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 VULGAK & COMMON EEEOES 
 
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 N°. VIII. 
 
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 AN EXPOSITION OF 
 
 VULGAR AND COMMON ERRORS 
 
 ADAPTED TO THE YEAR OF 
 ORACE MDCCCXLV. 
 
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 BY THOMAS /BROWN REDIVIVUS, 
 
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 WHILOME KNT. AND M.B. 
 
 Secontf lEfcition. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND, 
 
 1854. 
 

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 TO THE KEADEB. 
 
 IN ancient times it was held as a matter of 
 faith by many, that man's spiritual part did 
 not go at once to its ultimate state of existence, 
 but did undergo a kind of purification, by the 
 passing from one body to another of a better 
 or worse kind; until, being thus corrected of 
 its earthly desires and propensions, it was fitted 
 for its final beatitude. Pythagoras, it was said 
 by some, had good recollection of the time 
 when his soul was far worse bestowed than in 
 that body wherein he preached temperance and 
 virtue so effectually to the citizens of Crotona, 
 as to raise that city at once to greatness, and 
 its people to a merited superiority over their 
 neighbours of Sybaris: — a body kept in such 
 holiness and purity by its beatified inhabitant, 
 that we may well believe it fitted for that re- 
 surrection of the just, where "they that do well 
 shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; 
 and they that turn many to righteousness as 
 the stars for ever and ever." 
 
2 TO THE EEADEE. 
 
 Good reader, I will not ask thee to believe 
 that Pythagoras hath revisited earth under my 
 semblance, albeit, my wish to amend the morals, 
 and increase the wise knowledge of my contem- 
 poraries, be not less lively than his; but merely 
 to give me so far credit as to believe for the 
 nonce, that the pen which doth now address 
 thee, is that of Thomas Brown, whilome Doctor 
 of Physick ; who began his inquiry into vulgar 
 and common errors some two centuries back, 
 and having laughed somewhat at the odd blun- 
 ders in science made by the men of that age, 
 hath now, hi return, somewhat to blush for his 
 own. We are always wont to inquire anxiously 
 what men of other lands have to say concern- 
 ing us ; rightly judging that they who have 
 been brought up in other habits will notice 
 the strangenesses or excellencies of ours, with 
 a sharper observation than that of one born 
 and nurtured in the country; there is, there- 
 fore, good reason to think that the opinions of 
 a man of another age stepping onward into 
 this, will not be without their value to such as 
 can forget their own prejudgments so far as to 
 profit thereby. 
 
 Within the last two hundred years the very 
 face of the world is changed; and he who should 
 
TO THE BEADEE. 3 
 
 rise at once from his grave, passing through no 
 intermediate stage, and look on the nineteenth 
 century with the eyes of the seventeenth, would 
 go near to expire again with amazement at what 
 he saw; and would despair of ever, in the short 
 span of one life, attaining to the knowledge of 
 all the discoveries which have graced these later 
 times. But let the same man go into society, 
 and he will find things far less changed there, 
 than, with such a change in all else, there would 
 be good cause to expect. True it is, that there is 
 more of refinement in expression and manners : 
 but the unthinking many have gained, on the 
 whole, far less from the deep-thinking few, than 
 — taking a theoretic view of the case — might 
 in fair reason have been looked for ; and the 
 same error which my Lord Bacon doth so feel- 
 ingly complain of in his time, remaineth very 
 little corrected in this; namely, a " mistaking 
 or misplacing the last or farthest end of know- 
 ledge; for men," saith that wise writer, "have 
 entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, 
 sometimes upon a natural curiosity, and inquisi- 
 tive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds 
 with variety and delight ; sometimes for orna- 
 ment and reputation; and sometimes to enable 
 them to victory of wit and contradiction ; and 
 
4 TO THE EEADEE. 
 
 most times for lucre and profession; and seldom 
 to give a true account of their gift of reason, 
 to the benefit and use of men : as if there were 
 sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest 
 a searching and restless spirit ; or a terrace for 
 a wandering and variable mind to walk up and 
 down with a fair prospect ; or a tower of state 
 for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort 
 or commanding ground for strife and conten- 
 tion; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich 
 storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the 
 relief of man's estate." — In brief, learning is 
 sought as the means to an end, — and that end 
 is too usually a worldly one ; not for the love of 
 knowledge per se; nor for the elevation of the 
 soul, by the giving it strength of pinion to soar 
 above the things of earth: neither if it settle 
 down towards lower regions, doth it come, bird 
 of paradise-like, radiant with the hues of heaven, 
 to make us love the skies it hath left; but it 
 descendeth the rather like the fuliginous par- 
 ticles of the smoke which hath soared upwards 
 for a time, dark and unlovely; with much talk 
 of utility, but little of benevolent usefulness. 
 
 Neither do I find that the great advance of 
 science hath done much in the rendering peda- 
 gogy more facile and pleasant, either unto the 
 
TO THE EEADEE. 5 
 
 teacher or the learner : for I perceive youth, to 
 be instructed much in the same guise as was 
 the practice of two centuries back; by the in- 
 fluence of fearrather than love. Neither, though 
 somewhat hath been done towards the affording 
 to the poor a slight taste of letters, hath such 
 advance been made towards elevating them to 
 that state of mental enlightenment which is the 
 birthright of every human being, as becometh 
 a great and wealthy state, such as England doth 
 now boast itself to be. Neither do I see that 
 the state of woman-kind is such as becometh a 
 period wherein the empire of mind over matter 
 is so loudly proclaimed. For those disabilities 
 and obstructions of law which were laid upon 
 women in semi-barbarous times, by reason of 
 their lack of physical strength for martial exer- 
 cises, remain unaltered; and their education is 
 for the most part conducted in such sort, as 
 to debar them from that instruction in liberal 
 science which shall best fit them for the per- 
 formance of their many and great duties : nay, 
 it is not rare to hear such as have freed them- 
 selves from the shackles of idle prejudice so far 
 as to acquire a competent knowledge of science, 
 ancient and modern, rather flouted at, as if they 
 had done some evil thing, than marked as an 
 
TO THE KEADEK. 
 
 ensample for others. And in these things I 
 judge that this age hath not made the advance 
 which it claimeth to have done, in the policies 
 of civil life, and consequently that it walketh 
 lamely as it were, seeing that on the one leg 
 it standeth high, while the other is curtailed 
 . of its just proportions. 
 
 Nevertheless it promiseth well for this age, 
 that of all the common errors which in former 
 editions of this work the author took occasion 
 to remark on, scarcely any one remaineth unto 
 this present day: and I may surely indulge a 
 hope that if their forefathers suffered them- 
 selves to be argued out of their prejudices, and 
 flouted into the receiving of the truth, in so 
 many instances ; the existing generation will 
 not be less candid, and take in good part what 
 haply may be more rudely said than is the wont 
 of this age and country. Verily, if Truth have 
 lain in the well ever since the time of Demo- 
 critus — and, indeed, before his time, for he said 
 she was then so deep that it was past his power 
 to hale her up therefrom, — the wonder is not 
 great if the language she speak be somewhat 
 antiquated. Yet is her voice when she speaketh, 
 so musical to human ears, that the words she 
 useth matter not much: — to my readers, there- 
 
TO THE EEADEE. 7 
 
 fore, I leave it to consider if in these things 
 which I have noted, it be the voice of Tetjth 
 which speakelh or not : and if indeed they 
 should find it to be so, then haply they may 
 profit thereby, to the putting away of prejudice 
 so far, that, as this my record of common errors 
 is of so much less bulk than the last, so in the 
 next age there shall be none occasion to make 
 any farther edition thereof. 
 
