields to vegetation a less fallible assistance? It is nature that prompts us to propagate as well as to eat; and a savage man multiplies his kind by instinct as other animals do, without more thought or design of preserving his species, than a new-born infant has of keeping itself alive, in the action of sucking.

Hor. Yet nature gave the different instincts to both, for those reasons.

Cleo. Without doubt; but what I mean, is, that the reason of the thing is as much the motive of action in the one, as it is in the other; and I verily believe, that a wild woman who had never seen, or not minded the production of any young animals, would have several children before she would guess at the real cause of them; any more than if she had the cholic, she would suspect that it proceeded from some delicious fruit she had eaten; especially if she had feasted upon it for several months, without perceiving any inconveniency from it. Children, all the world over, are brought forth with pain, more or less, which seems to have no affinity with pleasure; and an untaught creature, however docile and attentive, would want several clear experiments, before it would believe that the one could produce or be the cause of the other.

Hor. Most people marry in hopes, and with a design of having children.

Cleo. I doubt, not; and believe that there are as many that would rather not have children, or at least not so fast as often they come, as there are that wish for them, even in the state of matrimony; but out of it, in the amours of thousands, that revel in enjoyments, children are reckoned to be the greatest calamity that can befal them; and often what criminal love gave birth to, without thought more criminal pride destroys, with purposed and considerate cruelty. But all this belongs to people in society, that are knowing, and well acquainted with the natural consequences of things; what I urged, I spoke of a savage.

Hor. Still the end of love, between the different sexes, in all animals, is the preservation of their species.

Cleo. I have allowed that already. But once more the savage is not prompted to love from that consideration: he propagates before he knows the consequence of it; and I much question, whether the most civilized pair, in the most chaste of their embraces, ever acted from the care of their species, as a real principle. A rich man may, with great impatience, wish for a son to inherit his name and his estate; perhaps he may marry from no other motive, and for no other purpose; but all the satisfaction he seems to receive, from the flattering prospect of an happy posterity, can only arise from a pleasing reflection on himself, as the cause of those descendants. How much soever this man's posterity might be thought to owe him for their being, it is certain, that the motive he acted from, was to oblige himself: still here is a wishing for posterity, a thought and design of getting children, which no wild couple could have to boast of; yet they would be vain enough to look upon themselves, as the principal cause of all their offspring and descendants, though they should live to see the fifth or sixth generation.

Hor. I can find no vanity in that, and I should think them so myself.

Cleo. Yet, as free agents, it would be plain, that they had contributed nothing to the existence of their prosperity.

Hor. Now surely, you have overshot the mark; nothing?

Cleo. No, nothing, even to that of their own children, knowingly; if you will allow that men have their appetites from nature. There is but one real cause in the universe, to produce that infinite variety of stupendous effects, and all the mighty labours that are performed in nature, either within, or far beyond the reach of our senses. Parents are the efficients of their offspring, with no more truth or propriety of speech, than the tools of an artificer, that were made and contrived by himself, are the cause of the most elaborate of his works. The senseless engine that raises water into the copper, and the passive mash-tub, have between them, as great a share in the art and action of brewing, as the liveliest male and female ever had in the production of an animal.

Hor. You make stocks and stones of us; is it not in our choice to act, or not to act?

Cleo. Yes, it is my choice now, either to run my head against the wall; or to let it alone; but, I hope, it does not puzzle you much to guess which of the two I shall choose.

Hor. But do not we move our bodies as we list; and is not every action determined by the will?

Cleo. What signifies that, where there is a passion that manifestly sways, and with a strict hand governs that will?

Hor. Still we act with consciousness, and are intelligent creatures.

Cleo. Not in the affair I speak of; where, willing or not willing, we are violently urged from within, and in a manner compelled not only to assist in, but likewise to long for, and, in spite of our teeth, be highly pleased with a performance that infinitely surpasses our understanding. The comparison I made is just, in every part of it; for the most loving, and, if you will, the most sagacious couple you can conceive, are as ignorant in the mystery of generation, nay, must remain, after having had twenty children together, as much uninformed, and as little conscious of nature's transactions, and what has been wrought within them, as inanimate utensils are of the most mystic and most ingenious operations they have been employed in.

Hor. I do not know any man more expert in tracing human pride, or more severe in humbling it than yourself; but when the subject comes in your way, you do not know how to leave it. I wish you would, at once, go over to the origin of society; which, how to derive, or bring about at all, from the savage family, as we left it, is past my skill. It is impossible but those children, when they grew up, would quarrel on innumerable occasions: if men had but three appetites to gratify, that are the most obvious, they could never live together in peace, without government: for though they all paid a deference to the father, yet if he was a man void of all prudence, that could give them no good rules to walk by, I am persuaded that they would live in a perpetual state of war; and the more numerous his offspring grew, the more the old savage would be puzzled between his desire and incapacity of government. As they increased in numbers, they would be forced to extend their limits, and the spot they were born upon would not hold them long: nobody would be willing to leave his native vale, especially if it was a fruitful one. The more I think upon it, and the more I look into such multitudes, the less I can conceive which way they could ever be formed into a society.

Cleo. The first thing that could make man associate, would be common danger, which unites the greatest enemies: this danger they would certainly be in, from wild beasts, considering that no uninhabited country is without them, and the defenceless condition in which men come into the world. This often must have been a cruel article, to prevent the increase of our species.

Hor. The supposition then, that this wild man, with his progeny, should for fifty years live undisturbed, is not very probable; and I need not trouble myself about our savages being embarrassed with too numerous an offspring.

Cleo. You say right; there is no probability, that a man and his progeny, all unarmed, should so long escape the ravenous hunger of beasts of prey, that are to live upon what animals they can get; that leave no place unsearched, nor pains untried, to come at food, though with the hazard of their lives. The reason why I made that supposition, was to show you, first, the improbability that a wild and altogether untaught man should have the knowledge and discretion which Sir William Temple gives him; secondly, that children who conversed with their own species, though they were brought up by savages, would be governable; and consequently, that all such, when come to maturity, would be fit for society, how ignorant and unskilful soever their parents might have been.

Hor. I thank you for it; for it has shown me, that the very first generation of the most brutish savages, was sufficient to produce sociable creatures; but that to produce a man fit to govern others, much more was required.

Cleo. I return to my conjecture concerning the first motive that would make savages associate: it is not possible to know any thing with certainty of beginnings, where men were destitute of letters; but I think, that the nature of the thing makes it highly probable, that it must have been their common danger from beasts of prey; as well such sly ones as lay in wait for their children, and the defenceless animals, men made use of for themselves, as the more bold, that would openly attack grown men and women. What much confirms me in this opinion is, the general agreement of all the relations we have, from the most ancient times, in different countries: for, in the infancy of all nations, profane history is stuffed with the accounts of the conflicts men had with wild beasts. It took up the chief labours of the heroes of remotest antiquity, and their greatest prowess was shown in killing of dragons, and subduing of other monsters.

Hor. Do you lay any stress upon sphinxes, basilisks, flying dragons, and bulls that spit fire?

Cleo. As much as I do on modern witches. But I believe that all those fictions had their rise from noxious beasts, the mischiefs they did, and other realities that struck terror into man; and I believe, that if no man had ever been seen on a horse's back, we should never have heard of Centaurs. The prodigious force and rage that are apparent in some savage animals, and the astonishing power, which, from the various poisons of venomous creatures, we are sure must be hid in others; the sudden and unexpected assaults of serpents, the variety of them; the vast bulk of crocodiles; the irregular and uncommon shapes of some fishes, and the wings of others, are all things that are capable of alarming man's fear; and it is incredible what chimeras that passion alone may produce in a terrified mind: the dangers of the day often haunt men at night with addition of terror; and from what they remember in their dreams, it is easy to forge realities. If you will consider, likewise, that the natural ignorance of man, and his hankering after knowledge, will augment the credulity which hope and fear first give birth to; the desire the generality have of applause, and the great esteem that is commonly had for the merveilleux, and the witnesses and relaters of it: If, I say, you will consider all these, you will easily discover, how many creatures came to be talked of, described, and formally painted, that never had any existence.

Hor. I do not wonder at the origin of monstrous figures, or the invention of any fables whatever; but in the reason you gave for the first motive, that would make men combine in one interest, I find something very perplexing, which I own I never thought of before. When I reflect on the condition of man, as you have set it before me, naked and defenceless, and the multitude of ravenous animals that thirst after his blood, and are superior to him in strength, and completely armed by nature, it is inconceivable to me, how our species should have subsisted.

Cleo. What you observe is well worthy our attention.

Hor. It is astonishing. What filthy, abominable beasts are lions and tigers!

Cleo. I think them to be very fine creatures; there is nothing I admire more than a lion.

Hor. We have strange accounts of his generosity and gratitude; but do you believe them?

Cleo. I do not trouble my head about them: What I admire is his fabric, his structure, and his rage, so justly proportioned to one another. There are order, symmetry, and superlative wisdom to be observed in all the works of nature; but she has not a machine, of which every part more visibly answers the end for which the whole was formed.

Hor. The destruction of other animals.

Cleo. That is true; but how conspicuous is that end, without mystery or uncertainty! that grapes were made for wine, and man for society, are truths not accomplished in every individual: but there is a real majesty stamped on every single lion, at the sight of which the stoutest animals submit and tremble. When we look upon and examine his massy talons, the size of them, and the laboured firmness with which they are fixed in, and fastened to that prodigious paw; his dreadful teeth, the strength of his jaws, and the width of his mouth equally terrible, the use of them is obvious; but when we consider, moreover, the make of his limbs, the toughness of his flesh and tendons, the solidity of his bones, beyond that of other animals, and the whole frame of him, together with his never-ceasing anger, speed, and agility; whilst in the desart he ranges king of beasts! When, I say, we consider all these things, it is stupidity not to see the design of nature, and with what amazing skill the beautiful creature is contrived for offensive war and conquest.

Hor. You are a good painter. But after all, why would you judge of a creature's nature from what it was perverted to, rather than from its original, the state it was first produced in? The lion in Paradise was a gentle, loving creature. Hear what Milton says of his behaviour before Adam and Eve, "as they sate recline on the soft downy bank, damask'd with flowers:"

--------About them frisking play'd All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den; Sporting the lion ramp'd, and in his paw Dandel'd the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambol'd before them.--------

What was it the lion fed upon; what sustenance had all these beasts of prey in Paradise?

Cleo. I do not know. Nobody who believes the Bible, doubts, but that the whole state of Paradise, and the intercourse between God and the first man, were as much preternatural, as the creation out of nothing; and, therefore, it cannot be supposed, that they should be accounted for by human reason; and if they were, Moses would not be answerable for more than he advanced himself. The history which he has given us of those times is extremely succinct, and ought not to be charged with any thing contained in the glosses and paraphrases that have been made upon it by others.

Hor. Milton has said nothing of Paradise, but what he could justify from Moses.

Cleo. It is no where to be proved, from Moses, that the state of innocence lasted so long, that goats, or any viviparous animals could, have bred and brought forth young ones.

Hor. You mean that there could have been no kid. I should never have made that cavil in so fine a poem. It was not in my thoughts: what I aimed at in repeating those lines, was to show you how superfluous and impertinent a lion must have been in Paradise; and that those who pretend to find fault with the works of nature, might have censured her with justice, for lavishing and throwing away so many excellencies upon a great beast, to no purpose. What a fine variety of destructive weapons, would they say, what prodigious strength of limbs and sinews are here given to a creature! What to do with? to be quiet and dandle a kid. I own, that to me, this province, the employment assigned to the lion, seems to be as proper and well chosen, as if you would make a nurse of Alexander the Great.

Cleo. You might make as many flights upon a lion now, if you saw him asleep. Nobody would think that a bull had occasion for horns, who had never seen him otherwise than quietly grazing among a parcel of cows; but, if one should see him attacked by dogs, by a wolf, or a rival of his own species, he would soon find out that his horns were of great use and service to him. The lion was not made to be always in Paradise.

Hor. There I would have you. If the lion was contrived for purposes to be served and executed out of Paradise, then it is manifest, from the very creation, that the fall of man was determined and predestinated.

Cleo. Foreknown it was: nothing could be hid from Omniscience; that is certain: But that it was predestinated so as to have prejudiced, or anywise influenced the free will of Adam, I utterly deny. But that word, predestinated, has made so much noise in the world, and the thing itself has been the cause of so many fatal quarrels, and is so inexplicable, that I am resolved never to engage in any dispute concerning it.

Hor. I cannot make you; but what you have extolled so much, must have cost the lives of thousands of our species; and it is a wonder to me how men, when they were but few, could possibly defend themselves, before they had fire arms, or at least bows and arrows; for what number of naked men and women, would be a match for one couple of lions?

Cleo. Yet, here we are; and none of those animals are suffered to be wild, in any civilized nation; our superior understanding has got the start of them.

Hor. My reason tells me it must be that; but I cannot help observing, that when human understanding serves your purpose to solve any thing, it is always ready and full grown; but at other times, knowledge and reasoning are the work of time, and men are not capable of thinking justly, until after many generations. Pray, before men had arms, what could their understanding do against lions, and what hindered wild beasts from devouring mankind, as soon as they were born?

Cleo. Providence.

Hor. Daniel, indeed, was saved by miracle; but what is that to the rest of mankind? great numbers, we know, have, at different times, been torn to pieces by savage beasts: what I want to know, is, the reason that any of them escaped, and the whole species was not destroyed by them; when men had yet no weapons to defend, nor strong holds to shelter themselves from the fury of those merciless creatures.

Cleo. I have named it to you already, Providence.

Hor. But which way can you prove this miraculous assistance?

Cleo. You still talk of miracles, and I speak of Providence, or the all-governing Wisdom of God.

Hor. If you can, demonstrate to me, how that Wisdom interposed between our species and that of lions, in the beginning of the world, without miracle, any more than it does at present, eris mihi magnus Apollo: for now, I am sure, a wild lion would prey upon a naked man, as soon, at least, as he would upon an ox or an horse.

Cleo. Will not you allow me, that all properties, instincts, and what we call the nature of things, animate or inanimate, are the produce, the effects of that Wisdom?

Hor. I never thought otherwise.

Cleo. Then it will not be difficult to prove this to you. Lions are never brought forth wild, but in very hot countries, as bears are the product of the cold. But the generality of our species, which loves moderate warmth, are most delighted with the middle regions. Men may, against their wills, be inured to intense cold, or by use and patience, accustom themselves to excessive heat; but a mild air, and weather between both extremes, being more agreeable to human bodies, the greatest part of mankind would naturally settle in temperate climates, and with the same conveniency, as to every thing else, never choose any other. This would very much lessen the danger men would be in from the fiercest and most irresistible wild beasts.

Hor. But would lions and tigers in hot countries keep so close within their bounds, and bears in cold ones, as never to straggle or stray beyond them?

Cleo. I do not suppose they would; and men, as well as cattle, have often been picked up by lions, far from the places where these were whelped. No wild beasts are more fatal to our species, than often we are to one another; and men pursued by their enemies have fled into climates and countries, which they would never have chose. Avarice likewise and curiosity, have, without force or necessity, often exposed men to dangers, which they might have avoided, if they had been satisfied with what nature required; and laboured for self-preservation in that simple manner, which creatures less vain and fantastical content themselves with. In all these cases, I do not question, but multitudes of our species have suffered from savage beasts, and other noxious animals; and on their account only, I verily believe, it would have been impossible for any number of men, to have settled or subsisted in either very hot or very cold countries, before the invention of bows and arrows, or better arms. But all this does nothing to overthrow my assertion: what I wanted to prove, is, that all creatures choosing by instinct that degree of heat or cold which is most natural to them, there would be room enough in the world for man to multiply his species, for many ages, without running almost any risk of being devoured either by lions or by bears; and that the most savage man would find this out, without the help of his reason. This I call the work of Providence; by which I mean the unalterable wisdom of the Supreme Being, in the harmonious disposition of the universe; the fountain of that incomprehensible chain of causes, on which all events have their undoubted dependance.

Hor. You have made this out better than I had expected; but I am afraid, that what you alleged as the first motive towards society, is come to nothing by it.

Cleo. Do not fear that; there are other savage beasts, against which men could not guard themselves unarmed, without joining, and mutual assistance: in temperate climates, most uncultivated countries abound with wolves.

Hor. I have seen them in Germany; they are of the size of a large mastiff; but I thought their chief prey had been sheep.

Cleo. Any thing they can conquer is their prey: they are desperate creatures, and will fall upon men, cows, and horses, as well as upon sheep, when they are very hungry: they have teeth like mastiffs; but besides them they have sharp claws to tear with, which dogs have not. The stoutest man is hardly equal to them in strength; but what is worse, they often come in troops, and whole villages have been attacked by them; they have five, six, and more whelps at a litter, and would soon over-run a country where they breed, if men did not combine against, and make it their business to destroy them. Wild boars likewise, are terrible creatures, that few large forests, and uninhabited places, in temperate climates, are free from.

Hor. Those tusks of theirs are dreadful weapons.

Cleo. And they are much superior to wolves in bulk and strength. History is full of the mischief they have done in ancient times, and of the renown that valiant men have gained by conquering them.

Hor. That is true; but those heroes that fought monsters in former days, were well armed; at least, the generality of them; but what could a number of naked men, before they had any arms at all, have to oppose to the teeth and claws of ravenous wolves that came in troops; and what impression could the greatest blow a man can strike, make upon the thick bristly hide of a wild boar?

Cleo. As on the one hand, I have named every thing that man has to fear from wild beasts; so, on the other, we ought not to forget the things that are in his favour. In the first place, a wild man inured to hardship, would far exceed a tame one, in all feats of strength, nimbleness and activity; in the second, his anger would sooner and more usefully transport and assist him in his savage state, than it can do in society; where, from his infancy he is so many ways taught, and forced in his own defence, to cramp and stifle with his fears the noble gift of nature. In wild creatures we see, that most of them, when their own life or that of their young ones is at stake, fight with great obstinacy, and continue fighting to the last, and do what mischief they can, whilst they have breath, without regard to their being overmatched, or the disadvantages they labour under. It is observed likewise, that the more untaught and inconsiderate creatures are, the more entirely they are swayed by the passion that is uppermost: natural affection would make wild men and women too, sacrifice their lives, and die for their children; but they would die fighting; and one wolf would not find it an easy matter to carry of a child from his watchful parents, if they were both resolute, though they were naked. As to man's being born defenceless, it is not to be conceived, that he should long know the strength of his arms, without being acquainted with the articulation of his fingers, or at least, what is owing to it, his faculty of grasping and holding fast; and the most untaught savage would make use of clubs and staves before he came to maturity. As the danger men are in from wild beasts would be of the highest consequence, so it would employ their utmost care and industry: they would dig holes, and invent other stratagems, to distress their enemies, and destroy their young ones: as soon as they found out fire, they would make use of that element to guard themselves and annoy their foes: by the help of it they would soon learn to sharpen wood, which presently would put them upon making spears and other weapons that would cut. When men are angry enough with creatures to strike them, and these are running away, or flying from them, they are apt to throw at what they cannot reach: this, as soon as they had spears, would naturally lead them to the invention of darts and javelins. Here, perhaps, they may stop a while; but the same chain of thinking would, in time, produce bows and arrows: the elasticity of sticks and boughs of trees is very obvious; and to make strings of the guts of animals, I dare say, is more ancient than the use of hemp. Experience teaches us, that men may have all these, and many more weapons, and be very expert in the use of them, before any manner of government, except that of parents over their children, is to be seen among them: it is likewise very well known, that savages furnished with no better arms, when they are strong enough in number, will venture to attack, and even hunt after the fiercest wild beasts, lions and tigers not excepted. Another thing is to be considered, that likewise favours our species, and relates to the nature of the creatures, of which intemperate climates man has reason to stand in bodily fear of.

Hor. Wolves and wild boars?

Cleo. Yes. That great numbers of our species have been devoured by the first, is uncontested; but they most naturally go in quest of sheep and poultry; and, as long as they can get carrion, or any thing to fill their bellies with, they seldom hunt after men, or other large animals; which is the reason, that in the summer our species, as to personal insults, have not much to fear from them. It is certain likewise, that savage swine will hunt after men, and many of their maws have been crammed with human flesh: but they naturally feed on acorns, chestnuts, beach-mast, and other vegetables; and they are only carnivorous upon occasion, and through necessity, when they can get nothing else; in great frosts, when the country is bare, and every thing covered with snow. It is evident, then, that human creatures are not in any great and immediate danger from either of these species of beasts, but in hard winters, which happen but seldom in temperate climates. But as they are our perpetual enemies, by spoiling and devouring every thing that may serve for the sustenance of man, it is highly necessary, that we should not only be always upon our guard against them, but likewise never cease to assist one another in routing and destroying them.

Hor. I plainly see, that mankind might subsist and survive to multiply, and get the mastery over all other creatures that should oppose them; and as this could never have been brought about, unless men had assisted one another against savage beasts, it is possible that the necessity men were in of joining and uniting together, was the first step toward society. Thus far I am willing to allow you to have proved your main point: but to ascribe all this to Providence, otherwise than that nothing is done without the Divine permission, seems inconsistent with the ideas we have of a perfectly good and merciful Being. It is possible, that all poisonous animals may have something in them that is beneficial to men; and I will not dispute with you, whether the most venomous of all the serpents which Lucan has made mention of, did not contain some antidote, or other fine medicine, still undiscovered: but when I look upon the vast variety of ravenous and blood-thirsty creatures, that are not only superior to us in strength, but likewise visibly armed by nature, as it were on purpose for our destruction; when, I say, I look upon these, I can find out no use for them, nor what they could be designed for, unless it be to punish us: but I can much less conceive, that the Divine Wisdom should have made them the means without which men could not have been civilized. How many thousands of our species must have been devoured in the conflicts with them!

