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Materials for Thinking,

EXTRACTED FROM THE WORKS OF

ANCIENT AND MODERN AUTHORS.

WHATEVER CHARITY WE OWE TO MEN'S PERSONS, WE OWE NONE TO THEIR ERRORS."-Bishop Burnet.

No. XXVIII.

Published Weekly.

[Price One Penny.

699. Beneficial Effects of Controversy.—However some may affect to dread controversy, it can never be of ultimate disadvantage to the interests of truth or the happiness of mankind. Where it is indulged in its full extent, a multitude of ridiculous opinions will, no doubt, be ob

truded upon the public; but any ill influence they may produce cannot

continue long, as they are sure to be opposed with at least equal ability, and that superior advantage which is ever attendant on truth. The colours with which wit or eloquence may have adorned a false system will gradually die away, sophistry be detected, and every thing estimated at length according to its true value. Publications, besides, like every thing else that is human, are of a mixed nature, where truth is often blended with falsehood, and important hints suggested in the midst of much impertinent or pernicious matter; nor is there any way; of separating the precious from the vile, but by tolerating the whole. Where the right of unlimited inquiry is exerted, the human faculties will be upon the advance; where it is relinquished, they will be of necessity at a stand, and will probably decline.-Robert Hall.

700. Reason. Many by their situations in life have not the opportunities of cultivating their rational powers. Many from the habit they have acquired of submitting their opinions to the authority of others, or from some other principle which operates more powerfully than the love of truth, suffer their judgment to be carried along to the end of their days, either by the authority of a leader, or of a party, or of the multitude, or by their own passions, Such persons, however learned, however acute, may be said to be all their days children in understanding. They reason, they dispute, and perhaps write; but it is not that they may find the truth; but that they may defend opinions which have descended to them by inheritance; or into which they have fallen by accident, or been led by affection.-Lord Kaimes.

701. Ambition.-Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness. But, alas! when we are at the summit of a vain ambition, we are also at the depth of real misery. We are placed where time cannot improve, but must impair us; where chance and change cannot befriend, but may betray us: in short, by attaining all we wish, and gaining all we want, we have only reached a pinnacle where we have nothing to hope, but every thing to fear.--Lacon.

702. Calumny.-Calumny on the part of the candidate is a tribute of acknowledgment paid to the virtue of the elector. "It is because you mean to give your vote to the most deserving, that I take all this pains to make you believe my antagonist is not he." The man who canvasses with a bribe in his hand or upon his table, may save his indolence from a deal of trouble, and his candour and veracity from a deal of danger: the strength of his cause lies not in the plausibility of his pretensions, but in the goodness of his liquor, or in the heaviness of his purse.-Bentham.

703. Iniquity of prolonging Mental Darkness.-Referring to the barbarous anecdote of " Certain Scythian Slaves," who " had their eyes destroyed, that they might work the harder," Thomson remarks, that "to extinguish human understanding, and establish a kingdom of darkness, is just so far more barbarous than even that monstrous cruelty, as the mind excels the body; or as understanding and reason are superior to sense."—Anon.

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704. The Liberty of the Press. What is it that distinguishes human society from a brutish herd, but the flourishing of the arts and sciences, the free exercise of wit and reason? What can government mean, intend, or produce, that is worthy of man, or beneficial to him, as he is a rational creature, besides wisdom, knowledge, virtue, and science? it merely, indeed, that we may eat, drink, sleep, sing, and dance with security, that we choose governors, subject ourselves to their administration, and pay taxes? Take away the arts, religion, knowledge, virtue (all of which must flourish or sink together), and, in the name of goodness, what is left to us that is worth enjoying or protecting? Yet take away the Liberty of the Press, and we are, all at once, stript of the use of our noblest faculties: our souls themselves are imprisoned in a dark dungeon: we may breathe, but we cannot be said to live. Thomson.

705. The national opinion of a book or treatise is not always right.Est ubi peccat-Milton's Paradise Lost is one instance; I mean the cold reception it met with at first.-Shenstone,

706. Promises.-Liberal of cruelty are those who pamper with promises; promisers destroy while they deceive, and the hope they raise is dearly purchased by the dependence that is sequent to disappoinment. Zimmerman.

707. Coercive measures never yet made a convert to any opinion, but either martyrs or hypocrites. This should be inculcated upon the minds of the rising generation with unceasing assiduity. The Christian religion beyond all others enjoins charity towards all men: and that if any be in error they should be convinced of it by argument drawn from reason and the word of God; but it every where discourages the idea of making converts by force, and inflicting punishment for difference of opinion. Yet there is no religion upon earth, whose professors have acted with more violence, have exercised greater cruelties, or have been guilty of more fragrant injustice, to secure uniformity of sentiment in religious matters, than that which really enjoins love and kindness among all descriptions of men.

Pinnock's Guide to Knowledge.