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 OF THE CAUSES OF COMMON 
 EEEOES. 
 
 TO him who proposeth unto himself the 
 correction of some of the errors which he 
 continually findeth current in the world, an in- 
 quiry into their causes is a natural beginning: 
 and doubtless, as is set forth in the first editions 
 of this work, the natural infirmity and decepti- 
 bility of human nature have their share therein : 
 but less so in the present perihelion of science, 
 than formerly. For I do now perceive, when 
 I look deeply into the causes aforesaid, that 
 much of the error now current is founded on 
 sayings delivered commonly in society, which 
 yet any one of that society could well correct 
 by his own proper knowledge, were he so 
 minded. I hold its prevalence, therefore, to 
 be rather the consequence of an indolence that 
 will not, than of an ignorance or dullness that 
 cannot examine the grounds thereof. 
 
 "When the patterns of weights and measures 
 were laid up in the sanctuary of the Hebrews, 
 
10 OF THE CAUSES OE 
 
 for the prevention of mistake or fraud, we find 
 very soon that the cubit and the ephah grew 
 to be so much shorter and less in the hands of 
 the people, that the difference came at last to 
 be acknowledged and registered: — so unwilling 
 are men to keep up to the full measure or- 
 dained by God : and thus it is that we too, 
 having our measure of life laid up unchangeably 
 in the gospel, have come to have a worldly 
 measure also, which falleth far short of it : and 
 this is allowed and acknowledged — but hath 
 Grod allowed it ? — and when we go from this 
 world with some of these current errors in our 
 mouths, arid measure ourselves thereby, are we 
 certain that the measure of the sanctuary will 
 not be brought forth to falsify our bad calcu- 
 lation ? nay, are we not sure that it will ? 
 
 Methinks, therefore, as errors of science are 
 every day fading away before the greater light 
 which seemeth to be leading us on, like the 
 lengthening days of May, to the summer-tide 
 of knowledge, where there shall be no real 
 darkness ; — it is of more import to expose the 
 falsity of some of these current sayings, and to 
 bring forth into common use the cubit and 
 ephah of the sanctuary, seeing that sooner or 
 later we must measure our course of life there- 
 
COMMON EKKOKS. 11 
 
 by; — than to combat many of those mere popu- 
 lar errors in science which are only dragging on a 
 lingering existence, and which will expire alto- 
 gether in a very few years without any aid of 
 mine. And if by such an examination of com- 
 mon sayings that have thus far passed un- 
 questioned, I may lead men generally to look a 
 little more narrowly into their opinions on 
 such matters ; and cultivate in them more ra- 
 tional and logical modes of thinking, so that 
 fallacies shall not, as heretofore, pass undetected 
 through an indolent fear of the trouble of in- 
 quiry, — I shall hold myself to have done good 
 service to the world, and not be without hope 
 that I may thereby have rendered my own 
 last account somewhat more satisfactory. 
 
 As for other errors of less concernment, 
 some have arisen from witty sayings, which 
 have come to be repeated for the neatness of 
 the expression, till they acquired the weight 
 of a maxim : and some have had their birth in 
 too much learning; inasmuch as not a few 
 writers have treated their own language con- 
 temptuously, as deficient in grammatical forms; 
 and so in studying to write Latin they have 
 forgotten how to write English ; and thus have 
 fallen themselves, and led others into notable 
 
12 OF THE CAUSES OE COMMON EEEOES. 
 
 errors of phrase ; some of which out of love to 
 my native tongue, which I hold to be rich in 
 power of expression, when spoken in its purity, 
 I shall take occasion to notice ; and doubtless, 
 if we look narrowly into men's notions, Igno- 
 rance also will be found to have a large family 
 of errors that call him father : but as I have 
 before said, they are a sickly brood, not likely 
 in most instances to reach maturity ; for the 
 which cause I am the less careful about them. 
 
OF VULGAK EEEOES IN THE WAY 
 OF COMMON SAYINGS. 
 
 U A young man must sow his wild oats." 
 
 A BAD and profitless crop at any time, but 
 worst when sown in a virgin soil; for 
 then do they grow more rampant, so as ut- 
 terly to choke all the seed planted by the care 
 of the Divine Husbandman. But to speak of 
 this notion without a figure, — for methinks it 
 is on account of its foulness that it hath been 
 so veiled; — and sometimes it is better .to show 
 bad tilings in all then' ugliness, that men may 
 eschew them, — what doth this phrase of " sow- 
 ing wild oats' ' signify ? Doth it not amount 
 to this, — that man, having lost his primaeval 
 innocence, shall take good care that he never 
 regain it ? That he doth well, if, after having 
 given all the cream and richness of his life to 
 Belial, he shall haply carry the sour skim milk 
 thereof to Grod ? 
 
 I remember once hearing one who had thus 
 
14 OF VULGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 done, and was now grown old, lament himself, 
 in that death was drawing nigh ; he being then 
 suffering with gout, and other infirmities of age, 
 come npon him all the sooner for the intempe- 
 rance of his youth: to the which it was an- 
 swered, that death was a happy deliverance 
 from the pains of protracted age, and that even 
 had his life formerly been such as he would 
 now wish had been otherwise, yet that for 
 many years he had had no cause for uneasiness 
 on this head; seeing that he had doubtless re- 
 pented of the past. Methinks I see his coun- 
 tenance now T , and hear the tone of his voice 
 when he replied to those well intended conso- 
 lations — " Yes, I forsook my sins when my sins 
 forsook me," — and he paused as if fearing to 
 strengthen by utterance the thought which 
 oppressed him ; but after a moment he added, 
 " how can I tell that such repentance is of any 
 avail ?" and then, though his age .and health 
 required rest, he plunged again into the dissipa- 
 tion of company, in order to get rid of uneasy 
 remembrance, and it may be, of still more un- 
 easy anticipations ; and so he died — he had 
 " sown his wild oats," and gathered the fruit. 
 
 But say some, and they are women whom I 
 hear say so, — the more the shame and the pity 
 
WAY OF COMMON SAYINGS. 15 
 
 when they who should be the salt of the earth, 
 have so far lost their savour as to allow it to 
 putrefy, — "Men must know the world, and they 
 will avoid vice the better for having tasted, and 
 found what it is like." " Grood madam,' ' I would 
 answer to such an one, " there have been per- 
 sons who have swallowed arsenic, and recovered; 
 but did any one ever think that it was needful 
 in order to the avoiding of that poison in future, 
 to try how much danger and suffering attended 
 the taking it ? Or did he ever find his consti- 
 tution amended thereby ?' ' Man' s bodily frame 
 is too complex in its mechanism to be disordered 
 with impunity; and it may well be a question 
 with an anatomist, who knoweth the functions 
 of the brain, and the extreme delicacy of that 
 organ, whether it ever entirely recovereth from 
 the effects of this devilish apprenticeship. Nei- 
 ther doth the youth thereby gain knowledge of 
 the world ; for, thanks be to heaven ! bad as 
 it is, it is not all bad ; and I think the larger 
 portion of mankind will be found to have enough 
 of good in their composition to pose a man 
 shrewdly, who hath known only evil. A person 
 may be innocent without being ignorant: he 
 may know, alack ! — who can move in the world 
 and not know it ? — that there is much of vice, 
 
16 OF VT7EGAB EEEOES IN THE 
 
 andjnany evil men and evil things around hini : 
 but he may at the same time dislike and avoid 
 such society. It hath been said by Oste whom 
 none will gainsay, that " no man can serve two 
 masters; for either he will hate the one and 
 love the other, or else he will hold to the one 
 and despise the other." Men do not become 
 vicious till they have learned to like vice ; for if 
 they did not, it is too ugly in its features and 
 frightful in its consequences to be entertained 
 for a moment. What security is there then, 
 that after having cherished this depraved appe- 
 tite for a season, the order of nature will be re- 
 versed in this one instance, and that habit will 
 not in this, as in other the like cases, strengthen 
 the propension to what hath been oft times 
 done, till it becometh more and more difficult 
 to avoid the doing it again ? 
 