Cleo. Ten troops of wolves, with fifty in each, would make a terrible havoc, in a long winter, among a million of our species with their hands tied behind them; but among half that number, one pestilence has been known to slaughter more, than so many wolves could have eaten in the same time; notwithstanding the great resistance that was made against it, by approved of medicines and able physicians. It is owing to the principle of pride we are born with, and the high value we all, for the sake of one, have for our species, that men imagine the whole universe to be principally made for their use; and this error makes them commit a thousand extravagancies, and have pitiful and most unworthy notions of God and his works. It is not greater cruelty, or more unnatural, in a wolf to eat a piece of a man, than it is in a man to eat part of a lamb or a chicken. What, or how many purposes wild beasts were made for, is not for us to determine; but that they were made, we know; and that some of them must have been very calamitous to every infant nation, and settlement of men, is almost as certain: this you was fully persuaded of; and thought, moreover, that they must have been such an obstacle to the very subsistence of our species, as was insurmountable: In answer to this difficulty, which you started, I showed you, from the different instincts and peculiar tendencies of animals, that in nature a manifest provision was made for our species: by which, notwithstanding the rage and power of the fiercest beasts, we should make a shift, naked and defenceless, to escape their fury, so as to be able to maintain ourselves and multiply our kind, till by our numbers, and arms acquired by our own industry, we could put to flight, or destroy all savage beasts without exception, whatever spot of the globe we might have a mind to cultivate and settle on. The necessary blessings we receive from the sun, are obvious to a child; and it is demonstrable, that without it, none of the living creatures that are now upon the earth, could subsist. But if it were of no other use, being eight hundred thousand times bigger than the earth at least, one thousandth part of it would do our business as well, if it was but nearer to us in proportion. From this consideration alone, I am persuaded, that the sun was made to enlighten and cherish other bodies, besides this planet of ours. Fire and water were designed for innumerable purposes; and among the uses that are made of them, some are immensely different from others. But whilst we receive the benefit of these, and are only intent on ourselves, it is highly probable, that there are thousands of things, and perhaps our own machines among them, that, in the vast system of the universe, are now serving some very wise ends, which we shall never know. According to that plan of this globe, I mean the scheme of government, in relation to the living creatures that inhabit the earth, the destruction of animals is as necessary as the generation of them.

Hor. I have learned that from the Fable of the Bees; and I believe what I have read there to be very true; that, if any one species was to be exempt from death, it would in time crush all the rest to pieces, though the first were sheep, and the latter all lions: but that the Supreme Being should have introduced society at the expence of so many lives of our species, I cannot believe, when it might have been done much better in a milder way.

Cleo. We are speaking of what probably was done, and not of what might have been done. There is no question, but the same Power that made whales, might have made us seventy feet high, and given us strength in proportion. But since the plan of this globe requires, and you think it necessary yourself, that in every species some should die almost as fast as others are born, why should you take away any of the means of dying?

Hor. Are there not diseases enough, physicians and apothecaries, as well as wars by sea and land, that may take off more than the redundancy of our species?

Cleo. They may, it is true; but in fact they are not always sufficient to do this: and in populous nations we see, that war, wild beasts, hanging, drowning, and an hundred casualties together, with sickness and all its attendants, are hardly a match for one invisible faculty of ours, which is the instinct men have to preserve their species. Every thing is easy to the Deity; but to speak after an human manner, it is evident, that in forming this earth, and every thing that is in it, no less wisdom or solicitude was required, in contriving the various ways and means, to get rid and destroy animals, than seems to have been employed in producing them; and it is as demonstrable, that our bodies were made on purpose not to last beyond such a period, as it is, that some houses are built with a design not to stand longer than such a term of years. But it is death itself to which our aversion by nature is universal; as to the manner of dying, men differ in their opinions; and I never heard of one yet that was generally liked of.

Hor. But nobody chooses a cruel one. What an unspeakable and infinitely excruciating torment must it be, to be torn to pieces, and eat alive by a savage beast!

Cleo. Not greater, I can assure you; than are daily occasioned by the gout in the stomach, and the stone in the bladder.

Hor. Which way can you give me this assurance; how can you prove it?

Cleo. From our fabric itself, the frame of human bodies, that cannot admit of any torment, infinitely excruciating. The degrees of pain, as well as of pleasure, in this life are limited, and exactly proportioned to every one's strength; whatever exceeds that, takes away the senses; and whoever has once fainted away with the extremity of any torture, knows the fall extent of what here he can suffer, if he remembers what he felt. The real mischief which wild beasts have done to our species, and the calamities they have brought upon it, are not to be compared to the cruel usage, and the multiplicity of mortal injuries which men have received from one another. Set before your eyes a robust warrior, that having lost a limb in battle, is afterwards trampled upon by twenty horses; and tell me, pray, whether you think, that lying thus helpless with most of his ribs broke, and a fractured skull, in the agony of death, for several hours, he suffers less than if a lion had dispatched him?

Hor. They are both very bad.

Cleo. In the choice of things we are more often directed by the caprice of fashions, and the custom of the age, than we are by solid reason, or our own understanding. There is no greater comfort in dying of a dropsy, and in being eaten by worms, than there is in being drowned at sea, and becoming the prey of fishes. But in our narrow way of thinking, there is something that subverts and corrupt our judgment; how else could persons of known elegancy in their taste, prefer rotting and stinking in a loathsome sepulchre, to their being burnt in the open air to inoffensive ashes?

Hor. I freely own, that I have an aversion to every thing that is shocking and unnatural.

Cleo. What you call shocking, I do not know; but nothing is more common to nature, or more agreeable to her ordinary course, than that creatures should live upon one another. The whole system of animated beings on the earth seems to be built upon this; and there is not one species that we know of, that has not another that feeds upon it, either alive or dead; and most kind of fish are forced to live upon fish. That this in the last-mentioned, was not an omission or neglect, is evident from the large provision nature has made for it, far exceeding any thing she has done for other animals.

Hor. You mean the prodigious quantity of roe they spawn.

Cleo. Yes; and that the eggs contained in them, receive not their fecundity until after they are excluded; by which means the female may be filled with as many of them as her belly can hold, and the eggs themselves may be more closely crowded together, than would be consistent with the admission of any substance from the male: without this, one fish could not bring forth yearly such a prodigious shoal.

Hor. But might not the aura seminalis of the male be subtle enough to penetrate the whole cluster of eggs, and influence every one of them, without taking up any room, as it does in fowls and other oviparous animals?

Cleo. The ostrich excepted in the first place: in the second, there are no other oviparous animals in which the eggs are so closely compacted together, as they are in fish. But suppose the prolific power should pervade the whole mass of them; if all the eggs which some of the females are crammed with, were to be impregnated whilst they are within the fish, it is impossible but the aura seminalis, the prolific spirit of the male, though it took up no room itself, would, as it does in all other creatures, dilate, and more or less distend every egg; and the least expansion of so many individuals would swell the whole roe to a bulk that would require a much greater space, than the cavity that now contains them. Is not here a contrivance beyond imagination fine, to provide for the continuance of a species, though every individual of it should be born with an instinct to destroy it!

Hor. What you speak of, is only true at sea, in a considerable part of Europe at least: for in fresh water, most kinds of fish do not feed on their own species, and yet they spawn in the same manner, and are as full of roe as all the rest: among them, the only great destroyer with us, is the pike.

Cleo. And he is a very ravenous one: We see in ponds, that where pikes are suffered to be, no other fish shall ever increase in number. But in rivers, and all waters near any land, there are amphibious fowls, and many sorts of them, that live mostly upon fish: Of these water-fowls in many places are prodigious quantities. Besides these, there are otters, beavers, and many other creatures that live upon fish. In brooks and shallow waters, the hearn and bittern will have their share: What is taken off by them, perhaps is but little; but the young fry, and the spawn that one pair of swans are able to consume in one year, would very well serve to stock a considerable river. So they are but eat, it is no matter what eats them, either their own species or another: What I would prove, is, that nature produces no extraordinary numbers of any species, but she has contrived means answerable to destroy them. The variety of insects in the several parts of the world, would be incredible to any one that has not examined into this matter; and the different beauties to be observed in them is infinite: But neither the beauty, nor the variety, of them, are more surprising, than the industry of nature in the multiplicity of her contrivances to kill them; and if the care and vigilance of all other animals in destroying them were to cease at once, in two years time the greatest part of the earth, which is ours now, would be theirs, and in many countries insects would be the only inhabitants.

Hor. I have heard that whales live upon nothing else; that must make a fine consumption.

Cleo. That is the general opinion, I suppose, because they never find any fish in them; and because there are vast multitudes of insects in those seas, hovering on the surface of the water. This creature likewise helps to corroborate my assertion, that in the numbers produced of every species, the greatest regard is had to the consumption of them: This prodigious animal being too big to be swallowed, nature in it has quite altered the economy observed in all other fish; for they are viviparous, engender like other viviparous animals, and have never above two or three young ones at a time. For the continuance of every species among such an infinite variety of creatures as this globe yields, it was highly necessary, that the provision for their destruction should not be less ample, than that which was made for the generation of them; and therefore the solicitude of nature in procuring death, and the consumption of animals, is visibly superior to the care she takes to seed and preserve them.

Hor. Prove that pray.

Cleo. Millions of her creatures are starved every year, and doomed to perish for want of sustenance; but whenever any die, there is always plenty of mouths to devour them. But then, again, she gives all she has: nothing is so fine or elaborate, as that she grudges it for food; nor is any thing more extensive or impartial than her bounty: she thinks nothing too good for the meanest of her broods, and all creatures are equally welcome to every thing they can find to eat. How curious is the workmanship in the structure of a common fly; how inimitable are the celerity of his wings, and the quickness of all his motions in hot weather! Should a Pythagorean, that was likewise a good master in mechanics, by the help of a microscope, pry into every minute part of this changeable creature, and duly consider the elegancy of its machinery, would he not think it great pity, that thousands of millions of animated beings, so nicely wrought and admirably finished, should every day be devoured by little birds and spiders, of which we stand in so little need? Nay, do not you think yourself, that things would have been managed full as well, is the quantity of flies had been less, and there had been no spiders at all?

Hor. I remember the fable of the Acorn and the Pumkin too well to answer you; I do not trouble my head about it.

Cleo. Yet you found fault with the means, which I supposed Providence had made use of to make men associate; I mean the common danger they were in from wild beasts: though you owned the probability of its having been the first motive of their uniting.

Hor. I cannot believe that Providence should have no greater regard to our species, than it has to flies, and the spawn of fish: or that nature has ever sported with the fate of human creatures, as she does with the lives of insects, and been as wantonly lavish of the first, as she seems to be of the latter. I wonder how you can reconcile this to religion; you that are such a stickler for Christianity.

Cleo. Religion has nothing to do with it. But we are so full of our own species, and the excellency of it, that we have no leisure seriously to consider the system of this earth; I mean the plan on which the economy of it is built, in relation to the living creatures that are in and upon it.

Hor. I do not speak as to our species, but in respect to the Deity: has religion nothing to do with it, that you make God the author of so much cruelty and malice?

Cleo. It is impossible, you should speak otherwise, than in relation to our species, when you make use of those expressions, which can only signify to us the intentions things were done with, or the sentiments human creatures have of them; and nothing can be called cruel or malicious in regard to him who did it, unless his thoughts and designs were such in doing it. All actions in nature, abstractly considered, are equally indifferent; and whatever it may be to individual creatures, to die is not a greater evil to this earth, or the whole universe, than it is to be born.

Hor. This is making the First Cause of things not an intelligent being.

Cleo. Why so? Can you not conceive an intelligent, and even a most wise being, that is not only exempt from, but likewise incapable of entertaining any malice or cruelty?

Hor. Such a being could not commit, or order things that are malicious and cruel.

Cleo. Neither does God. But this will carry us into a dispute about the origin of evil; and from thence we must inevitably fall on free-will and predestination, which, as I have told you before, is an inexplicable mystery I will never meddle with. But I never said nor thought any thing irreverent to the Deity: on the contrary, the idea I have of the Supreme Being, is as transcendently great, as my capacity is able to form one, of what is incomprehensible; and I could as soon believe, that he could cease to exist, as that he should be the author of any real evil. But I should be glad to hear the method, after which you think society might have been much better introduced: Pray, acquaint me with that milder way you spoke of.

Hor. You have thoroughly convinced me, that the natural love which it is pretended we have for our species, is not greater than what many other animals have for theirs: but if nature had actually given us an affection for one another, as sincere and conspicuous as that which parents are seen to have for their children, whilst they are helpless, men would have joined together by choice; and nothing could have hindered them from associating, whether their numbers had been great or small, and themselves either ignorant or knowing.

Cleo. O mentes hominum caecas! O Pectora caeca!

Hor. You may exclaim as much as you please; I am persuaded that this would have united men in firmer bonds of friendship, than any common danger from wild beasts could have tied them with: but what fault can you find with it, and what mischief could have befallen us from mutual affection?

Cleo. It would have been inconsistent with the scheme, the plan after which, it is evident, Providence has been pleased to order and dispose of things in the universe. If such an affection had been planted in man by instinct, there never could have been any fatal quarrels among them, nor mortal hatreds; men could never have been cruel to one another: in short, there could have been no wars of any duration; and no considerable numbers of our species could ever have been killed by one another's malice.

Hor. You would make a rare state-physician, in prescribing war, cruelty and malice, for the welfare and maintenance of civil society.

Cleo. Pray, do not misrepresent me: I have done no such thing: but if you believe the world is governed by Providence at all, you must believe likewise, that the Deity makes use of means to bring about, perform, and execute his will and pleasure: As for example, to have war kindled, there must be first misunderstandings and quarrels between the subjects of different nations, and dissentions among the respective princes, rulers, or governors of them: it is evident, that the mind of man is the general mint where the means of this sort must be coined; from whence I conclude, that if Providence had ordered matters after that mild way, which you think would have been the best, very little of human blood could have been spilt, if any at all.

Hor. Where would have been the inconveniency of that?

Cleo. You could not have had that variety of living creatures, there is now; nay, there would not have been room for man himself, and his sustenance: our species alone would have overstocked the earth, if there had been no wars, and the common course of Providence had not been more interrupted than it has been. Might I not justly say then, that this is quite contrary and destructive to the scheme on which it is plain this earth was built? This is a consideration which you will never give its due weight. I have once already put you in mind of it, that you yourself have allowed the destruction of animals to be as necessary as the generation of them. There is as much wisdom to be seen in the contrivances how numbers of living creatures might always be taken off and destroyed, to make room for those that continually succeed them, as there is in making all the different sorts of them, every one preserve their own species. What do you think is the reason, that there is but one way for us to come into the world?

Hor. Because that one is sufficient.

Cleo. Then from a parity of reason, we ought to think, that there are several ways to go out of the world, because one would not have been sufficient. Now, if for the support and maintenance of that variety of creatures which are here that they should die, is a postulatum as necessary as it is, that they should be born; and you cut off or obstruct the means of dying, and actually stop up one of the great gates, through which we see multitudes go to death; do you not oppose the scheme, nay, do you mar it less, than if you hindered generation! Is there never had been war, and no other means of dying, besides the ordinary ones, this globe could not have born, or at least not maintained, the tenth part of the people that would have been in it. By war, I do not mean only such as one nation has had against another, but civil as well as foreign quarrels, general massacres, private murders, poison, sword, and all hostile force, by which men, notwithstanding their pretence of love to their species, have endeavoured to take away one another's lives throughout the world, from the time that Cain slew Abel to this day.

Hor. I do not believe, that a quarter of all these mischiefs are upon record: but what may be known from history, would make a prodigious number of men: much greater, I dare say, than ever was on earth at one time: But what would you infer from this? They would not have been immortal; and if they had not died in war, they must soon after have been slain by diseases. When a man of threescore is killed by a bullet in the field, it is odds, that he would not have lived four years longer, though he had stayed at home.

Cleo. There are soldiers of threescore perhaps in all armies, but men generally go to the war when they are young; and when four or five thousand are lost in battle, you will find the greatest number to have been under five-and-thirty: consider now, that many men do not marry till after that age, who get ten or a dozen children.

Hor. If all that die by the hands of another, were to get a dozen children before they die----

Cleo. There is no occasion for that; I suppose nothing, that is either extravagant or improbable; but that all such, as have been wilfully destroyed by means of their species, should have lived, and taken their chance with the rest; that every thing should have befallen them, that has befallen those that have not been killed that way; and the same likewise to their posterity; and that all of them should have been subject to all the casualties as well as diseases, doctors, apothecaries, and other accidents, that take away man's life, and shorten his days; war, and violence from one another, only excepted.

Hor. But if the earth had been too full of inhabitants, might not Providence have sent pestilences and diseases oftener? More children might have died when they were young, or more women might have proved barren.

Cleo. I do not know whether your mild way would have been more generally pleasing; but you entertain notions of the Deity that are unworthy of him. Men might certainly have been born with the instinct you speak of; but if this had been the Creator's pleasure, there must have been another economy; and things on earth, from the beginning, would have been ordered in a manner quite different from what they are now. But to make a scheme first, and afterwards to mend it, when it proves defective, is the business of finite wisdom; it belongs to human prudence alone to mend faults, to correct and redress what was done amiss before, and to alter the measures which experience teaches men, were ill concerted: but the knowledge of God was consummate from eternity. Infinite Wisdom is not liable to errors or mistakes; therefore all his works are universally good, and every thing is made exactly as he would have it: the firmness and liability of his laws and councils are everlasting, and therefore his resolutions are as unalterable, as his decrees are eternal. It is not a quarter of an hour ago, that you named wars among the necessary means to carry off the redundancy of our species; how come you now to think them useless? I can demonstrate to you, that nature, in the production of our species, has amply provided against the losses of our sex, occasioned by wars, by repairing them visibly, where they are sustained, in as palpable a manner, as she has provided for the great destruction that is made of fish, by their devouring one another.

Hor. How is that, pray?

Cleo. By sending more males into the world than females. You will easily allow me that our sex bears the brunt of all the toils and hazards that are undergone by sea and land; and that by this means a far greater number of men must be destroyed than there is of women: now if we see, as certainly we do, that of the infants yearly born, the number of males is always considerably superior to that of the females, is it not manifest, that nature has made a provision for great multitudes, which, if they were not destroyed, would be not only superfluous, but of pernicious consequence in great nations?

Hor. That superiority in the number of males born is wonderful indeed; I remember the account that has been published concerning it, as it was taken from the bills of births and burials in the city and suburbs.

Cleo. For fourscore years; in which the number of females born was constantly much inferior to that of the males, sometimes by many hundreds: and that this provision of nature, to supply the havoc that is made of men by wars and navigation, is still greater than could be imagined from that difference only, will soon appear, if we consider that women, in the first place, are liable to all diseases, within a trifle, that are incident to men; and that, in the second, they are subject to many disorders and calamities on account of their sex, which great numbers die of, and which men are wholly exempt from.

Hor. This could not well be the effect of chance; but it spoils the consequence which you drew from my affectionate scheme, in case there had been no wars: for your fear that our species would have increased beyond all bounds, was entirely built upon the supposition, that those who have died in war should not have wanted women if they had lived; which, from this superiority in the number of males, it is evident, they should and must have wanted.

Cleo. What you observe is true; but my chief aim was to show you how disagreeable the alteration you required would have been every way to the rest of the scheme, by which it is manifest things are governed at present. For, if the provision had been made on the other side; and nature, in the production of our species, had continually taken care to repair the loss of women that die of calamities not incident to men, then certainly there would have been women for all the men that have been destroyed by their own species, if they had lived; and the earth without war, as I have said, would have been over-stocked; or, if nature had ever been the same as she is now, that is, if more males had been born than females, and more females had died of diseases than males, the world would constantly have had a great superfluity of men, if there never had been any wars; and this disproportion between their number and that of the women would have caused innumerable mischiefs, that are now prevented by no other natural causes, than the small value men set upon their species, and their dissentions with one another.

Hor. I can see no other mischief this would produce, than that the number of males which die without having ever tried matrimony, would be greater than it is now; and whether that would be a real evil or not, is a very disputable point.