708. Man's Destiny.-Certainly there is a fate that hurries man to his end beyond his own intention. There is uncertainty in wisdom as well as in folly. When man plotteth to save himself, that plotting delivers him into his ruin. Decrees are passed upon us, and our own wit often hunts us into the snares that above all things we would shun. What we suspect and would fly, we cannot: what we suspect not, we fall into. That which saved us now, by and by kills us. We use means of preservation, and they prove destroying ones. courses to ruin us, and they prove means of safety.

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Some men in their sleep are cast into fortune's lap; while others, with all their industry, cannot purchase one smile from her.

How many have, flying from danger, met with death! and, on the other side, found protection even in the very jaws of mischief!

Man is merely the ball of Time; and is sometimes taken from the plough to the throne; and sometimes, again, from the throne to the halter; as if we could neither avoid being wretched or happy, or both.

All human wisdom is defective, otherwise it might help us against the flash and storm. As it is, it is but lesser folly, which, preserving sometimes, fails as often. Grave directions do not always prosper; nor does the fool's bolt always miss.

I see there are both arguments and objections on every side. I hold it a kind of mundane predestination, writ in such characters as it is not in the wit of man to read them. In vain we murmur at the things that must be; in vain we mourn for what we cannot remedy. Why should we rave when we meet with what we look not for? It is our ignorance that makes us wonder. When we consider how little we know, we need not be disturbed at a new event.

There is no doubt that wisdom is better than folly, as light is better than darkness. "Yet I see," saith Solomon, "it happens to the wise and fool alike."

It were a super-insaniated folly to struggle with a power which I know is all in vain contended with. If a fair endeavour may free me, I will practise it. If that cannot, let me wait it with a calmed mind. Whatsoever happens as a wonder, I will admire and magnify as the act of a power above my apprehension. But as it is an alteration to man, I will never think it marvellous. I every day see him suffer more changes than it is of himself to be imagined.-Feltham.

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709. Knowledge the highest source of Pleasure. For the pleasure and delight of knowledge, it far surpasseth all other in nature. We see in all other pleasures there is satiety; and after they be used, their verdure departeth - which sheweth well that they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, not the quality: and therefore we see, that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable.

Bacon.

710. Errors of Opposites to Evils.-The wisest man is not safe from the liability to mistake for good the reverse of some inveterate and grievous ill. The clearer his discernment of existing evils, and the more absolutely his whole soul is engaged in the contest against them, the more danger that the mischiefs which chiefly occupy his own thoughts should render him insensible to their contraries: and that in guarding one side, he should leave the other uncovered.-Jurist.

711. The True End of Intellectual Cultivation.—The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self; to render our consciousness its own light and its own mirror. Hence there is the less reason to be surprised at our inability to enter fully into the feelings and characters of others. No one who has not a complete knowledge of himself, will ever have a true understanding of another.-Novalis.

712. Bond of Honour.-The knot that binds me by the law of courtesy, pinches me more than that of legal constraint; and I am much more at ease when bound by a scrivener than by myself. Is it not reason that my conscience should be much more engaged when men simply rely upon it ? In a bond my faith owes nothing, because it has nothing lent it. Let them trust to the security they have taken without me; I had much rather break the walls of a prison, and the laws themselves, than my own word.-Montaigne.

713. Sincerity and Morality superior to Policy.-To live with our enemies as those who one day may be our friends, and to live with our friends as those who some time or other may become our enemies, equally contradicts the nature of hatred, and the rules of friendship. may be a good maxim in policy, but is a detestable one in morality. La Bruyere.

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714. Rich and Poor.-Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.-Anon.

715. The Use of Ornament in Philosophical Composition.--The studying of words, and not matter, is so justly contemptible, that, as Hercules, when he saw the image of Adonis, Venus's minion, in a temple, said in disdain nil sacri es; so there are none of Hercules's followers in learning, that is, in the more severe and laborious toil of inquirers after truth, but will despise those delicacies and affectations as capable of no divineness. Indeed, it seems to me, that Pygmalian's frenzy is a good emblem and portraiture of this vanity; for words are but the images of matter, and except they have the life of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with a picture. But yet, notwithstanding, it is not hastily to be condemned to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution.-Bacon.

716. Wars have hitherto been waged for territorial or commercial advantages; to preserve the balance of power; to gratify ambition ; to support family compacts between allied sovereigns: but seldom for the noble objects of promoting civil and religious liberty. The world is now approaching another era. The conflict will be neither for territory, nor treasure, nor navigation, nor fortresses; but, in one awful phrase, for principle; for freedom, self-government, independence, will be the portentous prizes at stake.-Westminster Review.

717. The wise Venetians have so slight an opinion of the politics of their churchmen, that when anything of considerable nature occurs to be debated in the senate, before any suffrage passeth they cause proclamation to be made for all priests to depart, and the proper officer, with a loud and audible voice, pronounceth these words;- Out Priests !" Sir Thomas Pope Blount.

718. Curiosity.-There are two kinds of curiosity. One arises from interest, which makes us desire to learn what will be useful to us; the other from pride, which makes us desirous to know what others are ignorant of.-Rochefoucault.

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