 I should like to ask such as hold this pseudo- 
 knowledge of the world so especially needful to 
 man's well-being, what place in that future 
 world which all profess to believe in, this science 
 is likely to fit them for ? Sure I am that if our 
 conversation be destined to be with just men 
 made perfect, as in Sacred Writ we are told it 
 shall be, we shall find this kind of knowledge 
 strangely out of place in such intercourse; and 
 
WAT OP COMMON SAYINGS. 17 
 
 I question much if such a training would not go 
 far to exclude a man from all good society there ; 
 as being too vulgar and ill mannered a soul to 
 be admitted among such as had been accus- 
 tomed to keep good company. It is a conve- 
 nient doctrine that men hold, that the happiness 
 or infelicity of the next world is an arbitrary 
 reward or punishment, which can be bestowed 
 at the will of the Judge ; whose compassion 
 being finally moved by a few tears and profes- 
 sions of sorrow, he will thereupon remit the 
 one, and bestow the other. But what if we 
 should find that when the earthly mould is 
 broken, the soul remaineth with all the ugly 
 features there given it, settled and fixed forever? 
 Will not this so-called knowledge of the world 
 then remain upon its front, as an unseemly wart 
 or wen, quite foreign from its true beauty ? 
 
 Methinks the most careless libertine would 
 shrink from the thought of remembering to all 
 eternity, — even if he had no other penalty to 
 fear, — all the scenes of gross vice he had wit- 
 nessed, all the innocence he had undermined ; 
 all the misery he had been the cause of: yet if 
 we believe in a future judgment, we cannot sup- 
 pose that the remembrance of our past deeds 
 will ever be wiped out, for we are to receive 
 c 
 
18 OF VULGAR ERBORS IN THE 
 
 "the reward of the deeds done in the lody, 
 whether they be good or whether they be evil.' ' 
 But excesses of this kind are a mark of spirit, 
 it is said; and some young damsel will be found 
 to remark that she doth "not like an effeminate 
 man." Fair lady, did you ever hear of one 
 Jesus of Nazareth? Did any of the most famed 
 heroes of ancient or modern times ever meet 
 torture and death more calmly than he did ? or 
 ever bear himself before prejudiced and unjust 
 judges with more noble self-possession and dig- 
 nity ? Did He want spirit ? He, from whom 
 the scourge of the Eoman drew not a sigh ; He 
 who conversed calmly on the cross ! was He 
 effeminate ? His company was sought by the 
 wealthy and great, the poor carpenter's son ! 
 could He be wanting in elegance of manners ? 
 Yet how patient, how gentle, how kind was he 
 in all the relations of life ! how pure, how holy 
 was his conduct ! He, the young, the courted 
 guest ; the idol of the people, who might have 
 set the crown upon his brow at any moment of 
 his career, if he would but have given the word! 
 If you have ever heard of this person, look once 
 more at your man of spirit; place the two 
 characters side by side — but I will not insult 
 your judgment by drawing the parallel ; suffice 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 19 
 
 it that Jesus of Nazareth though " tempted 
 in all things like as we are ;" young, followed, 
 fond of female society, and joining in all the 
 pleasures of social life, — sowed no wild oats. 
 
 " A good fellow, nobody's enemy but his own." 
 
 It hath offc times been matter of wonderment 
 to me how many phrases do come to be received 
 as current coin in the world, which for certain 
 were never lawfully stamped in the mint of 
 either religion or reason: and among these 
 brass shillings of society, I know none that 
 better deserveth to be nailed to the counter 
 than the one above placed ; for many an idle 
 young man hath, before now, found it the last 
 in his pocket, and haply hath exchanged it for 
 a pistol bullet, thinking himself a gainer by 
 the bargain. 
 
 If man grew to a rock like a limpet, then 
 might he haply be his own enemy without any 
 great harm to his neighbours ; but he who 
 liveth in society, and faileth to perform his part 
 aright in the station assigned to him, doth all 
 that in him lieth to destroy the body politic. 
 He who is delivered over to vice and drunken- 
 ness — for such, being interpreted, is the meaning 
 of a good fellow who is only his own enemy, — 
 
20 Or VULGAR ERRORS IN THE 
 
 setteth a bad example to his dependents; squan- 
 dered his fortune on unworthy objects, to the 
 neglect of all that he might and ought to have 
 done towards the relief and advance of the 
 deserving ; plungeth his family into difficulties ; 
 grieveth, shameth, and perhaps starveth them ; 
 ruineth his health, so as to make himself a bur- 
 then to those about him; and fmally,after having 
 been a bad citizen, a bad master, a bad husband, 
 a bad father, sinketh into the grave with a soul 
 so irrecoverably poisoned by habits of sensuality 
 and gross earthliness, that it would seem rather 
 fit to rot with its putrefying companion, than to 
 enter into any region of spiritualized existence. 
 And this man who hath fulfilled no one duty, 
 but on the contrary hath spread around him a 
 dank atmosphere of sin, is called " a good fel- 
 low," merely because he hath done all this 
 with an air of reckless gaiety, which showed 
 an utter absence of any feeling for the beings 
 he was rendering miserable! Verily the world's 
 measure is wofully short of the standard cubit 
 and ephah of the sanctuary. 
 
 " We must do as others do." 
 So doubtless said the people before the flood, 
 and the natives of Sodoma: and from their time 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 21 
 
 downwards, half the evils of the world may be 
 tracked to that gregarious propension in man, 
 which maketh him, like a silly sheep, leap 
 because others leap, notwithstanding that he 
 himself seeth no just cause for any such feat 
 of agility. But "what will people say?" ex- 
 claim the weakly minded. "Grood Sir, or Ma- 
 dam," I would answer, " people" think far less 
 of your concerns than you imagine ; or even if 
 they do bestow a passing notice on them, there 
 is so little of unanimity among men, unless 
 where the great instincts of our nature are con- 
 cerned, that oft, yea, most times, what one party 
 blameth, another will praise. True it is, that 
 it concerneth all who would do good in their 
 generation, so far to make this inquiry as that 
 they may not needlessly give offence, even to 
 the conceits and prejudices of their neighbours ; 
 because so to do doth not only militate against 
 the rule of Christian charity, but, inasmuch as 
 it may cause their " good to be evil spoken of," 
 doth notably diminish their usefulness ; but to 
 let this consideration of what others will say 
 concerning us, be, as it often is, a worm at the 
 root of good intention, a barrier across the path 
 which leadeth to our goal, — what is it but to 
 give idle talk more importance than conscience, 
 