Cleo. Do not you think, that this perpetual scarcity of women, and superfluity of men, would make great uneasiness in all societies, how well soever people might love one another; and that the value, the price of women, would be so enhanced by it, that none but men in tolerable good circumstances would be able to purchase them? This alone would make us another world; and mankind could never have known that most necessary and now inexhaustible spring, from which all nations, where slaves are not allowed of, are constantly supplied with willing hands for all the drudgery of hard and dirty labour; I mean the children of the poor, the greatest and most extensive of all temporal blessings that accrue from society, on which all the comforts of life, in the civilized state, have their unavoidable dependance. There are many other things, from which it is plain, that such a real love of man for his species would have been altogether inconsistent with the present scheme; the world must have been destitute of all that industry, that is owing to envy and emulation; no society could have been easy with being a flourishing people at the expence of their neighbours, or enduring to be counted a formidable nation. All men would have been levellers; government would have been unnecessary; and there could have been no great bustle in the world. Look into the men of greatest renown, and the most celebrated achievements of antiquity, and every thing that has been cried up and admired in past ages by the fashionable part of mankind; if the same labours were to be performed over again, which qualification, which help of nature do you think would be the most proper means to have them executed; that instinct of real affection you required, without ambition or the love of glory; or a staunch principle of pride and selfishness, acting under pretence to, and assuming the resemblance of that affection? Consider, I beseech you, that no men governed by this instinct would require services of any of their species, which they would not be ready to perform for others; and you will easily see, that its being universal would quite alter the scene of society from what it is now. Such an instinct might be very suitable to another scheme different from this, in another world; where, instead of fickleness, and a restless desire after changes and novelty, there was observed an universal steadiness, continually preferred by a serene spirit of contentment among other creatures of different appetites from ours, that had frugality without avarice, and generosity without pride; and whose solicitude after happiness in a future state, was as active and apparent in life as our pursuits are after the enjoyments of this present. But, as to the world we live in, examine into the various ways of earthly greatness, and all the engines that are made use of to attain to the felicity of carnal men, and you will find, that the instinct you speak of must have destroyed the principles, and prevented the very existence of that pomp and glory to which human societies have been, and are still raised by worldly wisdom.

Hor. I give up my affectionate scheme; you have convinced me that there could not have been that stir and variety, nor, upon the whole, that beauty in the world, which there have been, if all men had been naturally humble, good, and virtuous. I believe that wars of all sorts, as well as diseases, are natural means to hinder mankind from increasing too fast; but that wild beasts should likewise have been designed to thin our species, I cannot conceive; for they can only serve this end, when men are but few, and their numbers should be increased, instead of lessened; and afterwards, if they were made for that purpose, when men are strong enough, they would not answer it.

Cleo. I never said that wild beasts was designed to thin our species. I have showed that many things were made to serve a variety of different purposes; that in the scheme of this earth, many things must have been considered that man has nothing to do with; and that it is ridiculous to think that the universe was made for our sake. I have said likewise, that as all our knowledge comes, a posteriori, it is imprudent to reason otherwise than from facts. That there are wild beasts, and that there are savage men, is certain; and that where there are but few of the latter, the first must always be very troublesome, and often fatal to them, is as certain; and when I reflect on the passions all men are born with, and their incapacity whilst they are untaught, I can find no cause or motive which is so likely to unite them together, and make them espouse the same interest, as that common danger they must always be in from wild beasts, in uncultivated countries, whilst they live in small families that all shift for themselves, without government or dependance upon one another: This first step to society, I believe to be an effect, which that same cause, the common danger so often mentioned, will never fail to produce upon our species in such circumstances: what other, and how many purposes wild beasts might have been designed for besides, I do not pretend to determine, as I have told you before.

Hor. But whatever other purposes wild beasts were designed for, it still follows from your opinion, that the uniting of savages in common defence, must have been one; which to me seems clashing with our idea of the Divine Goodness.

Cleo. So will every thing seem to do, which we call natural evil; if you ascribe human passions to the Deity, and measure Infinite Wisdom by the standard of our most shallow capacity; you have been at this twice already; I thought I had answered it. I would not make God the author of evil, any more than yourself; but I am likewise persuaded, that nothing could come by chance, in respect to the Supreme Being; and, therefore, unless you imagine the world not to be governed by Providence, you must believe that wars, and all the calamities we can suffer from man or beast, as well as plagues and all other diseases, are under a wise direction that is unfathomable. As there can be no effect without a cause, so nothing can be said to happen by chance, but in respect to him who is ignorant of the cause of it. I can make this evident to you, in an obvious and familiar example. To a man who knows nothing of the tennis-court, the skips and rebounds of the ball seems to be all fortuitous; as he is not able to guess at the several different directions it will receive before it comes to the ground; so, as soon as it has hit the place to which it was plainly directed at first, it is chance to him where it will fall: whereas, the experienced player, knowing perfectly well the journey the ball will make, goes directly to the place, if he is not there already, where it will certainly come within his reach. Nothing seems to be more the effect of chance than a cast of the dice: yet they obey the laws of gravity and motion in general, as much as any thing else; and from the impressions that are given them, it is impossible they should fall otherwise than they do: but the various directions which they shall receive in the whole course of the throw being entirely unknown, and the rapidity with which they change their situation being such, that our slow apprehension cannot trace them, what the cast will be is a mystery to human understanding, at fair play. But if the same variety of directions was given to two cubes of ten feet each, which a pair of dice receive, as well from one another as the box, the caster's fingers that cover it, and the table they are flung upon, from the time they are taken up until they lie still, the same effect would follow; and if the quantity of motion, the force that is imparted to the box and dice was exactly known, and the motion itself was so much retarded in the performance, that what is done in three or four seconds, should take up an hour's time, it would be easy to find out the reason of every throw, and men might learn with certainty to foretell which side of the cube would be uppermost. It is evident, then, that the words fortuitous and casual, have no other meaning than what depends upon our want of knowledge, foresight, and penetration; the reflection on which will show us, by what an infinity of degrees all human capacity falls short of that universal intuitus, with which the Supreme Being beholds at once every thing without exception, whether to us it be visible or invisible, past, present, or to come.

Hor. I yield: you have solved every difficulty I have been able to raise; and I must confess, that your supposition concerning the first motive that would make savages associate, is neither clashing with good sense, nor any idea we ought to have of the Divine attributes; but, on the contrary, in answering my objections, you have demonstrated the probability of your conjecture, and rendered the wisdom and power of providence, in the scheme of this earth, both as to the contrivance and the execution of it, more conspicuous and palpable to me, than any thing I ever heard or read, had done before.

Cleo. I am glad you are satisfied; though far from arrogating to myself so much merit as your civility would compliment me with.

Hor. It is very clear to me now; that as it is appointed for all men to die, so it is necessary there should be means to compass this end; that from the number of those means, or causes of death; it is impossible to exclude either the malice of men, or the rage of wild beasts, and all noxious animals; and that if they had been actually designed by nature, and contrived for that purpose, we should have no more reason justly to complain of them, than we have to find fault with death itself, or that frightful train of diseases which are daily and hourly the manifest occasion of it.

Cleo. They are all equally included in the curse, which after the fall was deservedly pronounced against the whole earth; and if they be real evils, they are to be looked upon as the consequence of sin, and a condign punishment, which the transgression of our first parents has drawn and entailed upon all their posterity. I am fully persuaded, that all the nations in the world, and every individual of our species, civilized or savage, had their origin from Seth, Sham, or Japhet: and as experience has taught us, that the greatest empires have their periods, and the best governed states and kingdoms may come to ruin; so it is certain, that the politest people being scattered and distressed, may soon degenerate, and some of them by accidents and misfortunes, from knowing and well taught ancestors, be reduced at last to savages of the first and lowest class.

Hor. If what you are fully persuaded of, be true, the other is self-evident, from the savages that are still subsisting.

Cleo. You once seemed to insinuate, that all the danger men were in from wild beasts, would entirely cease as soon as they were civilized, and lived in large and well-ordered societies; but by this you may see, that our species will never be wholly exempt from that danger; because mankind will always be liable to be reduced to savages; for, as this calamity has actually befallen vast multitudes that were the undoubted descendants of Noah; so the greatest prince upon earth, that has children, cannot be sure, that the same disaster will never happen to any of his posterity. Wild beasts may be entirely extirpated in some countries that are duly cultivated; but they will multiply in others that are wholly neglected; and great numbers of them range now, and are masters in many places, where they had been rooted and kept out before. I shall always believe that every species of living creatures in and upon this globe, without exception, continues to be, as it was at first, under the care of that same Providence that thought fit to produce it. You have had a great deal of patience, but I would not tire it: This first step towards society, now we have mastered it, is a good resting place, and so we will leave off for to-day.

Hor. With all my heart: I have made you talk a great deal; but I long to hear the rest, as soon as you are at leisure.

Cleo. I am obliged to dine at Windsor to-morrow; if you are not otherwise engaged, I can carry you where the honour of your company will be highly esteemed: my coach shall be ready at nine; you know you are in my way.

Hor. A fine opportunity, indeed, of three or four hours chat.

Cleo. I shall be all alone without you.

Hor. I am your man, and shall expect you.

Cleo. Adieu.

THE SIXTH DIALOGUE BETWEEN HORATIO AND CLEOMENES

HORATIO.

Now we are off the stones, pray let us lose no time; I expect a great deal of pleasure from what I am to hear further.

Cleo. The second step to society is the danger men are in from one another: for which we are beholden to that staunch principle of pride and ambition, that all men are born with. Different families may endeavour to live together, and be ready to join in common danger; but they are all of little use to one another, when there is no common enemy to oppose. If we consider that strength, agility, and courage would, in such a state, be the most valuable qualifications, and that many families could not live long together, but some, actuated by the principle I named, would strive for superiority: this must breed quarrels, in which the most weak and fearful will, for their own safety, always join with him of whom they have the best opinion.

Hor. This would naturally divide multitudes into bands and companies, that would all have their different leaders, and of which the strongest and most valiant would always swallow up the weakest and most fearful.

Cleo. What you say agrees exactly with the accounts we have of the uncivilized nations that are still subsisting in the world; and thus men may live miserably many ages.

Hor. The very first generation that was brought up under the tuition of parents, would be governable: and would not every succeeding generation grow wiser than the foregoing?

Cleo. Without doubt they would increase in knowledge and cunning: time and experience would have the same effect upon them as it has upon others; and in the particular things to which they applied themselves, they would become as expert and ingenious as the most civilized nations: but their unruly passions, and the discords occasioned by them, would never suffer them to be happy; their mutual contentions would be continually spoiling their improvements, destroying their inventions, and frustrating their designs.

Hor. But would not their sufferings in time bring them acquainted with the causes of their disagreement; and would not that knowledge put them upon making of contracts, not to injure one another?

Cleo. Very probably they would; but among such ill-bred and uncultivated people, no man would keep a contract longer than that interest lasted which made him submit to it.

Hor. But might not religion, the fear of an invisible cause, be made serviceable to them, as to the keeping of their contracts?

Cleo. It might, without dispute; and would, before many generations passed away. But religion could do no more among them, than it does among civilized nations; where the Divine vengeance is seldom trusted to only, and oaths themselves are thought to be of little service, where there is no human power to enforce the obligation, and punish perjury.

Hor. But do not think, that the same ambition that made a man aspire to be a leader, would make him likewise desirous of being obeyed in civil matters, by the numbers he led?

Cleo. I do; and moreover that, notwithstanding this unsettled and precarious way communities would live in, after three or four generations, human nature would be looked into, and begin to be understood: leaders would find out, that the more strife and discord there was amongst the people they headed, the less use they could make of them: this would put them upon various ways of curbing mankind; they would forbid killing and striking one another; the taking away by force the wives or children of others in the same community; they would invent penalties, and very early find out that nobody ought to be a judge in his own cause; and that old men, generally speaking, knew more than young.

Hor. When once they have prohibitions and penalties, I should think all the difficulty surmounted; and I wonder why you said, that thus they might live miserably for many ages.

Cleo. There is one thing of great moment, which has not been named yet; and until that comes to pass, no considerable numbers can ever be made happy; what signify the strongest contracts when we have nothing to show for them; and what dependence can we have upon oral tradition, in matters that require exactness; especially whilst the language that is spoken is yet very imperfect? Verbal reports are liable to a thousand cavils and disputes that are prevented by records, which every body knows to be unerring witnesses; and from the many attempts that are made to wrest and distort the sense of even written laws, we may judge how impracticable the administration of justice must be among all societies that are destitute of them. Therefore the third and last step to society, is the invention of letters. No multitudes can live peaceably without government; no government can subsist without laws; and no laws can be effectual long, unless they are wrote down: the consideration of this is alone sufficient to give us a great insight into the nature of man.

Hor. I do not think so: the reason why no government can subsist without laws, is, because there are bad men in all multitudes; but to take patterns from them, when we would judge of human nature, rather than from the good ones that follow the dictates of their reason, is an injustice one would not be guilty of to brute beasts; and it would be very wrong in us, for a few vicious horses, to condemn the whole species as such, without taking notice of the many fine spirited creatures that are naturally tame and gentle.

Cleo. At this rate I must repeat every thing that I have said yesterday and the day before: I thought you was convinced, that it was with thought as it is with speech; and that though man was born with a capacity beyond other animals, to attain to both, yet, whilst he remained untaught, and never conversed with any of his species, these characteristics were of little use to him. All men uninstructed, whilst they are let alone, will follow the impulse of their nature, without regard to others; and therefore all of them are bad, that are not taught to be good; so all horses are ungovernable that are not well broken: for what we call vicious in them, is, when they bite or kick, endeavour to break their halter, throw their rider, and exert themselves with all their strength to shake off the yoke, and recover that liberty which nature prompts them to assert and desire. What you call natural, is evidently artificial, and belongs to education: no fine-spirited horse was ever tame or gentle, without management. Some, perhaps, are not backed until they are four years old; but then long before that time, they are handled, spoke to, and dressed; they are fed by their keepers, put under restraint, sometimes caressed, and sometimes made to smart; and nothing is omitted whilst they are young, to inspire them with awe and veneration to our species; and make them not only submit to it, but likewise take a pride in obeying the superior genius of man. But would you judge of the nature of horses in general, as to its fitness to be governed, take the foals of the best bred mares and finest stallions, and turn an hundred of them loose, fillies and colts together, in a large forest, till they are seven years old, and then see how tractable they will be.

Hor. But this is never done.

Cleo. Whose fault is that? It is not at the request of the horses, that they are kept from the mares; and that any of them are ever gentle or tame, is entirely owing to the management of man. Vice proceeds from the same origin in men, as it does in horses; the desire of uncontrouled liberty, and impatience of restraint, are not more visible in the one than they are in the other; and a man is then called vicious, when, breaking the curbs of precepts and prohibitions, he wildly follows the unbridled appetites of his untaught or ill-managed nature. The complaints against this nature of ours, are every where the same: man would have every thing he likes, without considering whether he has any right to it or not; and he would do every thing he has a mind to do, without regard to the consequence it would be of to others; at the same time that he dislikes every body, that acting from the same principle, have in all their behaviour not a special regard to him.

Hor. That is, in short, man naturally will not do as he would be done by.

Cleo. That is true; and for this, there is another reason in his nature: all men are partial in their judgments, when they compare themselves to others; no two equals think so well of each other, as both do of themselves; and where all men have an equal right to judge, there needs no greater cause of quarrel, than a present amongst them, with an inscription of detur digniori. Man in his anger behaves himself in the same manner as other animals; disturbing, in the pursuit self-preservation, those they are angry with; and all of them endeavour, according as the degree of their passion is, either to destroy, or cause pain and displeasure to their adversaries. That these obstacles to society are the faults, or rather properties of our nature, we may know by this, that all regulations and prohibitions that have been contrived for the temporal happiness of mankind, are made exactly to tally with them, and to obviate those complaints, which I said were every where made against mankind. The principal laws of all countries have the same tendency; and there is not one that does not point at some frailty, defect, or unfitness for society, that men are naturally subject to; but all of them are plainly designed as so many remedies, to cure and disappoint that natural instinct of sovereignty, which teaches man to look upon every thing as centring in himself, and prompts him to put in a claim to every thing he can lay his hands on. This tendency and design to mend our nature, for the temporal good of society, is no where more visible, than in that compendious as well as complete body of laws, that was given by God himself. The Israelites, whilst they were slaves in Egypt, were governed by the laws of their masters; and as they were many degrees removed from the lowest savages, so they were yet far from being a civilized nation. It is reasonable to think, that, before they received the law of God, they had regulations and agreements already established, which the ten commandments did not abolish; and that they must have had notions of right and wrong, and contracts among them against open violence, and the invasion of property, is demonstrable.

Hor. How is that demonstrable?

Cleo. From the decalogue itself: all wise laws are adapted to the people that are to obey them. From the ninth commandment, for example, it is evident, that a man's own testimony was not sufficient to be believed in his own affair, and that nobody was allowed to be a judge in his own case.

Hor. It only forbids us to bear false witness against our neighbour.

Cleo. That is true; and therefore the whole tenor and design of this commandment presupposes, and must imply what I say. But the prohibitions of stealing, adultery, and coveting any thing that belonged to their neighbours, are still more plainly intimating the same; and seem to be additions and amendments, to supply the defects of some known regulations and contracts that had been agreed upon before. If, in this view, we behold the three commandments last hinted at, we shall find them to be strong evidences, not only of that instinct of sovereignty within us, which at other times I have called a domineering spirit, and a principle of selfishness; but likewise of the difficulty there is to destroy, eradicate, and pull it out of the heart of man: for, from the eighth commandment it appears, that, though we debar ourselves from taking the things of our neighbour by force, yet there is danger that this instinct will prompt us to get them unknown to him in a clandestine manner, and deceive us with the insinuations of an oportet habere. From the foregoing precept, it is likewise manifest, that though we agree not to take away, and rob a man of the woman that is his own, it is yet to be feared, that if we like her, this innate principle that bids us gratify every appetite, will advise us to make use of her as if she was our own; though our neighbour is at the charge of maintaining her and all the children she brings forth. The last more especially is very ample in confirming my assertion. It strikes directly at the root of the evil, and lays open the real source of the mischiefs that are apprehended in the seventh and the eighth commandment: for without first actually trespassing against this, no man is in danger of breaking either of the former. This tenth commandment, moreover, insinuates very plainly, in the first place, that this instinct of ours is of great power, and a frailty hardly to be cured; in the second, that there is nothing which our neighbour can be possessed of, but, neglecting the consideration of justice and property, we may have a desire after it; for which reason it absolutely forbids us to covet any thing that is his: The Divine Wisdom, well knowing the strength of this selfish principle, which obliges us continually to assume every thing to ourselves; and that, when once a man heartily covets a thing, this instinct, this principle will over-rule and persuade him to leave no stone unturned to compass his desires.

Hor. According to your way of expounding the commandments, and making them tally so exactly with the frailties of our nature, it should follow from the ninth, that all men are born with a strong appetite to forswear themselves, which I never heard before.

Cleo. Nor I neither; and I confess that the rebuke there is in this smart turn of yours is very plausible; but the censure, how specious soever it may appear, is unjust, and you shall not find the consequence you hint at, if you will be pleased to distinguish between the natural appetites themselves, and the various crimes which they make us commit, rather than not be obeyed: For, though we are born with no immediate appetite to forswear ourselves, yet we are born with more than one, that, if never checked, may in time oblige us to forswear ourselves, or do worse, if it be possible, and they cannot be gratified without it; and the commandment you mention plainly implies, that by nature we are so unreasonably attached to our interest on all emergencies, that it is possible for a man to be swayed by it, not only to the visible detriment of others, as is manifest from the seventh and the eighth, but even though it should be against his own conscience: For nobody did ever knowingly bear false witness against his neighbour, but he did it for some end or other; this end, whatever it is, I call his interest. The law which forbids murder, had already demonstrated to us, how immensely we undervalue every thing, when it comes in competition with ourselves; for, though our greatest dread be destruction, and we know no other calamity equal to the dissolution of our being, yet such unequitable judges this instinct of sovereignty is able to make of us, that rather than not have our will, which we count our happiness, we choose to inflict this calamity on others, and bring total ruin on such as we think to be obstacles to the gratification of our appetites; and this men do, not only for hindrances that are present, or apprehended as to come, but likewise for former offences, and things that are past redress.

Hor. By what you said last, you mean revenge, I suppose.

Cleo. I do so; and the instinct of sovereignty which I assert to be in human nature, is in nothing so glaringly conspicuous as it is in this passion, which no mere man was ever born without, and which even the most civilized, as well as the most learned, are seldom able to conquer: For whoever pretends to revenge himself, must claim a right to a judicature within, and an authority to punish: Which, being destructive to the mutual peace of all multitudes, are for that reason the first things that in every civil society are snatched away out of every man's hands, as dangerous tools, and vested in the governing part, the supreme power only.

Hor. This remark on revenge has convinced me more than any thing you have said yet, that there is some such thing as a principle of sovereignty in our nature; but I cannot conceive yet, why the vices of private, I mean particular persons, should be thought to belong to the whole species.

Cleo. Because every body is liable to fall into the vices that are peculiar to his species; and it is with them, as it is with distempers among creatures of different kinds: There are many ailments that horses are subject to, which are not incident to cows. There is no vice, but whoever commits it had within him before he was guilty of it, a tendency towards it, a latent cause that disposed him to it: Therefore, all lawgivers have two main points to consider at setting out: First, what things will procure happiness to the society under their care: Secondly, what passions and properties there are in man's nature, that may either promote or obstruct this happiness. It is prudence to watch your fish ponds against the insults of hearns and bitterns; but the same precaution would be ridiculous against turkeys and peacocks, or any other creatures, that neither love fish, nor are able to catch them.

Hor. What frailty or defect is it in our nature, that the two first commandments have a regard to, or, as you call it, tally with?

Cleo. Our natural blindness and ignorance of the true Deity: For, though we all come into the world with an instinct toward religion that manifests itself before we come to maturity, yet the fear of an invisible cause, or invisible causes, which all men are born with, is not more universal, than the uncertainty which all untaught men fluctuate in, as to the nature and properties of that cause, or those causes: There can be no greater proof of this----

Hor. I want none; the history of all ages is a sufficient witness.