22 OF YTLGAR EEEOES TS THE 
 
 and to set the fear of man to weigh against 
 the fear of God, in the balances of this world. 
 In the greatest matter that ever was enacted 
 on this earth, down to the most insignificant oc- 
 currence of ordinary life, this unhappy question 
 hath forced its way, to the manifest moral per- 
 turbation, if not to the actual overthrowing of 
 the inquirer. It was an idle and common oc- 
 currence that the daughter of Herodias should 
 dance ; and it was a no less common occurrence 
 that a king, being drunk, should make a promise 
 whereof he foresaw not the consequences ; but 
 it was the fear of what the lords who sate at 
 meat with him would say, that made Herod 
 embrue his hands in the blood of an innocent 
 man, even when his better nature started back 
 from the commission of so heinous a crime. 
 And thus much for a trivial occurrencewherethe 
 dread of the idle judgment of man, led to bit- 
 ter consequences and deep guilt; but there was 
 another and a greater occasion where this con- 
 cernment for the ill digested opinion and talk of 
 others, played a yet more notable and important 
 part; for what was it that led Pontius Pilate 
 to condemn Him whom he in his heart believed 
 to be guiltless, but the fear that "people would 
 say" he was disloyal unto Caesar? And to pass 
 
WAT OP COMMON SAYINGS. 23 
 
 from the greater unto the less, how long ago 
 would that evil custom bequeathed to us by 
 our barbarous ancestors, have been rusting, 
 with their armour, in forgetfulness, did not the 
 cowardly fear of what strangers would say, 
 outbalance the laws of Grod, and the best 
 affections of our nature ; and arm the hand of 
 the friend against the friend, when both, at 
 heart, shrunk from the appeal to this ultima 
 ratio of unreasoning men. 
 
 But leaving this part of the matter, wherein 
 this evil carefulness for the sweetness of the 
 world's breath leadeth to crimes of a deep dye; 
 let us farther consider the ill influence which 
 this maxim that 'we must do as others do,' ex- 
 erciseth on the common affairs of life. A man, 
 for instance, when he summeth up his reckon- 
 ings, and asketh himself how his business is 
 thriving, may perceive that he is not so well to 
 do in the world as he was ; that the sources of 
 his gains, without any fault of his, perhaps, are 
 lessening ; and that there is no reasonable hope 
 that they will again prosper him as they have 
 heretofore done. What doth he then ? — doth 
 he content himself to spendlesswhenhe gaineth 
 less ? — to proportion the sum of his outgoings 
 to that of his diminished incomings ? No, ' what 
 
24 OF VULGAR EKROES IN THE 
 
 would people say ? he must do as others of a 
 like rank do.' — What wonder if ruin follow?. . . 
 Again ; — a man of small fortune hath acquaint- 
 ances whose larger means may justify their in- 
 dulging in many of the gauds and ornaments of 
 life ; — the wife of such an one hath jewels; — 
 another keepethatable,not for hospitality alone, 
 but show : — our poorer man hath hitherto been 
 thrifty and careful, but an idle question maketh 
 its way into his mind of 'what will people think' 
 of his frugal though hospitable board, his wife's 
 lack of bravery in her attire, — his own plain 
 mode of life ? — Where this notion hath once 
 settled on the mind, it is like rust, corroding 
 and cankering whatever it touches ; it eateth 
 away his peace, and paltry as it is, hath power 
 to destroy the comfort of a life ! To be rid of 
 it he spendeth what he getteth not, vieth with 
 his neighbour for a year or two, and becometh 
 a beggar for the remainder of his days. 
 
 Nor is this over carefulness for the world's 
 opinion less an enemy to kindness than to thrift: 
 many a deed whose object is to raise the fallen, 
 to cheer those on whom the hard hearted have 
 frowned, to speak peace to a troubled soul, or 
 other such christian act, hath been nipped in 
 the bud by its selfish, blighting breath; and. 
 
WAT OP COMMON SAYINGS. 25 
 
 like other tyrannical rulers, it is not satisfied 
 with the homage of our actions only ; it must 
 have that of our speech ; and leadeth to injustice 
 in more, and more diverse ways, than I can here 
 specify. The experience of every one will, I 
 doubt not, furnish him with many instances 
 hereof in lesser matters ; as where persons 
 really not ill natured have joined with the com- 
 pany in slanderous or unedifying talk, lest it 
 should be thought strange, should they not do 
 as others did ; and so on in other things of a 
 like kind. It would be better both for ourselves 
 and others, methinks, if instead of asking "what 
 vrdl people say ?" we were to ask " what will 
 conscience say ?" and instead of measuring our 
 doings by those of others, were to seek to square 
 them by the standard of the sanctuary. We 
 might haply save ourselves from many crimes, 
 and some follies, by so doing. 
 
 "He that spareth the rod spoileth the child" 
 
 Is a sentence which, though it be that of the wise 
 Solomon, is often in the mouth of many a man 
 that hath not Solomon's wisdom, or he would 
 have known that if the advance of knowledge 
 be not of force to enable us to teach the young 
 to love goodness, rather than to fear punishment, 
 
26 Or YTTLGAR ERRORS IK THE 
 
 we might, for all the profit we have gained from 
 learning, as well have remained ignorant. Truly, 
 that is but a slavish service which is paid merely 
 through fear of the rod ; and as good Doctor 
 Martin Luther hath well said, " How shall our 
 works please God when they come from a dis- 
 inclined and unwilling heart ? For to fulfil 
 the law is to do the works of the law with incli- 
 nation and affection ; and freely, without the 
 constraint of the law, to lead a godly and pious 
 life, as if there were no fear of punishment." — 
 I trow that none of those who are so free to 
 quote this sentence of king Solomon, would be 
 satisfied with all Solomon's knowledge, even 
 though he spake of all plants, from the cedar of 
 Lebanon, to the hyssop that hangeth on the 
 wall : I hold it therefore among vulgar errors to 
 suppose that we are to make no advance in the 
 matter of education, when there is no other 
 point wherein we would be satisfied to live and 
 do as king Solomon did. And hereout arises 
 much bitter fruit ; for while parents are pleasing 
 themselves with the thought that all offence is 
 to be whipped out of the child by future peda- 
 gogues, and all learning whipped in ; those years 
 wherein the tender shoot can best be trained, 
 are wholly neglected ; and the child who haply, 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 27 
 
 in after years, may be called on to harangue in 
 the pulpit or the senate ; — to guide a family, or 
 it may be, the state ; — is left in the nursery to 
 learn to speak English from rude unlettered 
 persons, who cannot utter three words without 
 transgressing against the commonest rules of 
 grammar ; — and to gain the first notions of logical 
 reasoning from those whose arguments reach no 
 farther than, "it is because it is;" — and the first 
 ideas of duty from such as most frequently hold 
 the bearing a fair face towards the head of 
 the family, to be the only point to be aimed at ; 
 and whose squabbles and ill language, uncon- 
 strained before the baby, give its young mind 
 the first impressions. One who spake as never 
 man spake, said, "Ye do not gather grapes from 
 thorns, nor figs from thistles" — yet what but 
 thorns and thistles are likely to spring up in a 
 nursery where the mind is left, as was quaintly 
 said by some one, " a sheet of white paper for 
 the devil to write upon" — whereas if parents 
 would do their duty, and by keeping their chil- 
 dren with them under such gentle restraint as 
 parental affection would dictate, check in the 
 bud the first indications of evil, the young 
 memory would be stored with knowledge picked 
 up from conversation, without the weariness of 
 
28 OF VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 learning ; the language would be polished, the 
 manners refined ; and the child, instead of com- 
 ing down once a day to destroy everything he 
 can lay his hands on ; to howl if in an ill, or 
 to bellow if in a good humour ; would be a 
 cheerful andpleasant companion; knowing when 
 and where to indulge in his recreations, and 
 when to withdraw into discreet silence, should 
 graver matters require it. Nor is this any fine 
 drawn picture of the imagination; for in this my 
 revisitation of the world, it hath been my hap- 
 piness to see some such families, and the felicity 
 enjoyed by all the members, old and young, hath 
 shown that knowledge, if rightly employed, can 
 give us a better system than that of a semi-bar- 
 barous age, now passed away along with that 
 law of Moses, which, though good for the times, 
 was pronounced by the greatest of all authori- > 
 ties to have been given to the Israelites " be- 
 cause of the hardness of their hearts." 
 
 " Children should not ask questions" 
 
 I eemembee once hearing of the fellow of a 
 college at Oxford, whose training had been in 
 the days when university men could go deeper 
 into a bottle of port-than a problem of Euclid, 
 who exclaimed against the evil practice of 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 29 
 
 allowing children to be inquisitive. "A child 
 cometh up to one, now-a-days," cried this rem- 
 nant of the olden times, " and asketh me the 
 diameter of the moon : now I don't know what 
 is the diameter of the moon, and I don't like to 
 be asked such questions . ' ' This old gentleman 
 was at least honest, and confessed without re- 
 serve the real cause of his objection. If others 
 would be as honest, I have little doubt that we 
 should find the very strenuous objections made 
 to children's inquisitiveness, and eagerness to 
 search into omne scibile, to have its origin in a 
 like cause ; their elders do not know the dia- 
 meter of the moon. But meseemeth that even 
 though the former generation should have been 
 ignorant of many useful things, they have not 
 any right thereby engendered, to choke the 
 spring of knowledge for the young, even though 
 their searching inquiries should disclose how 
 little the old had drunk of it : and he must have 
 been a bad parent who hath gained so little of 
 the affection of his child by his kindliness, as to 
 have any fear that he shall attract his mockery 
 by his want of erudition. A better answer 
 would such a parent give, even in that case, 
 were he to say, " My child, when I was young, 
 no one would answer my questions; and there- 
 
30 OF VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 fore, to my regret, I remained ignorant of much 
 that I wished to know : but, my dear child, 
 I will not so deal with thee ; and, therefore, 
 though to this question of thine I am unable to 
 give an answer of mine own science, yet as hap- 
 pily we have in this age books that will tellus this 
 and much more, we will together seek this out, 
 and then we shall both be the wiser." Nor need 
 any one fear the being lightly esteemed by his 
 children for this plain spoken sincerity : for the 
 lesson thus learned is made pleasant by the very 
 circumstance that it is participated in by the pa- 
 rent, not dogmatically enforced ; and the child 
 will rather wish that much of his learning 
 should be thus acquired, than that he should 
 run the hazard of being rebuked for slowness 
 of apprehension, by one who already knoweth 
 what he hath to explain. 
 
 Moreover this inquiring spirit which men are 
 at such pains to repress, would seem to have 
 been bestowed by God for the express purpose 
 of farthering man's knowledge : for the child 
 asketh of his parent the cause of this and that, 
 and if he be answered well and freely, he will 
 have learned, long ere he come to man's estate, 
 the current state of science ; and having thus 
 a foundation whereon to advance his building, 
 
WAY OE COMMON SAYINGS. 31 
 
 he may chance thereupon to place a super- 
 structure which may be both useful and fair : 
 but if this first instinct be checked, and the child 
 be compelled to look on what he understandeth 
 not, and yet hold no question thereupon ; he 
 will soon learn to glance carelessly over the 
 things around him, so that "seeing he shall not 
 see, and hearing he shall not understand ;" and 
 when he cometh to years, miscalled of discre- 
 tion, it will be well for him if they afford enough 
 of it to enable him then to hold his tongue. 
 
 During the first years of childhood the brain 
 is tender, and impatient of much hard applica- 
 tion ; and, therefore, if heavy lessons be set him 
 to learn, a child soon becometh unhealthy, and 
 finally lumpish and incapable : but it is at this 
 period of the tenderness of the brain, that he 
 is most prone to ask questions as to all that he 
 seeth or heareth, as though he were exercising 
 that organ in the same way that he doth his 
 limbs, by many irregular jumps and movements ' 
 which f avom* its healthy development . If these 
 movements be restrained, the body becometh 
 deformed ; nor doth the brain suffer less by the 
 repressing this its natural exercise ; becoming 
 ever after inert, and unfit for all those higher 
 operations of intellect, which require prompti- 
 
32 OP YTJLGAB EKROKS IN THE 
 
 tude of thought : so that not only is much pre- 
 cious time lost afterwards, in gaining that rudi- 
 mentary knowledge which might have been ac- 
 quired viva voce without fatigue, but the organ 
 itself is, by its long inactivity, rendered less fit 
 for its work. Two heavy evils whereof the 
 world hath daily experience in the bad ordering 
 of affairs, by reason of the lack of mental ex- 
 pertness in those who have been entrusted with 
 the overseeing thereof : and thus a large quota 
 of mischief arises from the senseless vanity of 
 parents, who are ashamed to acknowledge their 
 lack of science ; or their inconsiderateness in 
 giving forth commands which they cannot sup- 
 port by any just and convincing reason, for 
 which cause they dread the word, " why ?" — or 
 their indolence in not choosing to seek, either 
 in their own minds or elsewhere, the means of 
 satisfying the first longings of the child after 
 true knowledge and justice. 
 
 " A hoy should he manly T 
 And what doth this phrase of " being manly," 
 intend to express ? We can understand what 
 was meant by the aperr] of the Greeks, and the 
 virtus of the Romans in heathen times ; for in 
 states when war was the only honourable em- 
 
way or commobt sayings. 33 
 
 ployment, — plunder the only riches, — and the 
 choice was only between slavery, literal back- 
 breaking slavery, and conquest ; it is easy to 
 conceive that personal courage was reckoned 
 the virtue kclt zt,oyj)v. But the manliness of a 
 Christian Englishman is a much more puzzling 
 thing. " I like my boys to be manly," saith a 
 father ; and thereupon he setteth his children 
 to fight one another or their companions ; not 
 in defence of the oppressed ; not in resistance 
 to wrong doing which they can no otherwise 
 avoid ; but upon some quarrel, having for its 
 origin either ill humour, or pride, or ill passion 
 of some kind. It is manly then, in the eyes of 
 this father that his son should do, what as a 
 Christian, he is forbidden to do ! Yet this same 
 parent would shudder at the thought of allowing 
 him to bow to the image of a Hindoo deity, or 
 of a Eomish saint even. But wherein lies the 
 difference ? Are we empowered to be thus cu- 
 riously nice in the picking out which of God's 
 positive laws we will obey, as though we gained 
 an immunity for the neglect of the rest, by the 
 observance of one or two ? If we are to call it 
 manly to cast off the very sign and badge of our 
 Christian profession, " hereby shall men know 
 that ye are my disciples, that ye love one an- 
 
 D 
 
34 OF VULGAR EBEOES EN" THE 
 
 other," — we need make small scruple to imitate 
 the example of the Dutch traders to Japan in 
 former times, and deny our faith when interest 
 prompteth us so to do. To my mind, the sin is 
 not greater in the one case, than the other : for 
 to be manly according to this devilish interpreta- 
 tion of the word, is — not to be a Christian man. 
 If such is to be his future training, wherefore is 
 a child mocked by being signed " with the sign 
 of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall 
 not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ 
 crucified" . . . and shall " continue his faithful 
 soldier and servant unto his life's end ?" Verily 
 the father who meaneth to have such a manly 
 son, might spare himself the trouble of carry- 
 ing him to the font. 
 