Cleo. Give me leave: There can, I say, be no greater proof of this, than the second commandment, which palpably points at all the absurdities and abominations which the ill-guided fear of an invisible cause had already made, and would still continue to make men commit; and in doing this, I can hardly think, that any thing but Divine Wisdom could, in so few words, have comprehended the vast extent and sum total of human extravagancies, as it is done in that commandment: For there is nothing so high or remote in the firmament, nor so low or abject upon earth, but some men have worshipped it, or made it one way or other the object of their superstition.

Hor.----Crocodilon adorat Pars haec: illa pavet saturam serpentibus Ibin. Effigias sacri nitet aurea Cercopitheci.

A holy monkey! I own it is a reproach to our species, that ever any part of it should have adored such a creature as a god. But that is the tip-top of folly, that can be charged on superstition.

Cleo. I do not think so; a monkey is still a living creature, and consequently somewhat superior to things inanimate.

Hor. I should have thought mens adoration of the sun or moon infinitely less absurd than to have seen them fall down before so vile, so ridiculous an animal.

Cleo. Those who have adored the sun and moon never questioned, but they were intelligent as well as glorious beings. But when I mentioned the word inanimate, I was thinking on what the same poet you quoted said of the veneration men paid to leeks and onions, deities they raised in their own gardens.

Porrum & cepe nefas violare, & frangere morsu: O sanctas genteis, quibus haec nascuntur in hortis Numina!----

But this is nothing to what has been done in America fourteen hundred years after the time of Juvenal. If the portentous worship of the Mexicans had been known in his days, he would not have thought it worth his while to take notice of the Egyptians. I have often admired at the uncommon pains those poor people must have taken to express the frightful and shocking, as well as bizarre and unutterable notions they entertained of the superlative malice and hellish implacable nature of their vitzliputzli, to whom they sacrificed the hearts of men, cut out whilst they were alive. The monstrous figure and laboured deformity of that abominable idol, are a lively representation of the direful ideas those wretches framed to themselves of an invisible over-ruling power; and plainly show us, how horrid and execrable they thought it to be, at the same time that they paid it the highest adoration; and at the expence of human blood endeavoured, with fear and trembling, if not to appease the wrath and rage of it, at least to avert, in some measure, the manifold mischiefs they apprehended from it.

Hor. Nothing, I must own, can render declaiming against idolatry more seasonable than a reflection upon the second commandment: But as what you have been saying required no great attention, I have been thinking of something else. Thinking on the purport of the third commandment, furnishes me with an objection, and I think a strong one, to what you have affirmed about all laws in general, and the decalogue in particular. You know I urged that it was wrong to ascribe the faults of bad men to human nature in general.

Cleo. I do; and thought I had answered you.

Hor. Let me try only once more. Which of the two, pray, do you think profane swearing to proceed from, a frailty in our nature, or an ill custom generally contracted by keeping of bad company?

Cleo. Certainly the latter.

Hor. Then it is evident to me, that this law is levelled at the bad men only, that are guilty of the vice forbid in it; and not any frailty belonging to human nature in general.

Cleo. I believe you mistake the design of this law; and am of opinion, that it has a much higher aim than you seem to imagine. You remember my saying, that reverence to authority was necessary, to make human creatures governable.

Hor. Very well; and that reverence was a compound of fear, love, and esteem.

Cleo. Now let us take a view of what is done in the decalogue: In the short preamble to it, expressly made that the Israelites should know who it was that spoke to them, God manifests himself to those whom he had chosen for his people, by a most remarkable instance of his own great power, and their strong obligation to him, in a fact, that none of them could be ignorant of. There is a plainness and grandeur withal in this sentence, than which nothing can be more truly sublime or majestic; and I defy the learned world to show me another as comprehensive, and of equal weight and dignity, that so fully executes its purpose, and answers its design with the same simplicity of words. In that part of the second commandment, which contains the motives and inducements why men should obey the Divine laws, are set forth in the most emphatical manner: First, God's wrath on those that hate him, and the continuance of it on their posterity: Secondly, the wide extent of his mercy to those who love him and keep his commandments. If we duly consider these passages, we shall find, that fear, as well as love, and the highest esteem, are plainly and distinctly inculcated in them; and that the best method is made use of there, to inspire men with a deep sense of the three ingredients that make up the compound of reverence. The reason is plain: If people were to be governed by that body of laws, nothing was more necessary to enforce their obedience to them, than their awful regard and utmost veneration to him, at whose command they were to keep them, and to whom they were accountable for the breaking of them.

Hor. What answer is all this to my objection?

Cleo. Have a moment's patience; I am coming to it. Mankind are naturally fickle, and delight in change and variety; they seldom retain long the same impression of things they received at first, when they were new to them; and they are apt to undervalue, if not despise the best, when they grow common. I am of opinion, that the third commandment points at this frailty, this want of steadiness in our nature; the ill consequences of which, in our duty to the Creator, could not be better prevented than by a strict observance of this law, in never making use of his name, but in the most solemn manner, on necessary occasions, and in matters of high importance. As in the foregoing part of the decalogue, care had been already taken, by the strongest motives, to create and attract reverence, so nothing could be more wisely adapted to strengthen, and make it everlasting, than the contents of this law: For as too much familiarity breeds contempt, so our highest regard due to what is most sacred, cannot be kept up better than by a quite contrary practice.

Hor. I am answered.

Cleo. What weight reverence is thought to be of to procure obedience, we may learn from the same body of laws in another commandment. Children have no opportunity of learning their duty but from their parents and those who act by their authority or in their stead: Therefore, it was requisite, that men should not only stand in great dread of the law of God, but likewise have great reverence for those who first inculcated it, and communicated to them that this was the law of God.

Hor. But you said, that the reverence of children to parents was a natural consequence of what they first experienced from the latter.

Cleo. You think there was no occasion for this law, if man would do what is commanded in it of his own accord: But I desire you would consider, that though the reverence of children to parents is a natural consequence, partly of the benefits and chastisements they receive from them, and partly of the great opinion they form of the superior capacity they observe in them; experience teaches us, that this reverence may be over-ruled by stronger passions; and therefore it being of the highest moment to all government and sociableness itself, God thought fit to fortify and strengthen it in us, by a particular command of his own; and, moreover, to encourage it, by the promise of a reward for the keeping of it. It is our parents that first cure us of our natural wildness, and break in us the spirit of independency we are all born with: It is to them we owe the first rudiments of our submission; and to the honour and deference which children pay to parents, all societies are obliged for the principle of human obedience. The instinct of sovereignty in our nature, and the waywardness of infants, which is the consequence of it, discover themselves with the least glimmering of our understanding, and before children that have been most neglected, and the least taught, are always the most stubborn and obstinate; and none are more unruly, and fonder of following their own will, than those that are least capable of governing themselves.

Hor. Then this commandment you think not obligatory, when we come to years of maturity.

Cleo. Far from it: for though the benefit politically intended by this law be chiefly received by us, whilst we are under age and the tuition of parents; yet, for that very reason, ought the duty commanded in it, never to cease. We are fond of imitating our superiors from our cradle, and whilst this honour and reverence to parents continue to be paid by their children, when they are grown men and women, and act for themselves, the example is of singular use to all minors, in teaching them their duty, and not to refuse what they see others, that are older and wiser, comply with by choice: For, by this means, as their understanding increases, this duty, by degrees, becomes a fashion, which at last their pride will not suffer them to neglect.

Hor. What you said last is certainly the reason, that among fashionable people, even the most vicious and wicked do outward homage, and pay respect to parents, at least before the world; though they act against, and in their hearts hate them.

Cleo. Here is another instance to convince us, that good manners are not inconsistent with wickedness; and that men may be strict observers of decorums, and take pains to seem well-bred, and at the same time have no regard to the laws of God, and live in contempt of religion: and therefore to procure an outward compliance with this fifth commandment, no lecture can be of such force, nor any instruction so edifying to youth, among the modest sort of people, as the sight of a strong and vigorous, as well as polite and well dressed man, in a dispute giving way and submitting to a decrepit parent.

Hor. But do you imagine that all the divine laws, even those that seem only to relate to God himself, his power and glory, and our obedience to his will, abstract from any consideration of our neighbour, had likewise a regard to the good of society, and the temporal happiness of his people?

Cleo. There is no doubt of that; witness the keeping of the Sabbath.

Hor. We have seen that very handsomely proved in one of the Spectators.

Cleo. But the usefulness of it in human affairs, is of far greater moment, than that which the author of that paper chiefly takes notice of. Of all the difficulties that mankind have laboured under in completing society, nothing has been more puzzling or perplexing than the division of time. Our annual course round the sun, not answering exactly any number of complete days or hours, has been the occasion of immense study and labour: and nothing has more racked the brain of man, than the adjusting the year to prevent the confusion of seasons: but even when the year was divided into lunar months, the computation of time must have been impracticable among the common people: To remember twenty-nine, or thirty days, where feasts are irregular, and all other days show alike, must have been a great burden to the memory, and caused a continual confusion among the ignorant; whereas, a short period soon returning is easily remembered, and one fixed day in seven, so remarkably distinguished from the rest, must rub up the memory of the most unthinking.

Hor. I believe that the Sabbath is a considerable help in the computation of time, and of greater use in human affairs, than can be easily imagined by those, who never knew the want of it.

Cleo. But what is most remarkable in this fourth commandment, is God's revealing himself to his people, and acquainting an infant nation with a truth, which the rest of the world remained ignorant of for many ages. Men were soon made sensible of the sun's power, observed every meteor in the sky, and suspected the influence of the moon and other stars: but it was a long time, and man was far advanced in sublime notions, before the light of nature could raise mortal thought to the contemplation of an Infinite Being that is the author of the whole.

Hor. You have descanted on this sufficiently when you spoke of Moses: pray let us proceed to the further establishment of society. I am satisfied that the third step towards it is the invention of letters; that without them no laws can be long effectual, and that the principal laws of all countries are remedies against human frailties; I mean, that they are designed as antidotes, to prevent the ill consequences of some properties, inseparable from our nature; which yet in themselves, without management or restraint, are obstructive and pernicious to society: I am persuaded likewise, that these frailties are palpably pointed at in the decalogue; that it was wrote with great wisdom, and that there is not one commandment in it, that has not a regard to the temporal good of society, as well as matters of higher moment.

Cleo. These are the things, indeed, that I have endeavoured to prove; and now all the great difficulties and chief obstructions, that can hinder a multitude from being formed into a body politic, are removed: when once men come to be governed by written laws, all the rest comes on a-pace. Now property, and safety of life and limb may be secured: this naturally will forward the love of peace, and make it spread. No number of men, when once they enjoy quiet, and no man needs to fear his neighbour, will be long without learning to divide and subdivide their labour.

Hor. I do not understand you.

Cleo. Man, as I have hinted before, naturally loves to imitate what he sees others do, which is the reason that savage people all do the same thing: this hinders them from meliorating their condition, though they are always wishing for it: but if one will wholly apply himself to the making of bows and arrows, whilst another provides food, a third builds huts, a fourth makes garments, and a fifth utensils: they not only become useful to one another, but the callings and employments themselves will in the same number of years receive much greater improvements, than if all had been promiscuously followed by every one of the five.

Hor. I believe you are perfectly right there; and the truth of what you say is in nothing so conspicuous, as it is in watch-making, which is come to a higher degree of perfection, than it would have been arrived at yet, if the whole had always remained the employment of one person; and I am persuaded, that even the plenty we have of clocks and watches, as well as the exactness and beauty they may be made of, are chiefly owing to the division that has been made of that art into many branches.

Cleo. The use of letters must likewise very much improve speech itself, which before that time cannot but be very barren and precarious.

Hor. I am glad to hear you mention speech again: I would not interrupt you when you named it once before: Pray what language did your wild couple speak, when first they met?

Cleo. From what I have said already, it is evident, that they could have had none at all; at least, that it is my opinion.

Hor. Then wild people must have an instinct to understand one another, which they lose when they are civilized.

Cleo. I am persuaded that nature has made all animals of the same kind, in their mutual commerce, intelligible to one another, as far as is requisite for the preservation of themselves and their species: and as to my wild couple, as you call them, I believe there would be a very good understanding before many sounds passed between them. It is not without some difficulty, that a man born in society can form an idea of such savages, and their condition; and unless he has used himself to abstract thinking, he can hardly represent to himself such a state of simplicity, in which man can have so few desires, and no appetites roving beyond the immediate call of untaught nature: to me it seems very plain, that such a couple would not only be destitute of language, but likewise never find out, or imagine that they stood in need of any; or that the want of it was any real inconvenience to them.

Hor. Why do you think so?

Cleo. Because it is impossible that any creatures should know the want of what it can have no idea of: I believe, moreover, that if savages, after they are grown men and women, should hear others speak, be made acquainted with the usefulness of speech, and consequently become sensible of the want of it in themselves, their inclination to learn it would be as inconsiderable as their capacity; and if they should attempt it, they would find it an immense labour, a thing not to be surmounted; because the suppleness and flexibility in the organs of speech, that children are endued with, and which I have often hinted at, would be lost in them; and they might learn to play masterly upon the violin, or any other the most difficult musical instrument, before they could make any tolerable proficiency in speaking.

Hor. Brutes make several distinct sounds to express different passions by: as for example, anguish, and great danger, dogs of all sorts express with another noise than they do rage and anger; and the whole species express grief by howling.

Cleo. This is no argument to make us believe, that nature has endued man with speech; there are innumerable other privileges and instincts which some brutes enjoy, and men are destitute of: chickens run about as soon as they are hatched; and most quadrupeds can walk without help, as soon as they are brought forth. If ever language came by instinct, the people that spoke it must have known every individual word in it; and a man in the wild state of nature would have no occasion for a thousandth part of the most barren language that ever had a name. When a man's knowledge is confined within a narrow compass, and he has nothing to obey, but the simple dictates of nature, the want of speech is easily supplied by dumb signs; and it is more natural to untaught men to express themselves by gestures, than by sounds; but we are all born with a capacity of making ourselves understood, beyond other animals, without speech: to express grief, joy, love, wonder and fear, there are certain tokens that are common to the whole species. Who doubts that the crying of children was given them by nature, to call assistance and raise pity, which latter it does so unaccountably beyond any other sound?

Hor. In mothers and nurses, you mean.

Cleo. I mean in the generality of human creatures. Will you allow me, that warlike music generally rouses and supports the spirits, and keeps them from sinking.

Hor. I believe I must.

Cleo. Then I will engage, that the crying (I mean the vagitus) of helpless infants will stir up compassion in the generality of our species, that are within the hearing of it, with much greater certainty than drums and trumpets will dissipate and chase away fear, in those they are applied to. Weeping, laughing, smiling, frowning, sighing, exclaiming, we spoke of before. How universal, as well as copious, is the language of the eyes, by the help of which the remotest nations understand one another at first sight, taught or untaught, in the weightiest temporal concern that belongs to the species? and in that language our wild couple would at their first meeting intelligibly say more to one another without guile, than any civilized pair would dare to name without blushing.

Hor. A man, without doubt, may be as impudent with his eyes, as he can be with his tongue.

Cleo. All such looks, therefore, and several motions, that are natural, are carefully avoided among polite people, upon no other account, than that they are too significant: it is for the same reason that stretching ourselves before others, whilst we are yawning, is an absolute breach of good manners, especially in mixed company of both sexes. As it is indecent to display any of these tokens, so it is unfashionable to take notice of, or seem to understand them: this disuse and neglect of them is the cause, that whenever they happen to be made, either through ignorance or wilful rudeness, many of them are lost and really not understood, by the beau monde, that would be very plain to savages without language, who could have no other means of conversing than by signs and motions.

Hor. But if the old stock would never either be able or willing to acquire speech, it is possible they could teach it their children: then which way could any language ever come into the world from two savages?

Cleo. By slow degrees, as all other arts and sciences have done, and length of time; agriculture, physic, astronomy, architecture, painting, &c. From what we see in children that are backward with their tongues, we have reason to think, that a wild pair would make themselves intelligible to each other by signs and gestures, before they would attempt it by sounds: but when they lived together for many years, it is very probable, that for the things they were most conversant with they would find out sounds, to stir up in each other the ideas of such things, when they were out of sight; these sounds they would communicate to their young ones; and the longer they lived together the greater variety of sounds they would invent, as well for actions as the things themselves: they would find that the volubility of tongue, and flexibility of voice, were much greater in their young ones, than they could remember it ever to have been in themselves: it is impossible, but some of these young ones would either by accident or design, make use of this superior aptitude of the organs at one time or other; which every generation would still improve upon; and this must have been the origin of all languages, and speech itself, that were not taught by inspiration. I believe moreover, that after language (I mean such as is of human invention) was come to a great degree of perfection, and even when people had distinct words for every action in life, as well as every thing they meddled or conversed with, signs and gestures still continued to be made for a great while, to accompany speech; because both are intended for the same purpose.

Hor. The design of speech is to make our thoughts known to others.

Cleo. I do not think so.

Hor. What! do not men speak to be understood?

Cleo. In one sense they do; but there is a double meaning in those words, which I believe you did not intend: if by man's speaking to be understood you mean, that when men speak, they desire that the purport of the sounds they utter should be known and apprehended by others, I answer in the affirmative: but if you mean by it, that men speak, in order that their thoughts may be known, and their sentiments laid open and seen through by others, which likewise may be meant by speaking to be understood, I answer in the negative. The first sign or sound that ever man made, born of a woman, was made in behalf, and intended for the use of him who made it; and I am of opinion, that the first design of speech was to persuade others, either to give credit to what the speaking person would have them believe; or else to act or suffer such things, as he would compel them to act or suffer, if they were entirely in his power.

Hor. Speech is likewise made use of to teach, advise, and inform others for their benefit, as well as to persuade them in our own behalf.

Cleo. And so by the help of it men may accuse themselves and own their crimes; but nobody would have invented speech for those purposes; I speak of the design, the first motive and intention that put man upon speaking. We see in children that the first things they endeavour to express with words are their wants and their will; and their speech is but a confirmation of what they asked, denied, or affirmed, by signs before.

Hor. But why do you imagine that people would continue to make use of signs and gestures, after they could sufficiently express themselves in words?

Cleo. Because signs confirm words, as much as words do signs; and we see, even in polite people, that when they are very eager they can hardly forbear making use of both. When an infant, in broken imperfect gibberish, calls for a cake or a play-thing, and at the same time points at and reaches after it, this double endeavour makes a stronger impression upon us, than if the child had spoke its wants in plain words, without making any signs, or else looked at and reached after the thing wanted, without attempting to speak. Speech and action assist and corroborate one another, and experience teaches us that they move us much more, and are more persuasive jointly than separately; vis unita fortior; and when an infant makes use of both, he acts from the same principle that an orator does when he joins proper gestures to an elaborate declamation.

Hor. From what you have said it should seem that action is not only more natural, but likewise more ancient than speech itself, which before I should have thought a paradox.

Cleo. Yet it is true; and you shall always find that the most forward, volatile, and fiery tempers make more use of gestures when they speak, than others that are more patient and sedate.

Hor. It is a very diverting scene to see how this is overdone among the French, and still more among the Portuguese: I have often been amazed to see what distortions of face and body, as well as other strange gesticulations with hands and feet, some of them will make in their ordinary discourses: But nothing was more offensive to me, when I was abroad, than the loudness and violence which most foreigners speak with, even among persons of quality, when a dispute arises, or any thing is to be debated: before I was used to it, it put me always upon my guard; for I did not question but they were angry; and I often recollected what had been said in order to consider whether it was not something I ought to have resented.

Cleo. The natural ambition and strong desire men have to triumph over, as well as persuade others, are the occasion of all this. Heightening and lowering the voice at proper seasons, is a bewitching engine to captivate mean understandings; and loudness is an assistant to speech, as well as action is: uncorrectness, false grammar, and even want of sense, are often happily drowned in noise and great bustle; and many an argument has been convincing, that had all its force from the vehemence it was made with: the weakness of the language itself may be palliatively cured by strength of elocution.

Hor. I am glad that speaking low is the fashion among well-bred people in England; for bawling and impetuosity I cannot endure.

Cleo. Yet this latter is more natural; and no man ever gave in to the contrary practice, the fashion you like, that was not taught it either by precept or example: and if men do not accustom themselves to it whilst they are young, it is very difficult to comply with it afterwards: but it is the most lovely, as well as most rational piece of good manners that human invention has to boast of in the art of flattery; for when a man addresses himself to me in a calm manner, without making gestures or other motions with head or body, and continues his discourse in the same submissive strain and composure of voice, without exalting or depressing it, he, in the first place, displays his own modesty and humility in an agreeable manner; and, in the second, makes me a great compliment in the opinion which he seems to have of me; for by such a behaviour he gives me the pleasure to imagine that he thinks me not influenced by my passions, but altogether swayed by my reason: he seems to lay his stress on my judgment, and therefore to desire, that I should weigh and consider what he says without being ruffled or disturbed: no man would do this unless he trusted entirely to my good sense, and the rectitude of my understanding.

Hor. I have always admired this unaffected manner of speaking, though I never examined so deeply into the meaning of it.