 "A man is not responsible for his belief" 
 Meseemeth that there is, in the use made of 
 this saying, some deal of error, sheltering itself 
 under an undeniable truth; for though man's 
 mind be so framed that he cannot believe with- 
 out proof, and therefore he remaineth free from 
 blame, if, from poverty, he be misinstructed, 
 and thereby his faith be starved; or if, from ill 
 instruction he be supplied with prejudice only, 
 and thereby his faith be poisoned ; or if, from 
 
WAY OF COMMON SAYINGS. 35 
 
 being born in a pagan country, the light hath 
 not arrived at him, and therefore the seed of 
 faith hath not been able to germinate ; yet if the 
 lack of belief in revelation be the consequence 
 of inattention, which doth not seek for proof, or 
 of indolence, which will not be at the pains to 
 cultivate the intellect enough to be able to com- 
 prehend the proof when given, — then is such a 
 man assuredly responsible for his errors. Yea, 
 methinks he incurreth the blame of the servant 
 in the parable who having a talent given him, 
 improved it not, but brought it back, not even 
 naked as he received it, but wrapped in a nap- 
 kin of fleshly desires and conceits, which he had 
 bestowed on it whilst it was in his keeping, and- 
 complained of his Lord as a hard master, be- 
 cause having bestowed on his idle servant the 
 means of bettering his estate, he expected him 
 to have made some use thereof. 
 
 It is a strange notion of many well inten- 
 tioned persons, that religious knowledge doth 
 differ from all other ; and that it cometh by 
 prayer only, and not by study. How shall the 
 man pray who knoweth not, or believeth not the 
 necessity for prayer ? But when study hath 
 roused his attention, then there will be some 
 likelihood that, like the treasurer of Queen 
 
36 OF VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 Candace, lie will find out his own ignorance, 
 and seek for some man to teach him ; yea, look 
 on high for the instruction of that Divine 
 Teacher, who is ever ready to make them 
 wise, who seek for true wisdom. 
 
 It hath never been my luck to know one 
 whose faith bore right good fruit, who had not 
 reasoned thereupon; for as St. Clement of 
 Alexandria doth truly say, "faith is knowledge, 
 and knowledge is faith ; Grod having so consti- 
 tuted them that they mutually lean on each 
 other, by turns leading and being led." Nor 
 for this kind of reasoning, is it needful to have 
 been trained in the schools of learning ; for as 
 the ancient fathers of the church do well observe, 
 man's mind is naturally \oyacog, i.e. rational 
 or logical ; and therefore many a peasant who 
 never heard of Aristoteles, doth, notwithstand- 
 ing, come to a good logical conclusion by dint of 
 his own deep thinking, aided by experience in 
 life, and right intentions. Let a man therefore 
 well judge himself, ere he assert, as a reason 
 for his incredulity, that we are not responsible 
 for our belief: for if he have not exerted all 
 the powers of his mind upon the question, aided 
 by all the cultivation which his station of life 
 hath put within his reach, he may find when 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYING-S. 37 
 
 it is too late for his comfort, that he hath cast 
 away that faith which is knowledge, and know- 
 ledge which is faith, to his own great detriment 
 in all the circumstances of life. For man, as he is 
 not self-existent, so neither is he self-supported. 
 He who would find diamonds must well know 
 andbelievethat there is a gem within that rough 
 outside, or he will pass it by unheeded: and he 
 who would truly prosper in this present world, 
 must sufficiently believethatthereisgoodmeant 
 to him in the seeming roughnesses of life, to in- 
 duce him to seek for it with some pains, other- 
 wise he will sit down desponding, and only see 
 black stones where others are gathering gems. 
 Man is not yet what he shall be, and in this his 
 infancy, if he be not content to lean on the hand 
 which God holdeth out to him, he will stumble 
 amid the rough ground which he hath to pass 
 over ere he reach his resting place. 
 
 "Women have no concern with politics" 
 Is a saying which goeth current with the many, 
 who indeed are not always the wise, as an incon- 
 trovertible truth; yet there is no opinion which 
 I have heard in these days, that, to my mind, 
 more savoureth of error. Politics, as I think, 
 is a word applied to the science of government ; 
 
38 Or VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 but in its larger signification it extendeth itself 
 to the knowledge of the relations between differ- 
 ent states, and the influence which the circum- 
 stances of one may have upon the well-being of 
 another, as well as to the acquaintance with the 
 civil polity of our own. Now as the prosperity 
 of a nation consisteth in the due attention on 
 the part of its governors to all these matters ; 
 and as the well-being of every citizen is deeply 
 involved in the prosperity of the land wherein 
 he abideth ; so hath it always been held that in 
 all free states the rulers should be under a cer- 
 tain control of public opinion; this opinionbeing 
 indeed no other than the collective expression 
 of the notions held by the majority of individual 
 citizens. Now as the essence of good govern- 
 ment is that it shall protect the weak against 
 the strong, so methinks, women, instead of 
 having no concern with politics, have necessarily 
 a peculiar interest therein ; seeing that their 
 small physical strength must always render them 
 the most liable to oppression, either amid civil 
 broils, or foreign invasion : for the which cause 
 Plato, in his book of laws, would have the 
 women of his imaginary state so trained to 
 active, and even martial exercises, that should 
 the defenders of a city be slain or absent, the 
 
WAY OE COMMON SAYINGS. 39 
 
 women thereof should be able in some sort to 
 protect themselves against the violence of their 
 enemies. 
 
 But I am inclined to think that the untrue 
 conclusion expressed in the above stated saying 
 is drawn from premises no less false; for I hear 
 it by many asserted that the female is born with 
 a weaker intellect than the male. Now, theo- 
 retically, this should be false : for all through 
 animal nature, that faculty whatever it be, which 
 is peculiar to the species, is possessed in an 
 equal degree by both the sexes. Thus, the scent 
 of the hound, or the wiliness of the fox, or the 
 imitativeness of the monkey, differeth not one 
 whit, whether the animal be male or female ; and 
 as reason, and a sharp discernment of the rela- 
 tions of things, is the peculiar faculty of man, 
 so we might, by analogy, conclude that the 
 female of the species possessed it in an equal 
 degree : but we rind a yet stronger argument in 
 the anatomy of the brain, which is the organ 
 whereby rational conclusions are shaped and 
 elaborated : for here is no defect, but the con- 
 trary ; for in regard to the proportion that the 
 brain beareth to the body, the female is no ways 
 behind the male, but rather exceedeth in the 
 quantity thereof; neither is there any organ or 
 
40 OF VTJLGAE EEEOES IN" THE 
 
 part wanting therein, of those which the male 
 brain doth possess. With regard to the usemade 
 thereof, I have already remarked that the educa- 
 tion afforded to the female sex is not generally 
 of such a nature as, considering the advance of 
 science, was to he expected; and yet despite of 
 these disadvantages, there have been examples 
 enough in almost every science, and especially 
 in that most uninviting and severe one of 
 the mathematics, to show that there is no 
 lack of power, were it duly cultivated. There- 
 fore I hold that this opinion of the intellectual 
 incapacity of the female sex, must be ranked 
 with those presumed truths which it is to be 
 hoped that the enlightenment of the age will 
 soon place among declared errors; and that 
 citizens of the state who have property and lives 
 to lose, will no longer be told that they have 
 no concern in the policy which may bring both 
 into jeopardy. I have heard much of "feminine 
 accomplishments," and "feminine virtues," as 
 if the two sexes were of entirely different species, 
 and had no concerns in common ; but I must 
 freely confess, however strange it may seem to 
 those who are freer in the use of this phrase 
 than they are haply clear in the understand- 
 ing of it, that I never yet could discover 
 
way or COMMON SAYINGS. 41 
 
 which they be. For should we term painting 
 or music such accomplishments, there are 
 abundance of the male sex as well as the 
 female, who excel in them, and therefore they 
 do not of nature belong to either ; and for the 
 so-called "feminine virtues," if any will tell 
 me of a virtue which becometh a woman, that 
 doth not also become a man, I shall be wiser 
 thereafter than the gospel hath made me. 
 