Cleo. I cannot help thinking, but that, next to the laconic and manly spirit that runs through the nation, we are very much beholden for the strength and beauty of our language to this tranquillity in discourse, which for many years has been in England, more than any where else, a custom peculiar to the beau monde, who, in all countries, are the undoubted refiners of language.

Hor. I thought that it was the preachers, play-wrights, orators, and fine writers that refined upon language.

Cleo. They make the best of what is ready coined to their hands; but the true and only mint of words and phrases is the court; and the polite part of every nation are in possession of the jus et norma loquendi. All technic words indeed, and terms of art, belong to the respective artists and dealers, that primarily and literally make use of them in their business; but whatever is borrowed from them for metaphorical use, or from other languages, living or dead, must first have the stamp of the court, and the approbation of beau monde before it can pass for current; and whatever is not used among them, or comes abroad without their sanction, is either vulgar, pedantic, or obsolete. Orators therefore, historians, and all wholesale dealers in words, are confined to those that have been already well received, and from that treasure they may pick and choose what is most for their purpose; but they are not allowed to make new ones of their own, any more than bankers are suffered to coin.

Hor. All this while I cannot comprehend what advantage or disadvantage speaking loud or low can be of to the language itself; and if what I am saying now was set down, it must be a real conjurer that, half a year hence, should be able to tell by the writing, whether it had been bawled out or whispered.

Cleo. I am of opinion that when people of skill and address accustom themselves to speak in the manner aforesaid, it must in time have an influence upon the language, and render it strong and expressive.

Hor. But your reason?

Cleo. When a man has only his words to trust to, and the hearer is not to be affected by the delivery of them, otherwise than if he was to read them himself, it will infallibly put men upon studying not only for nervous thoughts and perspicuity, but likewise for words of great energy, for purity of diction, compactness of style, and fullness, as well as elegancy of expressions.

Hor. This seems to be far fetched, and yet I do not know but there may be something in it.

Cleo. I am sure you will think so, when you consider that men that do speak are equally desirous and endeavouring to persuade and gain the point they labour for, whether they speak loud or low, with gestures or without.

Hor. Speech, you say, was invented to persuade; I am afraid you lay too much stress upon that: it certainly is made use of likewise for many other purposes.

Cleo. I do not deny that.

Hor. When people scold, call names, and pelt one another with scurrilities, what design is that done with? If it be to persuade others, to have a worse opinion of themselves than they are supposed to entertain, I believe it is seldom done with success.

Cleo. Calling names is showing others, and showing them with pleasure and ostentation, the vile and wretched opinion we have of them; and persons that make use of opprobrious language, are often endeavouring to make those whom they give it to, believe that they think worse of them than they really do.

Hor. Worse than they do! Whence does that ever appear?

Cleo. From the behaviour and the common practice of those that scold and call names. They rip up and exaggerate not only the faults and imperfections of their adversary himself, but likewise every thing that is ridiculous or contemptible in his friends or relations: They will fly to, and reflect upon every thing which he is but in the least concerned in, if any thing can possibly be said of it that is reproachful; the occupation he follows, the party he sides with, or the country he is of. They repeat with joy the calamities and misfortunes that have befallen him or his family: They see the justice of Providence in them, and they are sure they are punishments he has deserved. Whatever crime he has been suspected of, they charge him with, as if it had been proved upon him. They call in every thing to their assistance; bare surmises, loose reports, and known calumnies; and often upbraid him with what they themselves, at other times, have owned not to believe.

Hor. But how comes the practice of scolding and calling names to be so common among the vulgar all the world over? there must be a pleasure in it, though I cannot conceive it: I ask to be informed; what satisfaction or other benefit is it, that men receive or expect from it? what view is it done with?

Cleo. The real cause and inward motive men act from, when they use ill language, or call names in earnest, is, in the first place, to give vent to their anger, which it is troublesome to stifle and conceal. Secondly, to vex and afflict their enemies with greater hopes of impunity than they could reasonably entertain, if they did them any more substantial mischief, which the law would revenge: but this never comes to be a custom, nor is thought of, before language is arrived to great perfection, and society is carried to some degree of politeness.

Hor. That is merry enough, to assert that scurrility is the effect of politeness.

Cleo. You shall call it what you please, but in its original it is a plain shift to avoid fighting, and the ill consequences of it; for nobody ever called another rogue and rascal, but he would have struck him if it had been in his own power, and himself had not been withheld by the fear of something or other: therefore, where people call names without doing further injury, it is a sign not only that they have wholesome laws amongst them against open force and violence, but likewise that they obey and stand in awe of them; and a man begins to be a tolerable subject, and is nigh half civilized, that in his passion will take up and content himself with this paultry equivalent; which never was done without great self-denial at first: for otherwise the obvious, ready, and unstudied manner of venting and expressing anger, which nature teaches, is the same in human creatures that it is in other animals, and is done by fighting; as we may observe in infants of two or three months old, that never yet saw any body out of humour; for even at that age they will scratch, fling, and strike with their heads as well as arms and legs, when any thing raises their anger, which is easily, and at most times unaccountably provoked; often by hunger, pain, and other inward ailments. That they do this by instinct, something implanted in the frame, the mechanism of the body before any marks of wit or reason are to be seen in them, I am fully persuaded; as I am likewise, that nature teaches them the manner of fighting peculiar to their species; and children strike with their arms as naturally as horses kick, dogs bite, and bulls push with their horns. I beg your pardon for this digression.

Hor. It was natural enough, but if it had been less so, you would not have slipt the opportunity of having a fling at human nature, which you never spare.

Cleo. We have not a more dangerous enemy than our own inborn pride: I shall ever attack, and endeavour to mortify it when it is in my power: For the more we are persuaded that the greatest excellencies the best men have to boast of, are acquired, the greater stress it will teach us to lay upon education; and the more truly solicitous it will render us about it: And the absolute necessity of good and early instructions, can be no way more clearly demonstrated, than by exposing the deformity as well as the weakness of our untaught nature.

Hor. Let us return to speech: if the chief design of it is to persuade, the French have got the start of us a great way; theirs is really a charming language.

Cleo. So it is without doubt to a Frenchman.

Hor. And every body else, I should think, that understands it, and has any taste: do not you think it to be very engaging?

Cleo. Yes, to one that loves his belly; for it is very copious in the art of cookery, and every thing that belongs to eating and drinking.

Hor. But without banter, do not you think that the French tongue is more proper, more fit to persuade in, than ours?

Cleo. To coax and wheedle in, I believe it may.

Hor. I cannot conceive what nicety it is you aim at, in that distinction.

Cleo. The word you named includes no idea of reproach or disparagement; the greatest capacities may, without discredit to them, yield to persuasion, as well as the least; but those who can be gained by coaxing and wheedling, are commonly supposed to be persons of mean parts and weak understandings.

Hor. But pray come to the point: which of the two do you take to be the finest language?

Cleo. That is hard to determine: Nothing is more difficult than to compare the beauties of two languages together, because what is very much esteemed in the one, is often not relished at all in the other: In this point, the Pulchrum & Honestum varies, and is different every where, as the genius of the people differs. I do not set up for a judge, but what I have commonly observed in the two languages, is this: All favourite expressions in French, are such as either sooth or tickle; and nothing is more admired in English than what pierces or strikes.

Hor. Do you take yourself to be entirely impartial now?

Cleo. I think so; but if I am not, I do not know how to be sorry for it: There are some things in which it is the interest of the society that men should be biassed; and I do not think it amiss, that men should be inclined to love their own language, from the same principle that they love their country. The French call us barbarous, and we say they are fawning: I will not believe the first, let them believe what they please. Do you remember the six lines in the Cid, which Corneille is said to have had a present of six thousand livres for?

Hor. Very well.

Mon Pere est mort, Elvire, & la premiere Espee Dont s'est arme Rodrigue a sa trame coupee. Pleures, pleures mes yeux, & fondes vous en eau, La moitie de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau; Et m'oblige a venger, apres ce coup funeste, Cell qui je n'ay plus sur celle qui me reste.

Cleo. The same thought expressed in our language, to all the advantage it has in the French, would be hissed by an English audience.

Hor. That is no compliment to the taste of your country.

Cleo. I do not know that: Men may have no bad taste, and yet not be so ready at conceiving, which way one half of one's life can put the other into the grave: To me, I own it is puzzling, and it has too much the air of a riddle to be seen in heroic poetry.

Hor. Can you find no delicacy at all in the thought?

Cleo. Yes; but it is too fine spun; it is the delicacy of a cobweb; there is no strength in it.

Hor. I have always admired these lines; but now you have made me out of conceit with them: Methinks I spy another fault that is much greater.

Cleo. What is that?

Hor. The author makes his heroine say a thing which was false in fact: One half, says Chimene, of my life has put the other into the grave, and obliges me to revenge, &c. Which is the nominative of the verb obliges?

Cleo. One half of my life.

Hor. Here lies the fault; it is this, which I think is not true; for the one half of her life, here mentioned, is plainly that half which was left; it is Rodrigues her lover: Which way did he oblige her to seek for revenge?

Cleo. By what he had done, killing her father.

Hor. No, Cleomenes, this excuse is insufficient. Chimene's calamity sprung from the dilemma she was in between her love and her duty; when the latter was inexorable, and violently pressing her to solicit the punishment, and employ with zeal all her interest and eloquence to obtain the death of him, whom the first had made dearer to her than her own life; and therefore it was the half that was gone, that was put in the grave, her dead father, and not Rodrigues which obliged her to sue for justice: Had the obligation she lay under come from this quarter, it might soon have been cancelled, and herself released without crying out her eyes.

Cleo. I beg pardon for differing from you, but I believe the poet is in the right.

Hor. Pray, consider which it was that made Chimene prosecute Rodrigues, love, or honour.

Cleo. I do; but still I cannot help thinking, but that her lover, by having killed her father, obliged Chimene to prosecute him, in the same manner as a man, who will give no satisfaction to his creditors, obliges them to arrest him; or as we would say to a coxcomb, who is offending us with his discourse, If you go on thus, Sir, you will oblige me to treat you ill: Though all this while the debtor might be as little desirous of being arrested, and the coxcomb of being ill treated, as Rodrigues was of being prosecuted.

Hor. I believe you are in the right, and I beg Corneille's pardon. But now I desire you would tell me what you have further to say of society: What other advantages do multitudes receive from the invention of letters, besides the improvements it makes in their laws and language?

Cleo. It is an encouragement to all other inventions in general, by preserving the knowledge of every useful improvement that is made. When laws begin to be well known, and the execution of them is facilitated by general approbation, multitudes may be kept in tolerable concord among themselves: It is then that it appears, and not before, how much the superiority of man's understanding beyond other animals, contributes to his sociableness, which is only retarded by it in his savage state.

Hor. How so, pray; I do not understand you.

Cleo. The superiority of understanding, in the first place, makes man sooner sensible of grief and joy, and capable of entertaining either with greater difference as to the degrees, than they are felt in other creatures: Secondly, it renders him more industrious to please himself; that is, it furnishes self-love with a greater variety of shifts to exert itself on all emergencies, than is made use of by animals of less capacity. Superiority of understanding likewise gives us a foresight, and inspires us with hopes, of which other creatures have little, and that only of things immediately before them. All these things are so many tools, arguments, by which self-love reasons us into content, and renders us patient under many afflictions, for the sake of supplying those wants that are most pressing: this is of infinite use to a man, who finds himself born in a body politic, and it must make him fond of society; whereas, the same endowment before that time, the same superiority of understanding in the state of nature, can only serve to render man incurably averse to society, and more obstinately tenacious of his savage liberty, than any other creature would be, that is equally necessitous.

Hor. I do not know how to refute you: there is a justness of thought in what you say, which I am forced to assent to; and yet it seems strange: How come you by this insight into the heart of man, and which way is that skill of unravelling human nature to be obtained?

Cleo. By diligently observing what excellencies and qualifications are really acquired in a well-accomplished man; and having done this impartially, we may be sure that the remainder of him is nature. It is for want of duly separating and keeping asunder these two things, that men have uttered such absurdities on this subject; alleging as the causes of man's fitness for society, such qualifications as no man ever was endued with, that was not educated in a society, a civil establishment, of several hundred years standing. But the flatterers of our species keep this carefully from our view: instead of separating what is acquired from what is natural, and distinguishing between them, they take pains to unite and confound them together.

Hor. Why do they? I do not see the compliment; since the acquired, as well as natural parts, belong to the same person; and the one is not more inseparable from him than the other.

Cleo. Nothing is so near to a man, nor so really and entirely his own, as what he has from nature; and when that dear self, for the sake of which he values or despises, loves or hates every thing else, comes to be stript and abstracted from all foreign acquisitions, human nature makes a poor figure: it shows a nakedness, or at least an undress, which no man cares to be seen in. There is nothing we can be possessed of that is worth having, which we do not endeavour, closely to annex, and make an ornament of to ourselves; even wealth and power, and all the gifts of fortune, that are plainly adventitious, and altogether remote from our persons; whilst they are our right and property, we do not love to be considered without them. We see likewise that men, who are come to be great in the world from despicable beginnings, do not love to hear of their origin.

Hor. That is no general rule.

Cleo. I believe it is, though there may be exceptions from it; and these are not without reasons. When a man is proud of his parts, and wants to be esteemed for his diligence, penetration, quickness and assiduity, he will make perhaps an ingenuous confession, even to the exposing of his parents; and in order to set off the merit that raised him, bespeaking himself of his original meanness. But this is commonly done before inferiors, whose envy will be lessened by it, and who will applaud his candour and humility in owning this blemish: but not a word of this before his betters, who value themselves upon their families; and such men could heartily wish that their parentage was unknown, whenever they are with those that are their equals in quality, though superior to them in birth; by whom they know that they are hated for their advancement, and despised for the lowness of their extraction. But I have a shorter way of proving my assertion. Pray, is it good manners to tell a man that he is meanly born, or to hint at his descent, when it is known to be vulgar?

Hor. No: I do not say it is.

Cleo. That decides it, by showing the general opinion about it. Noble ancestors, and every thing else that is honourable and esteemed, and can be drawn within our sphere, are an advantage to our persons, and we all desire they should be looked upon as our own.

Hor. Ovid did not think so, when he said, Nam genus & proavos & quae non fecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra voco.

Cleo. A pretty piece of modesty in a speech, where a man takes pains to prove that Jupiter was his great grandfather. What signifies a theory, which a man destroys by his practice? Did you ever know a person of quality pleased with being called a bastard, though he owed his being, as well as his greatness, chiefly to his mother's impudicity?

Hor. By things acquired, I thought you meant learning and virtue; how come you to talk of birth and descent?

Cleo. By showing you, that men are unwilling to have any thing that is honourable separated from themselves, though it is remote from, and has nothing to do with their persons: I would convince you of the little probability there is, that we should be pleased with being considered, abstract from what really belongs to us; and qualifications, that in the opinion of the best and wisest are the only things for which we ought to be valued. When men are well-accomplished, they are ashamed of the lowest steps from which they rose to that perfection; and the more civilized they are, the more they think it injurious to have their nature seen, without the improvements that have been made upon it. The most correct authors would blush to see every thing published, which in the composing of their works they blotted out and stifled; and which yet it is certain they once conceived: for this reason they are justly compared to architects, that remove the scaffolding before they show their buildings. All ornaments bespeak the value we have for the things adorned. Do not you think, that the first red or white that ever was laid upon a face, and the first false hair that was wore, were put on with great secrecy, and with a design to deceive?

Hor. In France, painting is now looked upon as part of a woman's dress; they make no mystery of it.

Cleo. So it is with all the impositions of this nature, when they come to be so gross that they can be hid no longer; as men's perukes all over Europe: but if these things could be concealed, and were not known, the tawny coquette would heartily wish that the ridiculous dawbing she plasters herself with might pass for complexion; and the bald-pated beau would be as glad to have his full-bottomed wig looked upon as a natural head of hair. Nobody puts in artificial teeth, but to hide the loss of his own.

Hor. But is not a man's knowledge a real part of himself?

Cleo. Yes, and so is his politeness; but neither of them belong to his nature, any more than his gold watch or his diamond ring; and even from these he endeavours to draw a value and respect to his person. The most admired among the fashionable people that delight in outward vanity, and know how to dress well, would be highly displeased if their clothes, and skill in putting them on, should be looked upon otherwise than as part of themselves; nay, it is this part of them only, which, whilst they are unknown, can procure them access to the highest companies, the courts of princes; where it is manifest, that both sexes are either admitted or refused, by no other judgment than what is formed of them from their dress, without the least regard to their goodness, or their understanding.

Hor. I believe I apprehend you. It is our fondness of that self, which we hardly know what it consists in, that could first make us think of embellishing our persons; and when we have taken pains in correcting, polishing, and beautifying nature, the same self-love makes us unwilling to have the ornaments seen separately from the thing adorned.

Cleo. The reason is obvious. It is that self we are in love with, before it is adorned, as well as after, and every thing which is confessed to be acquired, seems to point at our original nakedness, and to upbraid us with our natural wants; I would say, the meanness and deficiency of our nature. That no bravery is so useful in war, as that which is artificial, is undeniable; yet the soldier, that by art and discipline has manifestly been tricked and wheedled into courage, after he has behaved himself in two or three battles with intrepidity, will never endure to hear that he has not natural valour; though all his acquaintance, as well as himself, remember the time that he was an arrant coward.

Hor. But since the love, affection, and benevolence we naturally have for our species, is not greater than other creatures have for theirs, how comes it, that man gives more ample demonstrations of this love on thousand occasions, than any other animal?

Cleo. Because no other animal has the same capacity or opportunity to do it. But you may ask the same of his hatred: the greater knowledge and the more wealth and power a man has, the more capable he is of rendering others sensible of the passion he is affected with, as well when he hates as when he loves them. The more a man remains uncivilized, and the less he is removed from the state of nature, the less his love is to be depended upon.

Hor. There is more honesty and less deceit among plain, untaught people, than there is among those that are more artful; and therefore I should have looked for true love and unfeigned affection among those that live in a natural simplicity, rather than any where else.

Cleo. You speak of sincerity; but the love which I said was less to be depended upon in untaught than in civilized people, I supposed to be real and sincere in both. Artful people may dissemble love, and pretend to friendship, where they have none; but they are influenced by their passions and natural appetites as well as savages, though they gratify them in another manner: well-bred people behave themselves in the choice of diet and the taking of their repasts, very differently from savages; so they do in their amours; but hunger and lust are the same in both. An artful man, nay, the greatest hypocrite, whatever his behaviour is abroad, may love his wife and children at his heart, and the sincerest man can do no more. My business is to demonstrate to you, that the good qualities men compliment our nature and the whole species with, are the result of art and education. The reason why love is little to be depended upon in those that are uncivilized, is because the passions in them are more fleeting and inconstant; they oftener jostle out and succeed one another, than they are and do in well-bred people, persons that are well educated, have learned to study their ease and the comforts of life; to tie themselves up to rules and decorums for their own advantage, and often to submit to small inconveniencies to avoid greater. Among the lowest vulgar, and those of the meanest education of all, you seldom see a lasting harmony: you shall have a man and his wife that have a real affection for one another, be full of love one hour, and disagree the next for a trifle; and the lives of many are made miserable from no other faults in themselves, than their want of manners and discretion. Without design they will often talk imprudently, until they raise one another's anger; which neither of them being able to stifle, she scolds at him; he beats her; she bursts out into tears; this moves him, he is sorry; both repent, and are friends again: and with all the sincerity imaginable resolve never to quarrel for the future, as long as they live: all this will pass between them in less than half a day, and will perhaps be repeated once a month, or oftener, as provocations offer, or either of them is more or less prone to anger. Affection never remained long uninterrupted between two persons without art; and the best friends, if they are always together, will fall out, unless great discretion be used on both sides.

Hor. I have always been of your opinion, that the more men were civilized the happier they were; but since nations can never be made polite but by length of time, and mankind must have been always miserable before they had written laws, how come poets and others to launch out so much in praise of the golden age, in which they pretend there was so much peace, love, and sincerity?

Cleo. For the same reason that heralds compliment obscure men of unknown extraction with illustrious pedigrees: as there is no mortal of high descent, but who values himself upon his family, so extolling the virtue and happiness of their ancestors, can never fail pleasing every member of a society: but what stress would you lay upon the fictions of poets?

Hor. You reason very clearly, and with great freedom, against all heathen superstition, and never suffer yourself to be imposed upon by any fraud from that quarter; but when you meet with any thing belonging to the Jewish or Christian religion, you are as credulous as any of the vulgar.

Cleo. I am sorry you should think so.

Hor. What I say is fact. A man that contentedly swallows every thing that is said of Noah and his ark, ought not to laugh at the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.

Cleo. Is it as credible, that human creatures should spring from stones, because an old man and his wife threw them over their heads, as that a man and his family, with a great number of birds and beasts, should be preserved in a large ship, made convenient for that purpose?

Hor. But you are partial: what odds is there between a stone and a lump of earth, for either of them to become a human creature? I can as easily conceive how a stone should be turned into a man or a woman, as how a man or a woman should be turned into a stone; and I think it not more strange, that a woman should be changed into a tree, as was Daphne, or into marble as Niobe, than that she should be transformed into a pillar of salt, as the wife of Lot was. Pray suffer me to catechise you a little.

Cleo. You will hear me afterwards, I hope.

Hor. Yes, yes. Do you believe Hesiod?

Cleo. No.

Hor. Ovid's Metamorphosis?

Cleo. No.

Hor. But you believe the story of Adam and Eve, and Paradise.

Cleo. Yes.

Hor. That they were produced at once, I mean at their full growth; he from a lump of earth, and she from one of his ribs?

Cleo. Yes.

Hor. And that as soon as they were made, they could speak, reason, and were endued with knowledge?

Cleo. Yes.

Hor. In short, you believe the innocence, the delight, and all the wonders of Paradise, that are related by one man; at the same time that you will not believe what has been told us by many, of the uprightness, the concord, and the happiness of a golden age.

Cleo. That is very true.

Hor. Now give me leave to show you, how unaccountable, as well as partial, you are in this. In the first place, the things naturally impossible, which you believe, are contrary to your own doctrine, the opinion you have laid down, and which I believe to be true: for you have proved, that no man would ever be able to speak, unless he was taught it; that reasoning and thinking come upon us by slow degrees; and that we can know nothing that has not from without been conveyed to the brain, and communicated to us through the organs of the senses. Secondly, in what you reject as fabulous, there is no manner of improbability. We know from history, and daily experience teaches us, that almost all the wars and private quarrels that have at any time disturbed mankind, have had their rise from the differences about superiority, and the meum & tuum: therefore before cunning, covetousness and deceit, crept into the world; before titles of honour, and the distinction between servant and master were known; why might not moderate numbers of people have lived together in peace and amity, when they enjoyed every thing in common; and have been content with the product of the earth in a fertile soil and a happy climate? Why cannot you believe this?

Cleo. Because it is inconsistent with the nature of human creatures, that any number of them should ever live together in tolerable concord, without laws or government, let the soil, the climate, and their plenty be whatever the most luxuriant imagination shall be pleased to fancy them. But Adam was altogether the workmanship of God; a preternatural production: his speech and knowledge, his goodness and innocence were as miraculous, as every other part of his frame.

Hor. Indeed, Cleomenes, this is insufferable; when we are talking philosophy you foist in miracles: why may not I do the same, and lay that the people of the golden age were made happy by miracle?

Cleo. It is more probable that one miracle should, at a stated time, have produced a male and female, from whom all the rest of mankind are descended in a natural way; than that by a continued series of miracles several generations of people should have all been made to live and act contrary to their nature; for this must follow from the account we have of the golden and silver ages. In Moses, the first natural man, the first that was born of a woman, by envying and slaying his brother, gives an ample evidence of the domineering spirit, and the principle of sovereignty, which I have asserted to belong to our nature.

Hor. You will not be counted credulous, and yet you believe all those stories, which even some of our divines have called ridiculous, if literally understood. But I do not insist upon the golden age, if you will give up Paradise: a man of sense, and a philosopher, should believe neither.

Cleo. Yet you have told me that you believed the Old and New Testament.

Hor. I never said that I believed every thing that is in them, in a literal sense. But why should you believe miracles at all?

Cleo. Because I cannot help it: and I promise never to mention the name to you again, if you can show me the bare possibility that man could ever have been produced, brought into the world without miracle. Do you believe there ever was a man who had made himself?

Hor. No: that is a plain contradiction.

Cleo. Then it is manifest the first man must have been made by something; and what I say of man, I may say of all matter and motion in general. The doctrine of Epicurus, that every thing is derived from the concourse and fortuitous jumble of atoms, is monstrous and extravagant beyond all other follies.

Hor. Yet there is no mathematical demonstration against it.

Cleo. Nor is there one to prove, that the sun is not in love with the moon, if one had a mind to advance it; and yet I think it a greater reproach to human understanding to believe either, than it is to believe the most childish stories that are told of fairies and hobgoblins.

Hor. But there is an axiom very little inferior to a mathematical demonstration, ex nihilo nihil fit, that is directly clashing with, and contradicts the creation out of nothing. Do you understand how something can come from nothing?

Cleo. I do not, I confess, any more than I can comprehend eternity, or the Deity itself: but when I cannot comprehend what my reason assures me must necessarily exist, there is no axiom or demonstration clearer to me, than that the fault lies in my want of capacity, the shallowness of my understanding. From the little we know of the sun and stars, their magnitudes, distances, and motion; and what we are more nearly acquainted with, the gross visible parts in the structure of animals and their economy, it is demonstrable, that they are the effects of an intelligent cause, and the contrivance of a Being infinite in wisdom as well as power.

Hor. But let wisdom be as superlative, and power as extensive as it is possible for them to be, still it is impossible to conceive how they should exert themselves, unless they had something to act upon.

Cleo. This is not the only thing which, though it be true, we are not able to conceive: How came the first man to exist? and yet here we are. Heat and moisture are the plain effects from manifest causes, and though they bear a great sway, even in the mineral as well as the animal and vegetable world, yet they cannot produce a sprig of grass without a previous seed.

Hor. As we ourselves, and every thing we see, are the undoubted parts of some one whole, some are of opinion, that this all, the to pan, the universe, was from all eternity.

Cleo. This is not more satisfactory or comprehensible than the system of Epicurus, who derives every thing from wild chance, and an undesigned struggle of senseless atoms. When we behold things which our reason tells us could not have been produced without wisdom and power, in a degree far beyond our comprehension, can any thing be more contrary to, or clashing with that same reason, than that the things in which that high wisdom and great power are visibly displayed, should be coeval with the wisdom and power themselves that contrived and wrought them? Yet this doctrine which is spinosism in epitome, after having been neglected many years, begins to prevail again, and the atoms lose ground: for of atheism, as well as superstition, there are different kinds that have their periods and returns, after they have been long exploded.

Hor. What makes you couple together two things so diametrically opposite?

Cleo. There is greater affinity between them than you imagine: they are of the same origin.

Hor. What, atheism and superstition!

Cleo. Yes, indeed; they both have their rise from the same cause, the same defect in the mind of man, our want of capacity in discerning truth, and natural ignorance of the Divine essence. Men that from their most early youth have not been imbued with the principles of the true religion, and have not afterwards continued to be strictly educated in the same, are all in great danger of falling either into the one or the other, according to the difference there is in the temperament and complexion they are of, the circumstances they are in, and the company they converse with. Weak minds, and those that are brought up in ignorance, and a low condition, such as are much exposed to fortune, men of slavish principles, the covetous and mean-spirited, are all naturally inclined to, and easily susceptible of superstition; and there is no absurdity so gross, nor contradiction so plain, which the dregs of the people, most gamesters, and nineteen women in twenty, may not be taught to believe, concerning invisible causes. Therefore multitudes are never tainted with irreligion; and the less civilized nations are, the more boundless is their credulity. On the contrary, men of parts and spirit, of thought and reflection, the assertors of liberty, such as meddle with mathematics and natural philosophy, most inquisitive men, the disinterested that live in ease and plenty; if their youth has been neglected, and they are not well-grounded in the principles of the true religion, are prone to infidelity; especially such amongst them, whose pride and sufficiency are greater than ordinary; and if persons of this sort fall into hands of unbelievers, they run great hazard of becoming atheists or sceptics.

Hor. The method of education you recommend, in pinning men down to an opinion, may be very good to make bigots, and raise a strong party to the priests; but to have good subjects, and moral men, nothing is better than to inspire youth with the love of virtue, and strongly to imbue them with sentiments of justice and probity, and the true notions of honour and politeness. These are the true specifics to cure man's nature, and destroy in him the savage principles of sovereignty and selfishness, that infest and are so mischievous to it. As to religious matters, prepossessing the mind, and forcing youth into a belief, is more partial and unfair, than it is to leave them unbiassed, and unprejudiced till they come to maturity, and are fit to judge as well as choose for themselves.

Cleo. It is this fair and impartial management you speak in praise of, that will ever promote and increase unbelief; and nothing has contributed more to the growth of deism in this kingdom, than the remissness of education in sacred matters, which for some time has been in fashion among the better sort.

Hor. The public welfare ought to be our principal care; and I am well assured, that it is not bigotry to a sect or persuasion; but common honesty, uprightness in all dealings, and benevolence to one another, which the society stands most in need of.

Cleo. I do not speak up for bigotry; and where the Christian religion is thoroughly taught as it should be, it is impossible, that honesty, uprightness or benevolence should ever be forgot; and no appearances of those virtues are to be trusted to, unless they proceed from that motive; for without the belief of another world, a man is under no obligation for his sincerity in this: his very oath is no tie upon him.

Hor. What is it upon an hypocrite that dares to be perjured?

Cleo. No man's oath is ever taken, if it is known that once he has been forsworn; nor can I ever be deceived by an hypocrite, when he tells me that he is one; and I shall never believe a man to be an atheist, unless he owns it himself.

Hor. I do not believe there are real atheists in the world.

Cleo. I will not quarrel about words; but our modern deism is no greater security than atheism: for a man's acknowledging the being of a God, even an intelligent first Cause, is of no use, either to himself or others, if he denies, a Providence and a future state.

Hor. After all, I do not think that virtue has any more relation to credulity, than it has to want of faith.

Cleo. Yet it would and ought to have, if we were consistent with ourselves; and if men were swayed in their actions by the principles they side with, and the opinion they profess themselves to be of, all atheists would be devils, and superstitious men saints: but this is not true; there are atheists of good morals, and great villains superstitious: nay, I do not believe there is any wickedness that the worst atheist can commit, but superstitious men may be guilty of it; impiety not excepted; for nothing is more common amongst rakes and gamesters, than to hear men blaspheme, that believe in spirits, and are afraid of the devil. I have no greater opinion of superstition than I have of atheism; what I aimed at, was to prevent and guard against both; and I am persuaded that there is no other antidote to be obtained by human means, so powerful and infallible against the poison of either, as what I have mentioned. As to the truth of our descent from Adam, I would not be a believer, and cease to be a rational creature: what I have to say for it, is this. We are convinced that human understanding is limited; and by the help of every little reflection, we may be as certain that the narrowness of its bounds, its being so limited, is the very thing, the sole cause, which palpably hinders us from diving into our origin by dint of penetration: the consequence is, that to come at the truth of this origin, which is of very great concern to us, something is to be believed: but what or whom to believe is the question. If I cannot demonstrate to you that Moses was divinely inspired, you will be forced to confess, that there never was any thing more extraordinary in the world, than that, in a most superstitious age, one man brought up among the grossest idolaters, that had the vilest and most abominable notions of the Godhead, should, without help, as we know of, find out the most hidden and most important truths by his natural capacity only; for, besides the deep insight he had in human nature, as appears from the decalogue, it is manifest that he was acquainted with the creation out of nothing, the unity and immense greatness of that Invisible Power that has made the universe; and that he taught this to the Israelites, fifteen centuries before any other nation upon earth was so far enlightened: it is undeniable, moreover, that the history of Moses, concerning the beginning of the world and mankind, is the most ancient and least improbable of any that are extant; that others, who have wrote after him on the same subject, appear most of them to be imperfect copiers of him; and that the relations which seem not to have been borrowed from Moses, as the accounts we have of Sommona-codam, Confucius, and others, are less rational, and fifty times more extravagant and incredible, than any thing contained in the Pentateuch. As to the things revealed, the plan itself, abstract from faith and religion; when we have weighed every system that has been advanced, we shall find; that, since we must have had a beginning, nothing is more rational or more agreeable to good sense, than to derive our origin from an incomprehensible creative Power, that was the first Mover and Author of all things.

Hor. I never heard any body entertain higher notions, or more noble sentiments of the Deity, than at different times I have heard from you; pray, when you read Moses, do not you meet with several things in the economy of Paradise, and the conversation between God and Adam, that seem to be low, unworthy, and altogether inconsistent with the sublime ideas you are used to form of the Supreme Being.

Cleo. I freely own, not only that I have thought so, but likewise that I have long stumbled at it: but when I consider, on the one hand, that the more human knowledge increases, the more consummate and unerring the Divine Wisdom appears to be, in every thing we can have any insight into; and on the other, that the things hitherto detected, either by chance or industry, are very inconsiderable both in number and value, if compared to the vast multitude of weightier matters that are left behind and remain still undiscovered: When, I say, I consider these things, I cannot help thinking, that there may be very wise reasons for what we find fault with, that are, and perhaps ever will be, unknown to men as long the world endures.

Hor. But why should he remain labouring under difficulties we can easily solve, and not say with Dr. Burnet, and several others, that those things are allegories, and to be understood in a figurative sense?

Cleo. I have nothing against it; and shall always applaud the ingenuity and good offices of men, who endeavour to reconcile religious mysteries to human reason and probability; but I insist upon it, that nobody can disprove any thing that is said in the Pentateuch, in the most literal sense; and I defy the wit of man to frame or contrive a story, the best concerted fable they can invent, how man came into the world, which I shall not find as much fault with, and be able to make as strong objections to, as the enemies of religion have found with, and raised against the account of Moses: If I may be allowed to take the same liberty with their known forgery, which they take with the Bible, before they have brought one argument against the veracity of it.

Hor. It may be so. But as first I was the occasion of this long digression, by mentioning the golden age; so now, I desire we may return to our subject. What time, how many ages do you think it would require to have a well-civilized nation from such a savage pair as yours?

Cleo. That is very uncertain; and I believe it impossible, to determine any thing about it. From what has been said, it is manifest, that the family descending from such a stock, would be crumbled to pieces, reunited, and dispersed again several times, before the whole of any part of it could be advanced to any degree of politeness. The best forms of government are subject to revolutions, and a great many things must concur to keep a society of men together, till they become a civilized nation.

Hor. Is not a vast deal owing, in the raising of a nation, to the difference there is in the spirit and genius of people?

Cleo. Nothing, but what depends upon climates, which is soon over-balanced by skilful government. Courage and cowardice, in all bodies of men, depend entirely upon exercise and discipline. Arts and sciences seldom come before riches, and both flow in faster or slower, according to the capacity of the governors, the situation of the people, and the opportunities they have of improvements; but the first is the chief: to preserve peace and tranquillity among multitudes of different views, and make them all labour for one interest, is a great task; and nothing in human affairs requires greater knowledge, than the art of governing.

Hor. According to your system, it should be little more, than guarding against human nature.

Cleo. But it is a great while before that nature can be rightly understood; and it is the work of ages to find out the true use of the passions, and to raise a politician that can make every frailty of the members add strength to the whole body, and by dextrous management turn private Vices into public Benefits.

Hor. It must be a great advantage to an age, when many extraordinary persons are born in it.

Cleo. It is not genius, so much as experience, that helps men to good laws: Solon, Lycurgus, Socrates and Plato, all travelled for their knowledge, which they communicated to others. The wisest laws of human invention are generally owing to the evasions of bad men, whose cunning had eluded the force of former ordinances that had been made with less caution.

Hor. I fancy that the invention of iron, and working the oar into a metal, must contribute very much to the completing of society; because men can have no tools nor agriculture without it.

Cleo. Iron is certainly very useful; but shells and flints, and hardening of wood by fire, are substitutes that men make a shift with; if they can but have peace, live in quiet, and enjoy the fruits of their labour. Could you ever have believed, that a man without hands could have shaved himself, wrote good characters, and made use of a needle and thread with his feet? Yet this we have seen. It is said by some men of reputation, that the Americans in Mexico and Peru have all the signs of an infant world; because, when the Europeans first came among them, they wanted a great many things, that seem to be of easy invention. But considering that they had nobody to borrow from, and no iron at all, it is amazing which way they could arrive at the perfection we found them in. First, it is impossible to know, how long multitudes may have been troublesome to one another, before the invention of letters came among them, and they had any written laws. Secondly, from the many chasms in history, we know by experience, that the accounts of transactions and times in which letters are known, may be entirely lost. Wars and human discord may destroy the most civilized nations, only by dispersing them; and general devastations spare arts and sciences no more than they do cities and palaces. That all men are born with a strong desire, and no capacity at all to govern, has occasioned an infinity of good and evil. Invasions and persecutions, by mixing and scattering our species, have made strange alterations in the world. Sometimes large empires are divided into several parts, and produce new kingdoms and principalities; at others, great conquerors in few years bring different nations under one dominion. From the decay of the Roman empire alone we may learn, that arts and sciences are more perishable, much sooner lost, than buildings or inscriptions; and that a deluge of ignorance may overspread countries, without their ceasing to be inhabited.

Hor. But what is it at last, that raises opulent cities and powerful nations from the smallest beginnings?

Cleo. Providence.

Hor. But Providence makes use of means that are visible; I want to know the engines it is performed with.

Cleo. All the ground work that is required to aggrandize nations, you have seen in the Fable of the Bees. All sound politics, and the whole art of governing, are entirely built upon the knowledge of human nature. The great business in general of a politician is to promote, and, if he can, reward all good and useful actions on the one hand; and on the other, to punish, or at least discourage every thing that is destructive or hurtful to society. To name particulars would be an endless task. Anger, lust, and pride, may be the causes of innumerable mischiefs, that are all carefully to be guarded against: but setting them aside, the regulations only that are required to defeat and prevent all the machinations and contrivances that avarice and envy may put man upon, to the detriment of his neighbour, are almost infinite. Would you be convinced of these truths, do but employ yourself for a month or two, in surveying and minutely examining into every art and science, every trade, handicraft and occupation, that are professed and followed in such a city as London; and all the laws, prohibitions, ordinances and restrictions that have been found absolutely necessary, to hinder both private men and bodies corporate, in so many different stations, first from interfering with the public peace and welfare; secondly, from openly wronging and secretly over-reaching, or any other way injuring one another: if you will give yourself this trouble, you will find the number of clauses and provisos, to govern a large flourishing city well, to be prodigious beyond imagination; and yet every one of them tending to the same purpose, the curbing, restraining, and disappointing the inordinate passions, and hurtful frailties of man. You will find, moreover, which is still more to be admired, the greater part of the articles in this vast multitude of regulations, when well understood, to be the result of consummate wisdom.

Hor. How could these things exist, if there had not been men of very bright parts and uncommon talents?

Cleo. Among the things I hint at, there are very few that are the work of one man, or of one generation; the greatest part of them are the product, the joint labour of several ages. Remember what in our third conversation I told you, concerning the arts of ship-building and politeness. The wisdom I speak of, is not the offspring of a fine understanding, or intense thinking, but of sound and deliberate judgment, acquired from a long experience in business, and a multiplicity of observations. By this sort of wisdom, and length of time, it may be brought about, that there shall be no greater difficulty in governing a large city, than (pardon the lowness of the simile) there is in weaving of stockings.

Hor. Very low indeed.

Cleo. Yet I know nothing to which the laws and established economy of a well ordered city may be more justly compared, than the knitting-frame. The machine, at first view, is intricate and unintelligible; yet the effects of it are exact and beautiful; and in what is produced by it, there is a surprising regularity: but the beauty and exactness in the manufacture are principally, if not altogether, owing to the happiness of the invention, the contrivance of the engine. For the greatest artist at it can furnish us with no better work, than may be made by almost any scoundrel after half a year's practice.

Hor. Though your comparison be low, I must own that it very well illustrates your meaning.

Cleo. Whilst you spoke, I have thought of another, which is better. It is common now, to have clocks that are made to play several tunes with great exactness: the study and labour, as well as trouble of disappointments, which, in doing and undoing, such a contrivance must necessarily have cost from the beginning to the end, are not to be thought of without astonishment; there is something analogous to this in the government of a flourishing city, that has lasted uninterrupted for several ages: there is no part of the wholesome regulations belonging to it, even the most trifling and minute, about which great pains and consideration have not been employed, as well as length of time; and if you will look into the history and antiquity of any such city, you will find that the changes, repeals, additions and amendments, that have been made in and to the laws and ordinances by which it is ruled, are in number prodigious: but that when once they are brought to as much perfection as art and human wisdom can carry them, the whole machine may be made to play of itself, with as little skill as it required to wind up a clock; and the government of a large city once put into good order, the magistrates only following their noses, will continue to go right for a while, though there was not a wise man in it; provided that the care of Providence was to watch over it in the same manner as it did before.

Hor. But supposing the government of a large city, when it is once established, to be very easy, it is not so with whole states and kingdoms: is it not a great blessing to a nation, to have all places of honour and great trust filled with men of parts and application, of probity and virtue?

Cleo. Yes; and of learning, moderation, frugality, candour and affability: look out for such as fast as you can; but in the mean time the places cannot stand open, the offices must be served by such as you can get.

Hor. You seem to insinuate, that there is a great scarcity of good men in the nation.

Cleo. I do not speak of our nation in particular, but of all states and kingdoms in general. What I would say, is, that it is the interest of every nation to have their home government, and every branch of the civil administration so wisely contrived, that every man of middling capacity and reputation may be fit for any of the highest posts.

Hor. That is absolutely impossible, at least in such a nation as ours: for what would you do for judges and chancellors?

Cleo. The study of the law is very crabbed and very tedious; but the profession of it is as gainful, and has great honours annexed to it: the consequence of this is, that few come to be eminent in it, but men of tolerable parts and great application. And whoever is a good lawyer, and not noted for dishonesty, is always fit to be a judge, as soon as he is old and grave enough. To be a lord chancellor, indeed, requires higher talents; and he ought not only to be a good lawyer and an honest man, but likewise a person of general knowledge and great penetration. But this is but one man: and considering what I have said of the law, and the power which ambition and the love of gain have upon mankind, it is morally impossible, that, in the common course of things among the practitioners in chancery, there should not at all times be one or other fit for the seals.