 " Marriage is a lottery" 
 
 To them that choose to make it so ; for if a 
 farmer going to a market where samples of corn 
 or beeves are exposed for sale, shall determi- 
 nately shut his eyes, and purchase the one upon 
 which some chance shall cause him to lay his 
 hand, I know no law to prevent it; save that, 
 if it were often done, his next of kin might per- 
 chance sue for a writ de lunatieo inqidrendo: 
 but since marriage is, for the most part done 
 once for all, the individual can, if he will, make 
 this kind of lottery of it : for however great the 
 folly, it would want that succession of proof 
 which would enable the chancellor to allow re- 
 lations to interfere in the way of restraint. How 
 the saying arose, I am at a loss to tell, unless it 
 were in those times when parents selected hus- 
 
42 OP YTTLGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 bands for their daughters, and wives for their 
 sons, in their nonage: it might then be held a 
 lottery what the infant thus betrothed might 
 prove to be when grown to maturity: and per- 
 chance, as sayings last long after the circum- 
 stances which gave rise to them, this, which was 
 a true condemnation of a bad practice in its first 
 use hath now grown into a proverbial justifica- 
 tion of a practice equally bad: for to take him. 
 or her who is to be the companion of our future 
 life, by mere chance, and without enquiry, 
 bringeth us back to those times whereof this 
 saying was the reproach. Yet we do not see 
 that a servant who may at any time be dis- 
 charged at a month's notice, and trouble us no 
 farther, is received into our houses without a 
 strict enquiry into former conduct, ability, and 
 disposition: a strange instance of prudence in 
 the lesser matter, coupled with carelessness in 
 the greater. And though something might be 
 said in excuse on the part of the man, inasmuch 
 as the law of this realm of England, as I have 
 before noted, giveth him a kind of mastership 
 over his wife which savoureth of that law of the 
 strongest which barbarous times do affect, and 
 thus he may think her temper and conduct of 
 the less import, — what is the woman thinking 
 
WAT OF COMilOX SAYINGS. 43 
 
 of when she taketh to herself a master whose 
 character she hath not sought to ascertain! Is 
 she ignorant that, by the sanction of this same 
 law of -England, he can imprison her in any 
 room in his house, so long as he himself is an 
 inhabitant thereof ; — that he may strike her, so 
 long as he innicteth no severe bodily injury; 
 that he may leave her and live in adultery with 
 another ; but if, when thus abandoned, she can 
 earn money to support herself, or come into an 
 inheritance from her family, he can claim and 
 take it from her, for the use of himself and his 
 paramour ? Knoweth she not this ? and if she 
 do, what term shall we find for the folly of her 
 who maketh it a lottery whether all this may 
 not be her lot ? — 1 speak not here of the law 
 which surely hath strange and ugly features for 
 an age that boasteth itself as a polished one ; 
 but I do say that whilst the law is such as to 
 make marriage a legal slavery for the woman, 
 lightened only of its burthensomeness by the 
 temper and just feelings of a good man, who 
 would abhor to use the wicked privileges thus 
 allowed him ; it behoveth her, ere she so bind 
 herself, to know thoroughly the habits and prin- 
 ciples of him whom she trusteth with such large 
 authority over her. A christian in principle 
 
44 OE TTJLGAE EEKORS IN THE 
 
 would not avail himself of such a law; as indeed 
 he blusheth now to see it recorded among those 
 of his country: but the world's code of honour 
 affordeth no security against it, as daily experi- 
 ence too sadly sheweth. Let every woman then 
 beware, and take heed that her future peace 
 be not thrown away in this " lottery:" and let 
 every man beware also, lest with all these pri- 
 vileges of law, he should find that a bad woman 
 can make them all of none avail, and bring him 
 to confess that he had better have looked ere 
 he made that headlong leap, led thereto by a 
 fair face hiding an evil heart. 
 
 " You cannot put an old liead on young 
 
 Ie in the saying which standeth above, it be 
 only intended to be affirmed that we cannot 
 expect to gather the blossom and pluck the fruit 
 of the same tree at the same season, or in other 
 phrase, to find in a youth who hath not yet 
 numbered twenty years, the experience of one 
 of twice or thrice that age; it may be reckoned 
 among those self evident propositions which 
 persons might well spare themselves the trouble 
 of putting forth or iterating, and can as little 
 be gainsaid, as that grey hairs are more to be 
 
wax or coimoN sayings. 45 
 
 looked for on the head of an old man than on 
 that of a youth. But if more than this be sup- 
 posed to be contained by implication in the saw 
 I have mentioned, methinks it is not only 
 dubious, but capable of large error. The wise 
 Lord Bacon hath said that" a man that is young 
 in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no 
 time; but," he addeth, — alack that the world 
 should have profited so little by his wisdom ! — 
 " that happeneth rarely." Now that it is good 
 that the young should be merry and happy, it 
 must be a sorry cynic that would deny; but 
 that mirth and joy may be all the better for 
 having wisdom, goodness, and learning in their 
 company must be admitted by all: and if the 
 training of the young be such as shall lead 
 them to seek and delight in such things, they 
 will indeed be less giddy and perturbed on all 
 occasions, but not a whit the less happy. 
 
 Should it be a question how this saying hath 
 become current in the world, it may be consi- 
 dered that it is a very facile and convenient 
 mode of shifting the burthen from our own 
 shoulders to those of dame Nature: yet is she 
 not blameworthy in this matter, for she hath 
 given abundance of brains to the young, and 
 if they be not taught to use them, it is not 
 her fault but the parent's. 
 
46 OF VTTLGAB EEEOES IN THE 
 
 We have examples enough, of the early putting 
 forth of such buds of wisdom as have matured 
 into goodly fruit, to prove that such things may 
 be: but if ye shall be at the pains of inquiring 
 whether the present fashion of indoctrinating 
 youth, as well boys as maidens, be of a kind to 
 supply by thought and cogitation what is lack- 
 ing in experience, ye shall surely find that there 
 is some main error at the bottom of the present 
 plan of education; since the best fruits of it are 
 wanting. Yet is there not any lack of power 
 in the brain, for ye shall oft times see a lad of 
 sixteen or seventeen years of age, possessed of 
 many acquirements not to be gamed without 
 hard study. Such an one will be well grounded 
 in Greek, Latin, and the mathematics, and these 
 are not to be learned without some thought ; 
 but this glorious faculty whereby man doth so 
 rise above the brutes, is for the most part left 
 uncultivated, or only called into action by the 
 dread of the psedagogue: — the memory indeed 
 is disciplined, but the reason left untrained. 
 For proof hereof ye have but to look at the 
 course of a young man's life: at school first, ' 
 then at the university, and lastly under the 
 especial training for his profession or trade be it 
 what it may, wherein the fashion of empirical 
 
WAT OE COMMON SAYINGS. 47 
 
 teaching doth so generally prevail, that ye shall 
 rarely find a tutor or instructor of youth any 
 where, who is either able or willing to answer 
 those questions on the foundations of science, of 
 law, or of commerce, which suggest themselves 
 to an ingenuous mind; 'and thus all teaching 
 resolveth itself into a set of dogmatic rules for 
 particular cases, rather than broad principles, 
 whereon the tyro may ground general conclu- 
 sions, such as may guide him on other occa- 
 sions than the one in question. 
 