Hor. Must not every nation have men that are fit for public negotiations, and persons of great capacity to serve for envoys, ambassadors and plenipotentiaries? must they not have others at home, that are likewise able to treat with foreign ministers?

Cleo. That every nation must have such people, is certain; but I wonder that the company you have kept both at home and abroad, have not convinced you that the things you speak of require no such extraordinary qualifications. Among the people of quality that are bred up in courts of princes, all middling capacities must be persons of address, and a becoming boldness, which are the most useful talents in all conferences and negotiations.

Hor. In a nation so involved in debts of different kinds, and loaded with such a variety of taxes as ours is, to be thoroughly acquainted with all the funds, and the appropriations of them, must be a science not to be attained to without good natural parts and great application; and therefore the chief management of the treasury must be a post of the highest trust, as well as endless difficulty.

Cleo. I do not think so: most branches of the public administration are in reality less difficult to those that are in them, than they seem to be to those that are out of them, and are strangers to them. If a jack and the weights of it were out of sight, a sensible man unacquainted with that matter, would be very much puzzled, if he was to account for the regular turning of two or three spits well loaded, for hours together; and it is ten to one, but he would have a greater opinion of the cook or the scullion, than either of them deserved. In all business that belong to the exchequer, the constitution does nine parts in ten; and has taken effectual care, that the happy person whom the king shall be pleased to favour with the superintendency of it, should never be greatly tired or perplexed with his office; and likewise that the trust, the confidence that must be reposed in him, should be very near as moderate as his trouble. By dividing the employments in a great office, and subdividing them into many parts, every man's business may be made so plain and certain, that, when he is a little used to it, it is hardly possible for him to make mistakes: and again, by careful limitations of every man's power, and judicious checks upon every body's trust, every officer's fidelity may be placed in so clear a light, that the moment he forfeits it, he must be detected. It is by these arts that the weightiest affairs, and a vast multiplicity of them, may be managed with safety as well as dispatch, by ordinary men, whose highest good is wealth and pleasure; and that the utmost regularity may be observed in a great office, and every part of it; at the same time, that the whole economy of it seems to be intricate and perplexed to the last degree, not only to strangers, but the greatest part of the very officers that are employed in it.

Hor. The economy of our exchequer, I own, is an admirable contrivance to prevent frauds and encroachments of all kinds; but in the office, which is at the head of it, and gives motion to it, there is greater latitude.

Cleo. Why so? A lord treasurer, or if his office be executed by commissioners, the chancellor of the exchequer, are no more lawless, and have no greater power with impunity to embezzle money, than the meanest clerk that is employed under them.

Hor. Is not the king's warrant their discharge?

Cleo. Yes; for sums which the king has a right to dispose of, or the payment of money for uses directed by parliament; not otherwise; and if the king, who can do no wrong, should be imposed upon, and his warrant be obtained for money at random, whether it is appropriated or not, contrary to, or without a direct order of the legislature, the treasurer obeys at his peril.

Hor. But there are other posts, or at least there is one still of higher moment, and that requires a much greater, and more general capacity than any yet named.

Cleo. Pardon me: as the lord chancellor's is the highest office in dignity, so the execution of it actually demands greater, and more uncommon abilities than any other whatever.

Hor. What say you to the prime minister who governs all, and acts immediately under the king?

Cleo. There is no such officer belonging to our constitution; for by this, the whole administration is, for very wise reasons, divided into several branches.

Hor. But who must give orders and instructions to admirals, generals, governors, and all our ministers in foreign courts? Who is to take care of the king's interest throughout the kingdom, and of his safety?

Cleo. The king and his council, without which, royal authority is not supposed to act, superintend, and govern all; and whatever the monarch has not a mind immediately to take care of himself, falls in course to that part of the administration it belongs to, in which every body has plain laws to walk by. As to the king's interest, it is the same with that of the nation; his guards are to take care of his person; and there is no business of what nature soever, that can happen in or to the nation, which is not within the province, and under the inspection of some one or other of the great officers of the crown, that are all known, dignified, and distinguished by their respective titles; and amongst them, I can assure you, there is no such name as prime minister.

Hor. But why will you prevaricate with me after this manner? You know yourself, and all the world knows and sees, that there is such a minister; and it is easily proved, that there always have been such ministers: and in the situation we are, I do not believe a king could do without. When there are a great many disaffected people in the kingdom, and parliament-men are to be chosen, elections must be looked after with great care, and a thousand things are to be done, that are necessary to disappoint the sinister ends of malecontents, and keep out the Pretender; things of which the management often requires great penetration, and uncommon talents, as well as secrecy and dispatch.

Cleo. How sincerely soever you may seem to speak in defence of these things, Horatio, I am sure, from your principles, that you are not in earnest. I am not to judge of the exigency of our affairs: But as I would not pry into the conduct, or scan the actions of princes, and their ministers, so I pretend to justify or defend no wisdom but that of the constitution itself.

Hor. I do not desire you should: Only tell me, whether you do not think, that a man, who has and can carry this vast burden upon his shoulders, and all Europe's business in his breast, must be a person of a prodigious genius, as well as general knowledge, and other great abilities.

Cleo. That a man, invested with so much real power, and an authority so extensive, as such ministers generally have, must make a great figure, and be considerable above all other subjects, is most certain: But it is my opinion, that there are always fifty men in the kingdom, that, if employed, would be fit for this post, and, after a little practice, shine in it, to one who is equally qualified to be a Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. A prime minster has a vast, an unspeakable advantage barely by being so, and by every body's knowing him to be, and treating him as such: A man who in every office, and every branch of it throughout the administration, has the power, as well as the liberty, to ask and see whom and what he pleases, has more knowledge within his reach, and can speak of every thing with greater exactness than any other man, that is much better versed in affairs, and has ten times greater capacity. It is hardly possible, than an active man, of tolerable education, that is not destitute of a spirit nor of vanity, should fail of appearing to be wise, vigilant, and expert, who has the opportunity whenever he thinks fit, to make use of all the cunning and experience, as well as diligence and labour of every officer in the civil administration; and if he has but money enough, and will employ men to keep up a strict correspondence in every part of the kingdom, he can remain ignorant of nothing; and there is hardly any affair or transaction, civil or military, foreign or domestic, which he will not be able greatly to influence, when he has a mind either to promote or obstruct it.

Hor. There seems to be a great deal in what you say, I must confess; but I begin to suspect, that what often inclines me to be of your opinion, is your dexterity in placing things in the light you would have seen them in, and the great skill you have in depreciating what is valuable, and detracting from merit.

Cleo. I protest that I speak from my heart.

Hor. When I reflect on what I have beheld with my own eyes, and what I still see every day of the transactions between statesmen and politicians, I am very well assured you are in the wrong: When I consider all the stratagems, and the force as well as finesse that are made use of to supplant and undo prime ministers, the wit and cunning, industry and address, that are employed to misrepresent all their actions, the calumnies and false reports that are spread of them, the ballads and lampoons that are published, the set speeches and studied invectives that are made against them; when I consider, I say, and reflect on these things, and every thing else that is said and done, either to ridicule or to render them odious, I am convinced, that to defeat so much art and strength, and disappoint so much malice and envy as prime ministers are generally attacked with, require extraordinary talents: No man of only common prudence and fortitude could maintain himself in that post for a twelvemonth, much less for many years together, though he understood the world very well, and had all the virtue, faithfulness, and integrity in it; therefore, there must be some fallacy in your assertion.

Cleo. Either I have been deficient in explaining myself or else I have had the misfortune to be misunderstood. When I insinuated that men might be prime ministers without extraordinary endowments, I spoke only in regard to the business itself, that province, which, if there was no such minister, the king and council would have the trouble of managing.

Hor. To direct and manage the whole machine of government, he must be a consummate statesman in the first place.

Cleo. You have too sublime a notion of that post. To be a consummate statesman, is the highest qualification human nature is capable of possessing. To deserve that name, a man must be well versed in ancient and modern history, and thoroughly acquainted with all the courts of Europe, that he may know not only the public interest in every nation, but likewise the private views, as well as inclinations, virtues, and vices of princes and ministers: Of every country in Christendom, and the borders of it, he ought to know the product and geography, the principal cities and fortresses; and of these their trade and manufactures, their situation, natural advantages, strength, and number of inhabitants; he must have read men as well as books, and perfectly well understand human nature, and the use of the passions: He must, moreover, be a great master in concealing the sentiments of his heart, have an entire command over his features, and be well skilled in all the wiles and stratagems to draw out secrets from others. A man, of whom all this, or the greatest part of it, may not be said with truth, and that he has had great experience in public affairs, cannot be called a consummate statesman; but he may be fit to be a prime minister, though he had not a hundredth part of those qualifications. As the king's favour creates prime ministers, and makes their station the post of the greatest power as well as profit, so the same favour is the only bottom which those that are in it have to stand upon: The consequence is, that the most ambitious men in all monarchies are ever contending for this post as the highest prize, of which the enjoyment is easy, and all the difficulty in obtaining and preserving it. We see accordingly, that the accomplishments I spoke of to make a statesman are neglected, and others aimed at and studied, that are more useful and more easily acquired. The capacities you observe in prime ministers are of another nature, and consist in being finished courtiers, and thoroughly understanding the art of pleasing and cajoling with address. To procure a prince what he wants, when it is known, and to be diligent in entertaining him with the pleasures he calls for, are ordinary services: Asking is no better than complaining; therefore, being forced to ask, is to have cause of complaint, and to see a prince submit to the slavery of it, argues great rusticity in his courtiers; a polite minister penetrates into his master's wishes, and furnishes him with what he delights in, without giving him the trouble to name it. Every common flatterer can praise and extol promiscuously every thing that is said or done, and find wisdom and prudence in the most indifferent actions; but it belongs to the skilful courtier to set fine glosses upon manifest imperfections, and make every failing, every frailty of his prince, have the real appearance of the virtues that are the nearest, or, to speak more justly, the least opposite to them. By the observance of these necessary duties, it is that the favour of princes may be long preserved, as well as obtained. Whoever can make himself agreeable at a court, will seldom fail of being thought necessary; and when a favourite has once established himself in the good opinion of his master, it is easy for him to make his own family engross the king's ear, and keep every body from him but his own creatures: Nor is it more difficult, in length of time, to turn out of the administration every body that was not of his own bringing in, and constantly be tripping up the heels of those who attempt to raise themselves by any other interest or assistance. A prime minister has by his place great advantages over all that oppose him; one of them is, that nobody, without exception, ever filled that post but who had many enemies, whether he was a plunderer or a patriot: Which being well known, many things that are laid to a prime minister's charge are not credited among the impartial and more discreet part of mankind, even when they are true. As to the defeating and disappointing all the envy and malice they are generally attacked with, if the favourite was to do all that himself, it would certainly, as you say, require extraordinary talents and a great capacity, as well as continual vigilance and application; but this is the province of their creatures, a task divided into a great number of parts; and every body that has the least dependence upon, or has any thing to hope from the minister, makes it his business and his study, as it is his interest, on the one hand, to cry up their patron, magnify his virtues and abilities, and justify his conduct; on the other, to exclaim against his adversaries, blacken their reputation, and play at them every engine, and the same stratagems that are made use of to supplant the minister.

Hor. Then every well-polished courtier is fit to be a prime minister, without learning or languages, skill in politics, or any other qualification besides.

Cleo. No other than what are often and easily met with: It is necessary that he should be a man, at least, of plain common sense, and not remarkable for any gross frailties or imperfections; and of such, there is no scarcity almost in any nation: He ought to be a man of tolerable health and constitution, and one who delights in vanity, that he may relish, as well as be able to bear the gaudy crowds that honour his levees, the constant addresses, bows, and cringes of solicitors, and the rest of the homage that is perpetually paid him. The accomplishment he stands most in need of, is to be bold and resolute, so as not to be easily shocked or ruffled; if he be thus qualified, has a good memory, and is, moreover, able to attend a multiplicity of business, if not with a continual presence of mind, at least seemingly without hurry or perplexity, his capacity can never fail of being extolled to the skies.

Hor. You say nothing of his virtue nor his honesty; there is a vast trust put in a prime minister: If he should be covetous, and have no probity, nor love for his country, he might make strange havoc with the public treasure.

Cleo. There is no man that has any pride, but he has some value for his reputation; and common prudence is sufficient to hinder a man of very indifferent principles from stealing, where he would be in great danger of being detected, and has no manner of security that he shall not be punished for it.

Hor. But great confidence is reposed in him where he cannot be traced; as in the money for secret services, of which, for reasons of state, it may be often improper even to mention, much more to scrutinize into the particulars; and in negotiations with other courts, should he be only swayed by selfishness and private views, without regard to virtue of the public, is it not in his power to betray his country, sell the nation, and do all manner of mischief?

Cleo. Not amongst us, where parliaments are every year sitting. In foreign affairs nothing of moment can be transacted but what all the world must know; and should any thing be done or attempted that would be palpably ruinous to the kingdom, and in the opinion of natives and foreigners grossly and manifestly clashing with our interest, it would raise a general clamour, and throw the minister into dangers, which no man of the least prudence, who intends to stay in his country, would ever run into. As to the money for secret services, and perhaps other sums, which ministers have the disposal of, and where they have great latitudes, I do not question but they have opportunities of embezzling the nation's treasure: but to do this without being discovered, it must be done sparingly, and with great discretion: The malicious overlookers that envy them their places, and watch all their motions, are a great awe upon them: the animosities between those antagonists, and the quarrels between parties, are a considerable part of the nation's security.

Hor. But would it not be a greater security to have men of honour, of sense and knowledge, of application and frugality, preferred to public employments?

Cleo. Yes, without doubt.

Hor. What confidence can we have in the justice or integrity of men; that, on the one hand, show themselves on all occasions mercenary and greedy after riches; and on the other, make it evident, by their manner of living, that no wealth or estate could ever suffice to support their expences, or satisfy their desires! besides, would it not be a great encouragement to virtue and merit, if from the posts of honour and profit all were to be debarred and excluded, that either wanted capacity or were enemies to business; all the selfish, ambitious, vain, and voluptuous?

Cleo. Nobody disputes it with you; and if virtue, religion, and future happiness were sought after by the generality of mankind, with the same solicitude, as sensual pleasure, politeness, and worldly glory are, it would certainly be best that none but men of good lives, and known ability, should have any place in the government whatever: but to expert that this ever should happen, or to live in hopes of it in a large, opulent, and flourishing kingdom, is to betray great ignorance in human affairs? and whoever reckons a general temperance, frugality, and disinterestedness among the national blessings, and at the same time solicits Heaven for ease and plenty, and the increase of trade, seems to me, little to understand what he is about. The best of all, then, not being to be had, let us look out for the next best, and we shall find, that of all possible means to secure and perpetuate to nations their establishment, and whatever they value, there is no better method than with wise laws to guard and entrench their constitution, and contrive such forms of administration that the commonweal can receive no great detriment from the want of knowledge or probity of ministers, if any of them should prove less able or honest, than they could wish them. The public administration must always go forward; it is a ship that can never lie at anchor: the most knowing, the most virtuous, and the least self-interested ministers are the best; but, in the mean time there must be ministers. Swearing and drunkenness are crying sins among seafaring men, and I should think it a very desirable blessing to the nation, if it was possible to reform them: but all this while we must have sailors; and if none were to be admitted on board of any of his majesty's ships, that had sworn above a thousand oaths, or had been drunk above ten times in their lives, I am persuaded that the service would suffer very much by the well-meaning regulation.

Hor. Why do not you speak more openly, and say that there is no virtue or probity in the world? for all the drift of your discourse is tending to prove that.

Cleo. I have amply declared myself upon this subject already in a former conversation; and I wonder you will lay again to my charge what I once absolutely denied: I never thought that there were no virtuous or religious men; what I differ in with the flatterers of our species, is about the numbers which they contend for; and I am persuaded that you yourself, in reality, do not believe that there are so many virtuous men as you imagine you do.

Hor. How come you to know my thoughts better than I do myself?

Cleo. You know I have tried you upon this head already, when I ludicrously extolled and set a fine gloss on the merit of several callings and professions in the society, from the lowest stations of life to the highest: it then plainly appeared, that, though you have a very high opinion of mankind in general, when we come to particulars, you was as severe, and every whit as censorious as myself. I must observe one thing to you, which is worth consideration. Most, if not all people, are desirous of being thought impartial; yet nothing is more difficult than to preserve our judgment unbiassed, when we are influenced either by our love or our hatred; and how just and equitable soever people are, we see that their friends are seldom so good, or their enemies so bad as they represent them, when they are angry with the one, or highly pleased with the other. For my part, I do not think that, generally speaking, prime ministers are much worse than their adversaries, who for their own interest defame them, and at the same time, move Heaven and earth to be in their places. Let us look out for two persons of eminence in any court of Europe, that are equal in merit and capacity, and as well matched in virtues and vices, but of contrary parties; and whenever we meet with two such, one in favour and the other neglected, we shall always find that whoever is uppermost, and in great employ, has the applause of his party; and if things go tolerably well, his friends will attribute every good success to his conduct, and derive all his actions from laudable motives: the opposite side can discover no virtues in him; they will not allow him to act from any principles but his passions; and if any thing be done amiss, are very sure that it would not have happened if their patron had been in the same post. This is the way of the world. How immensely do often people of the same kingdom differ in the opinion they have of their chiefs and commanders, even when they are successful to admiration! we have been witnesses ourselves that one part of the nation has ascribed the victories of a general entirely to his consummate knowledge in martial affairs, and superlative capacity in action; and maintained that it was impossible for a man to bear all the toils and fatigues he underwent with alacrity, or to court the dangers he voluntarily exposed himself to, if he had not been supported, as well as animated, by the true spirit of heroism, and a most generous love for his country: these, you know, were the sentiments of one part of the nation, whilst the other attributed all his successes to the bravery of his troops, and the extraordinary care that was taken at home to supply his army; and insisted upon it, that from the whole course of his life, it was demonstrable, that he had never been buoyed up or actuated by any other principles than excess of ambition, and an unsatiable greediness after riches.

Hor. I do not know but I may have said so myself. But after all, the Duke of Marlborough was a very great man, an extraordinary genius.

Cleo. Indeed was he, and I am glad to hear you own it at last.

Virtutem incolumem odimus, Sublatum ex oculis quaerimus invidi.

Hor. A propos. I wish you would bid them stop for two or three minutes: some of the horses perhaps may stale the while.

Cleo. No excuses, pray. You command here. Besides, we have time enough.----Do you want to go out?

Hor. No; but I want to set down something, now I think of it, which I have heard you repeat several times. I have often had a mind to ask you for it, and it always went out of my head again. It is the epitaph which your friend made upon the Duke.

Cleo. Of Marlborough? with all my heart. Have you paper?

Hor. I will write it upon the back of this letter; and as it happens, I mended my pencil this morning. How does it begin?

Cleo. Qui belli, aut paucis virtutibus astra petebant.

Hor. Well.

Cleo. Finxerunt homines saecula prisca Deos.

Hor. I have it. But tell me a whole distich at a time; the sense is clearer.

Cleo. Quae martem sine patre tulit, sine matre Minervam, Illustres mendax Graecia jactet avos.

Hor. That is really a happy thought. Courage and conduct: just the two qualifications he excelled in. What is the next?

Cleo. Anglia quem genuit jacet hac, Homo, conditus Urna, Antiqui, qualem non habuere Deum.

Hor.----I thank you. They may go on now. I have seen several things since first I heard this epitaph of you, that are manifestly borrowed from it. Was it never published?

Cleo. I believe not. The first time I saw it was the day the Duke was buried, and ever since it has been handed about in manuscript; but I never met with it in print yet.

Hor. It is worth all his Fable of the Bees, in my opinion.

Cleo. If you like it so well, I can show you a translation of it, lately done by a gentleman of Oxford, if I have not lost it. It only takes in the first and last distich, which indeed contain the main thought: The second does not carry it on, and is rather a digression.

Hor. But it demonstrates the truth of the first in a very convincing manner; and that Mars had no father, and Minerva no mother, is the most fortunate thing a man could wish for, who wanted to prove that the account we have of them is fabulous.

Cleo. Oh, here it is. I do not know whether you can read it; I copied it in haste.

Hor. Very well.

The grateful ages past a God declar'd, Who wisely council'd, or who bravely war'd: Hence Greece her Mars and Pallas deify'd; Made him the heroe's, her the patriot's guide. Ancients, within this urn a mortal lies Shew me his peer among your deities.

It is very good.

Cleo. Very lively; and what is aimed at in the Latin, is rather more clearly expressed in the English.

Hor. You know I am fond of no English verse but Milton's. But do not let this hinder our conversation.

Cleo. I was speaking of the partiality of mankind in general, and putting you in mind how differently men judged of actions, according as they liked or disliked the persons that performed them.

Hor. But before that you was arguing against the necessity, which I think there is, for men of great accomplishments and extraordinary qualifications in the administration of public affairs. Had you any thing to add?

Cleo. No; at least I do not remember that I had.

Hor. I do not believe you have an ill design in advancing these notions; but supposing them to be true, I cannot comprehend that divulging them can have any other effect than the increase of sloth and ignorance; for if men may fill the highest places in the government without learning or capacity, genius or knowledge, there is an end of all the labour of the brain, and the fatigue of hard study.

Cleo. I have made no such general assertion; but that an artful man may make a considerable figure in the highest post of the administration, and other great employments, without extraordinary talents, is certain: as to consummate statesmen, I do not believe there ever were three persons upon earth at the same time, that deserved that name. There is not a quarter of the wisdom, solid knowledge, or intrinsic worth in the world that men talk of and compliment one another with; and of virtue or religion there is not an hundredth part in reality of what there is in appearance.

Hor. I allow that those who set out from no better motives, than avarice and ambition, aim at no other ends but wealth and honour; which, if they can but get anywise they are satisfied; but men who act from principles of virtue and a public spirit, take pains with alacrity to attain the accomplishments that will make them capable of serving their country: and if virtue be so scarce, how come there to be men of skill in their professions? for that there are men of learning and men of capacity, is most certain.

Cleo. The foundation of all accomplishments must be laid in our youth, before we are able or allowed to choose for ourselves, or to judge, which is the most profitable way of employing our time. It is to good discipline, and the prudent care of parents and masters, that men are beholden for the greatest part of their improvements; and few parents are so bad as not to wish their offspring might be well accomplished: the same natural affection that makes men take pains to leave their children rich, renders them solicitous about their education. Besides, it is unfashionable, and consequently a disgrace to neglect them. The chief design of parents in bringing up their children to a calling or profession, is to procure them a livelihood. What promotes and encourages arts and sciences, is the reward, money and honour; and thousands of perfections are attained to, that would have had no existence, if men had been less proud or less covetous. Ambition, avarice, and often necessity, are great spurs to industry and application; and often rouse men from sloth and indolence, when they are grown up, whom no persuasions or chastisement of fathers or tutors, made any impression upon in their youth. Whilst professions are lucrative, and have great dignities belonging to them, there will always be men that excel in them. In a large polite nation, therefore, all sorts of learning will ever abound, whilst the people flourish. Rich parents, and such as can afford it, seldom fail bringing up their children to literature: from this inexhaustible spring it is, that we always draw much larger supplies than we stand in need of, for all the callings and professions where the knowledge of the learned languages is required. Of those that are brought up to letters, some neglect them, and throw by their books as soon as they are their own masters; others grow fonder of study, as they increase in years; but the greatest part will always retain a value for what has cost them pains to acquire. Among the wealthy, there will be always lovers of knowledge, as well as idle people: every science will have its admirers, as men differ in their tastes and pleasures; and there is no part of learning but somebody or other will look into it, and labour at it, from no better principles than some men are fox hunters, and others take delight in angling. Look upon the mighty labours of antiquaries, botanists, and the vertuosos in butterflies, cockle-shells, and other odd productions of nature; and mind the magnificent terms they all make use of in their respective provinces, and the pompous names they often give to what others, who have no taste that way, would not think worth any mortal's notice. Curiosity is often as bewitching to the rich, as lucre is to the poor; and what interest does in some, vanity does in others; and great wonders are often produced from a happy mixture of both. Is it not amazing, that a temperate man should be at the expence of four or five thousand a-year, or, which is much the same thing, be contented to lose the interest of above a hundred thousand pounds, to have the reputation of being the possessor and owner of rarities and knicknacks in a very great abundance, at the same time that he loves money, and continues slaving for it in his old age! It is the hopes either of gain or reputation, of large revenues and great dignities that promote learning; and when we say that any calling, art or science, is not encouraged, we mean no more by it, than that the masters or professors of it are not sufficiently rewarded for their pains, either with honour or profit. The most holy functions are no exception to what I say; and few ministers of the gospel are so disinterested as to have a less regard to the honours and emoluments that are or ought to be annexed to their employment, than they have to the service and benefit they should be of to others; and among those of them that study hard and take uncommon pains, it is not easily proved that many are excited to their extraordinary labour by a public spirit or solicitude for the spiritual welfare of the laity: on the contrary, it is visible, in the greatest part of them, that they are animated by the love of glory and the hopes of preferment; neither is it common to see the most useful parts of learning neglected for the most trifling, when, from the latter, men have reason to hope that they shall have greater opportunities of showing their parts, than offer themselves from the former. Ostentation and envy have made more authors than virtue and benevolence. Men of known capacity and erudition are often labouring hard to eclipse and ruin one another's glory. What principle must we say two adversaries act from, both men of unquestionable good sense and extensive knowledge, when all the skill and prudence they are masters of are not able to stifle, in their studied performances, and hide from the world, the rancour of their minds, the spleen and animosity they both write with against one another.

Hor. I do not say that such act from principles of virtue.

Cleo. Yet you know an instance of this in two grave divines, men of fame and great merit, of whom each would think himself very much injured, should his virtue be called in question.

Hor. When men have an opportunity, under pretence of zeal for religion, or the public good, to vent their passion, they take great liberties. What was the quarrel?

Cleo. De lana caprina.

Hor. A trifle. I cannot guess yet.

Cleo. About the metre of the comic poets among the ancients.

Hor. I know what you mean now; the manner of scanding and chanting those verses.

Cleo. Can you think of any thing belonging to literature, of less importance, or more useless?

Hor. Not readily.

Cleo. Yet the great contest between them, you see, is which of them understands it best, and has known it the longest. This instance, I think, hints to us how highly improbable it is, though men should act from no better principles than envy, avarice, and ambition, that when learning is once established, any part of it, even the most unprofitable, should ever be neglected in such a large opulent nation as ours is; where there are so many places of honour, and great revenues to be disposed of among scholars.

Hor. But since men are fit to serve in most places with so little capacity, as you insinuate, why should they give themselves that unnecessary trouble of studying hard, and acquiring more learning than there is occasion for?

Cleo. I thought I had answered that already; a great many, because they take delight in study and knowledge.

Hor. But there are men that labour at it with so much application, as to impair their healths, and actually to kill themselves with the fatigue of it.

Cleo. Not so many as there are that injure their healths, and actually kill themselves with hard drinking, which is the most unreasonable pleasure of the two, and a much greater fatigue. But I do not deny that there are men who take pains to qualify themselves in order to serve their country; what I insist upon is, that the number of those who do the same thing to serve themselves with little regard to their country, is infinitely greater. Mr. Hutcheson, who wrote the Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, seems to be very expert at weighing and measuring the quantities of affection, benevolence, &c. I wish that curious metaphysician would give himself the trouble, at his leisure, to weigh two things separately: First, the real love men have for their country, abstracted from selfishness. Secondly, the ambition they have of being thought to act from that love, though they feel none. I wish, I say, that this ingenious gentleman would once weigh these two asunder; and afterwards, having taken in impartially all he could find of either, in this or any other nation, show us in his demonstrative way, what proportion the quantities bore to each other.--Quisque sibi commissus est, says Seneca; and certainly, it is not the care of others, but the care of itself, which nature has trusted and charged every individual creature with. When men exert themselves in an extraordinary manner, they generally do it to be the better for it themselves; to excel, to be talked of, and to be preferred to others, that follow the same business, or court the same favours.

Hor. Do you think it more probable, that men of parts and learning should be preferred, than others of less capacity?

Cleo. Caeteris paribus, I do.

Hor. Then you must allow that there is virtue at least in those who have the disposal of places.

Cleo. I do not say there is not; but there is likewise glory and real honour accruing to patrons for advancing men of merit; and if a person who has a good living in his gift, bestows it upon a very able man, every body applauds him, and every parishioner is counted to be particularly obliged to him. A vain man does not love to have his choice disapproved of, and exclaimed against by all the world, any more than a virtuous man; and the love of applause, which is innate to our species, would alone be sufficient to make the generality of men, and even the greatest part of the most vicious, always choose the most worthy, out of any number of candidates; if they knew the truth, and no stronger motive arising from consanguinity, friendship, interest, or something else, was to interfere with the principle I named.

Hor. But, methinks, according to your system, those should be soonest preferred that can best coax and flatter.

Cleo. Among the learned there are persons of art and address, that can mind their studies without neglecting the the world: these are the men that know how to ingratiate themselves with persons of quality; employing to the best advantage all their parts and industry for that purpose. Do but look into the lives and the deportment of such eminent men, as we have been speaking of, and you will soon discover the end and advantages they seem to propose to themselves from their hard study and severe lucubrations. When you see men in holy orders, without call or necessity, hovering about the courts of princes; when you see them continually addressing and scraping acquaintance with the favourites; when you hear them exclaim against the luxury of the age, and complain of the necessity they are under of complying with it; and at the same time you see, that they are forward, nay eager and take pains with satisfaction, in the way of living, to imitate the beau monde, as far as it is in their power: that no sooner they are in possession of one preferment, but they are ready, and actually soliciting for another, more gainful and more reputable; and that on all emergencies, wealth, power, honour and superiority are the things they grasp at, and take delight in; when, I say, you see these things, this concurrence of evidences, is it any longer difficult to guess at, or rather is there room to doubt of the principles they act from, or the tendency of their labours?

Hor. I have little to say to priests, and do not look for virtue from that quarter.

Cleo. Yet you will find as much of it among divines, as you will among any other class of men; but every where less in reality, than there is in appearance. Nobody would be thought insincere, or to prevaricate; but there are few men, though they are so honest as to own what they would have, that will acquaint us with the true reason why they would have it: therefore the disagreement between the words and actions of men is at no time more conspicuous, than when we would learn from them their sentiments, concerning the real worth of things. Virtue, is without doubt, the most valuable treasure which man can be possessed of; it has every body's good word; but where is the country in which it is heartily embraced, praemia si tollas? Money, on the other hand, is deservedly called the root of all evil: there has not been a moralist nor a satirist of note, that has not had a fling at it; yet what pains are taken, and what hazards are run to acquire it, under various pretences of designing to do good with it! As for my part, I verily believe, that as an accessary cause, it has done more mischief in the world than any one thing besides: yet it is impossible to name another, that is so absolutely necessary to the order, economy, and the very existence of the civil society; for as this is entirely built upon the variety of our wants, so the whole superstructure is made up of the reciprocal services which men do to each other. How to get these services performed by others, when we have occasion for them, is the grand and almost constant solicitude in life of every individual person. To expect that others should serve us for nothing, is unreasonable; therefore all commerce that men can have together, must be a continual bartering of one thing for another. The feller who transfers the property of a thing, has his own interest as much at heart as the buyer who purchases that property: and, if you want or like a thing, the owner of it, whatever stock or provision he may have of the same, or how greatly soever you may stand in need of it, will never part with it, but for a consideration which he likes better than he does the thing you want. Which way shall I persuade a man to serve me, when the service I can repay him in, is such as he does not want or care for? Nobody who is at peace, and has no contention with any of the society, will do any thing for a lawyer; and a physician can purchase nothing of a man, whose whole family is in perfect health. Money obviates and takes away all those difficulties, by being an acceptable reward for all the services men can do to one another.

Hor. But all men valuing themselves above their worth, every body will over-rate his labour. Would not this follow from your system?

Cleo. It certainly would, and does. But what is to be admired is, that the larger the numbers are in a society, the more extensive they have rendered the variety of their desires, and the more operose the gratification of them is become among them by custom; the less mischievous is the consequence of that evil, where they have the use of money: whereas, without it, the smaller the number was of a society, and the more strictly the members of it, in supplying their wants, would confine themselves to those only that were necessary for their subsistence, the more easy it would be for them to agree about the reciprocal services I spoke of. But to procure all the comforts of life, and what is called temporal happiness, in a large polite nation, would be every whit as practicable without speech, as it would be without money, or an equivalent to be used instead of it. Where this is not wanting, and due care is taken of it by the legislature, it will always be the standard, which the worth of every thing will be weighed by. There are great blessings that arise from necessity; and that every body is obliged to eat and drink, is the cement of civil society. Let men set what high value they please upon themselves, that labour which most people are capable of doing, will ever be the cheapest. Nothing can be dear of which there is great plenty, how beneficial soever it may be to man; and scarcity enhances the price of things much oftener than the usefulness of them. Hence it is evident why those arts and sciences will always be the most lucrative, that cannot be attained to, but in great length of time, by tedious study and close application; or else require a particular genius, not often to be met with. It is likewise evident, to whose lot, in all societies, the hard and dirty labour, which nobody would meddle with, if he could help it, will ever fall: but you have seen enough of this in the Fable of the Bees.

Hor. I have so, and one remarkable saying I have read there on this subject, which I shall never forget. "The poor," says the author, "have nothing to stir them up to labour, but their wants, which it is wisdom to relieve, but folly to cure."

Cleo. I believe the maxim to be just, and that it is not less calculated for the real advantage of the poor, than it appears to be for the benefit of the rich. For, among the labouring people, those will ever be the least wretched as to themselves, as well as most useful to the public, that being meanly born and bred, submit to the station they are in with cheerfulness; and contented, that their children should succeed them in the same low condition, inure them from their infancy to labour and submission, as well as the cheapest diet and apparel; when, on the contrary, that sort of them will always be the least serviceable to others, and themselves the most unhappy, who, dissatisfied with their labour, are always grumbling and repining at the meanness of their condition; and, under pretence of having a great regard for the welfare of their children, recommend the education of them to the charity of others; and you shall always find, that of this latter class of poor, the greatest part are idle sottish people, that, leading dissolute lives themselves, are neglectful to their families, and only want, as far as it is in their power, to shake off that burden of providing for their brats from their own shoulders.

Hor. I am no advocate for charity schools; yet I think it is barbarous, that the children of the labouring poor, should be for ever pinned down, they, and all their posterity, to that slavish condition; and that those who are meanly born, what parts or genius soever they might be of, should be hindered and debarred from raising themselves higher.

Cleo. So should I think it barbarous, if what you speak of was done any where, or proposed to be done. But there is no degree of men in Christendom that are pinned down, they and their posterity, to slavery for ever. Among the very lowest sort, there are fortunate men in every country; and we daily see persons, that without education, or friends, by their own industry and application, raise themselves from nothing to mediocrity, and sometimes above it, if once they come rightly to love money and take delight in saving it: and this happens more often to people of common and mean capacities, than it does to those of brighter parts. But there is a prodigious difference between debarring the children of the poor from ever rising higher in the world, and refusing to force education upon thousands of them promiscuously, when they should be more usefully employed. As some of the rich must come to be poor, so some of the poor will come to be rich in the common course of things. But that universal benevolence, that should every where industriously lift up the indigent labourer from his meanness, would not be less injurious to the whole kingdom than a tyrannical power, that should, without a cause, cast down the wealthy from their ease and affluence. Let us suppose, that the hard and dirty labour throughout the nation requires three millions of hands, and that every branch of it is performed by the children of the poor. Illiterate, and such as had little or no education themselves; it is evident, that if a tenth part of these children, by force and design, were to be exempt from the lowest drudgery, either there must be so much work left undone, as would demand three hundred thousand people; or the defect, occasioned by the numbers taken off, must be supplied by the children of others, that had been better bred.

Hor. So that what is done at first out of charity to some, may, at long run, prove to be cruelty to others.

Cleo. And will depend upon it. In the compound of all nations, the different degrees of men ought to bear a certain proportion to each other, as to numbers, in order to render the whole a well proportioned mixture. And as this due proportion is the result and natural consequence of the difference there is in the qualifications of men, and the vicissitudes that happen among them, so it is never better attained to, or preserved, than when nobody meddles with it. Hence we may learn, how the short-sighted wisdom of perhaps well-meaning people, may rob us of a felicity that would flow spontaneously from the nature of every large society, if none were to divert or interrupt the stream.

Hor. I do not care to enter into these abstruse matters; what have you further to say in praise of money?

Cleo. I have no design to speak either for or against it; but be it good or bad, the power and dominion of it are both of vast extent, and the influence of it upon mankind has never been stronger or more general in any empire, state, or kingdom, than in the most knowing and politest ages, when they were in their greatest grandeur and prosperity; and when arts and sciences were the most flourishing in them: Therefore, the invention of money seems to me to be a thing more skilfully adapted to the whole bent of our nature, than any other or human contrivance. There is no greater remedy against sloth or stubbornness; and with astonishment I have beheld the readiness and alacrity with which it often makes the proudest men pay homage to their inferiors: It purchases all services, and cancels all debts; nay, it does more, for when a person is employed in his occupation, and he who sets him to work, a good paymaster, how laborious, how difficult or irksome soever the service be, the obligation is always reckoned to lie upon him who performs it.

Hor. Do not you think, that many eminent men in the learned professions would dissent from you in this?

Cleo. I know very well, that none ought to do it, if ever they courted business, or hunted after employment.

Hor. All you have said is true among mercenary people; but upon noble minds that despise lucre, honour has far greater efficacy than money.

Cleo. The highest titles, and the most illustrious births, are no security against covetousness; and persons of the first quality, that are actually generous and munificent are often as greedy after gain, when it is worth their while, as the most sordid mechanics are for trifles: The year twenty has taught us, how difficult it is to find out those noble minds that despise lucre, when there is a prospect of getting vastly. Besides, nothing is more universally charming than money; it suits with every station, the high, the low, the wealthy, and the poor: whereas, honour has little influence on the mean, slaving people, and rarely affects any of the vulgar; but if it does, money will almost every where purchase honour; nay, riches of themselves are an honour to all those who know how to use them fashionably. Honour, on the contrary, wants riches for its support; without them it is a dead weight that oppresses its owner; and titles of honour, joined to a necessitous condition, are a greater burden together than the same degree of poverty is alone: for the higher a man's quality is, the more considerable are his wants in life; but the more money he has, the better he is able to supply the greatest extravagancy of them. Lucre is the best restorative in the world, in a literal sense, and works upon the spirits mechanically; for it is not only a spur that excites men to labour, and makes them in love with it, but it likewise gives relief in weariness, and actually supports men in all fatigues and difficulties. A labourer of any sort, who is paid in proportion to his diligence, can do more work than another who is paid by the day or the week, and has standing wages.

Hor. Do not you think, then, that there are men in laborious offices, who, for a fixed salary, discharge their duties with diligence and assiduity?

Cleo. Yes, many; but there is no place or employment in which there are required or expected, that continual attendance and uncommon severity of application, that some men harass and punish themselves with by choice, when every fresh trouble meets with a new recompence; and you never saw men so entirely devote themselves to their calling, and pursue business with that eagerness, dispatch, and perseverance in any office of preferment, in which the yearly income is certain and unalterable, as they often do in those professions where the reward continually accompanies the labour, and the fee immediately either precedes the service they do to others, as it is with the lawyers, or follows it, as it is with the physicians. I am sure you have hinted at this in our first conversation yourself.

Hor. Here is the castle before us.

Cleo. Which I suppose you are not sorry for.

Hor. Indeed I am, and would have been glad to have heard you speak of kings and other sovereigns with the same candour, as well as freedom, with which you have treated prime ministers, and their envious adversaries. When I see a man entirely impartial, I shall always do him that justice, as to think, that if he is not in the right in what he says, at least he aims at truth. The more I examine your sentiments, by what I see in the world, the more I am obliged to come into them; and all this morning I have said nothing in opposition to you, but to be better informed, and to give you an opportunity to explain yourself more amply. I am your convert, and shall henceforth look upon the Fable of the Bees very differently from what I did; for though, in the Characteristics, the language and the diction are better, the system of man's sociableness is more lovely and more plausible, and things are set off with more art and learning; yet in the other there is certainly more truth, and nature is more faithfully copied in it almost every where.

Cleo. I wish you would read them both once more, and, after that, I believe you will say that you never saw two authors who seem to have wrote with more different views. My friend, the author of the Fable, to engage and keep his readers in good humour, seems to be very merry, and to do something else, whilst he detects the corruption of our nature; and having shown man to himself in various lights, he points indirectly at the necessity, not only of revelation and believing, but likewise of the practice of Christianity manifestly to be seen in mens lives.

Hor. I have not observed that: Which way has he done it indirectly?

Cleo. By exposing, on the one hand, the vanity of the world, and the most polite enjoyments of it; and, on the other, the insufficiency of human reason and heathen virtue to procure real felicity: for I cannot see what other meaning a man could have by doing this in a Christian country, and among people that all pretend to seek after happiness.

Hor. And what say you of Lord Shaftsbury?

Cleo. First, I agree with you that he was a man of erudition, and a very polite writer; he has displayed a copious imagination, and a fine turn of thinking, in courtly language and nervous expressions: But, as on the one hand, it must be confessed, that his sentiments on liberty and humanity are noble and sublime, and that there is nothing trite or vulgar in the Characteristics; so, on the other, it cannot be denied, that the ideas he had formed of the goodness and excellency of our nature, were as romantic and chimerical as they are beautiful and amiable; that he laboured hard to unite two contraries that can never be reconciled together, innocence of manners, and worldly greatness; that to compass this end, he favoured deism, and, under pretence of lashing priestcraft and superstition, attacked the Bible itself; and, lastly, that by ridiculing many passages of Holy Writ, he seems to have endeavoured to sap the foundation of all revealed religion, with design of establishing Heathen virtue on the ruins of Christianity.

FINIS.

NOTES

[1] This was wrote in 1714.

[2] This was wrote in 1714.

[3] P. 212, 213. First Edit. 175, 176.

[4] P. 215. First Edit. 178.

[5] P. 106. First Edit. 77.

[6] P. 116. First Edit. 87.

[7] P. 115, 116. First Edit. 86, 87.

[8] Quis est tam vecors qui non intelligat, numine hoc tantum imperium esse natum, actum, et retentum? Cic. Orat. de Harush. Resp.