 And if this be true as regardeth youth of the 
 male sex, how much more biting an evil is it 
 as regardeth the female : for the teachers them- 
 selves, being for the most part ill and insuffi- 
 ciently instructed, dare not step beyond the 
 mere setting of lessons to be learned by rote; 
 from which so little of wisdom is to be gained, 
 that ye shall frequently find the old shoulders 
 surmounted by a very childish head, as far as 
 regardeth the brain furniture, however it may 
 externally bear the signs of age. 
 
 Many are the complaints made in this age, 
 of the neglect of education ; and truly I do hold 
 them to be well founded: but I do also note 
 that what is called education, though it may 
 raise the recipients thereof above the depths of 
 
48 OF VT7LGAB EEKOES IN THE 
 
 brutal ignorance, is far off from a training to 
 wisdom. A young maiden is kept in the 
 nursery and the school room, like a ship on the 
 stocks, whilst she is furnished with abundance 
 of showy accomplishments, and is launched like 
 the ship, looking taut and trim, but empty 
 of everything that can make her useful. What 
 captain would undertake to go a voyage in such 
 a vessel? He would naturally say, I must have 
 store of all that is needful to meet the storms 
 of winter, the attacks of enemies, the wear and 
 tear of the voyage. And wherein is the maiden 
 better qualified to meet the rubs and storms of 
 life? What store of knowledge hath she to 
 enable her to meet the wintry period of life 
 cheerfully? What mental firmness to with- 
 stand the enemies of her virtue? What good 
 common sense to meet the wear and tear of 
 every day life? — She is a doll to be played with, 
 not a companion to cheer, or a wise friend to 
 guide, or to help in the bufferings of ill fortune. 
 Yet if we will mark those persons of both sexes, 
 who.— by circumstances, which though deemed 
 untoward, were God's schooling for the mind, — 
 have had all the powers of thinking and acting 
 early called forth; we shall see that they have 
 proved themselves equal to the demands made 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 49 
 
 upon them. Now if wise and gentle training 
 were during early life made to perform the part 
 of hard necessity, the same good effect might be 
 secured without the pain and harass ; and chil- 
 dren might be accustomed to employ their rea- 
 son on the ordinary business of life, without 
 foregoing any branch of useful learning, or 
 losing any of those refreshments and delights 
 which the great Creator hath provided for the 
 young and innocent. For a better system of 
 teaching, where the reason rather than the me- 
 mory should be taxed, would make learning less 
 the drudgery of one who fears punishment, than 
 the pleasant occupation of the intellect; and 
 thus would it both occupy less time, and be far 
 more useful for the affairs of life; where we 
 never find that set rules will serve us for every 
 variety of circumstance, but where general prin- 
 ciples are needed for guidance on fresh occasions 
 and must thus be applied pro re nata, as we are 
 wont to say in our prescriptions. Were such 
 training given to the young, I think the saying 
 I have commented on, would not be so gene- 
 ral: for it would then be seen that a wise and 
 experienced head can be placed on young 
 shoulders ; and that nothing is needful thereto 
 E 
 
50 OF VULGAR EEROES IN THE 
 
 but the careful and early use of the faculties 
 God hath given. 
 
 u Ne sutor ultra crepidam"* 
 
 Albeit this saying be ancient, it is not without 
 its harm in modern times also; for it is a cruelty 
 to attempt to bound the expansion of the human 
 intellect because the law of nature may have re- 
 quired the labour of the hand to minister to 
 the maintenance of the body: and to scoff at the 
 endeavour to rise above the mire of daily toil, 
 and soar in the empyrean of spiritual enjoyments 
 for a short space, showeth a small share of the 
 brotherly feeling which should exist among the 
 followers of Christ. Moreover the maxim, if 
 attended to, would be hurtful to mankind gene- 
 rally ; — for many of our most useful discoveries, 
 and much that doth most delectate our imagina- 
 tion, have been the work of persons who would 
 never have benefited or delighted then' contem- 
 poraries and posterity, had they thereby been 
 deterred from engaging in pursuits very little 
 germane to their worldly calling. The lawyer 
 would never have written poetiy, nor the priest 
 have invented machinery: yea, Friar Bacon 
 
 * Let not the shoemaker go beyond his last. 
 
WAY OP COMMON SAYINGS. 51 
 
 would have left us without gunpowder, which 
 albeit it hath its evils, yet hath served man much 
 more effectually than it hath injured: and even 
 in times nearer to the period wherein that saying 
 had its rise, Cicero himself would never have 
 left us that rich legacy of pure morality and 
 wise philosophy, had he confined himself to Ms 
 last; videlicet, the labours of the forum; nor 
 earlier yet, would Socrates have become the 
 listener to Anaxagoras while he was yet engaged 
 with the chisel in his father's shop, had he had 
 any such notion. Nay, he who first spake it 
 showed more of the spite of mortified vanity, 
 than the sense of a wise man; for though a 
 shoemaker's business be with the foot only, yet 
 if he had made any use of his eyes he could not 
 fail to be cognizant of other parts of the body 
 also, in a country and time when men were so 
 little chary of their skin, that there was scarcely 
 any part thereof that did not daily see the sun. 
 It hardly deserveth therefore the long cur- 
 rency it hath had. 
 
 " A little learning is a dangerous tiling"'' 
 
 I know not whether, when Mr. Pope wrote 
 these words, he had himself felt that his small 
 knowledge of Greek had betrayed him into some 
 
52 OE VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 inaccuracies in his translation of Homer, and 
 therefore he was in anger with his own " little 
 learning;" but this I do know, that the lines 
 have been quoted largely to countenance an in- 
 dolence that human nature is already too prone 
 to, without the further aid of a popular poet. 
 Form good sooth, he that never beginneth can 
 never end; and he who would have much learn- 
 ing, must begin his labours with a little; there- 
 fore I do hold this to be one of those fallacies 
 which throw an obstacle in the way of improve- 
 ment, and therefore ought to be removed from 
 the path. 
 
 Science duly followed up doth elevate man 
 to his greatest perfection; but even a small tinc- 
 ture thereof is not unuseful, for thereby is the 
 mind rescued from that utter brutishness which 
 leaveth it the mere tool of sensual and animal 
 desires; and he who seeketh learning because 
 he would not leave unused any of Grod's good 
 gifts, will be in no danger of drawing therefrom 
 any of that idle vanity which hath no part in the 
 character of a good Christian. Every approach, 
 however distant, to the enjoyment and apprecia- 
 tion of spiritual pleasures, — and of this class are 
 learning and science, — is an approach also to- 
 wards a capability of that immortality of spiritual 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYINQS. 53 
 
 happiness which is promised us, and they who 
 discourage such attempts in those large classes 
 of mankind that are necessitated to live hy their 
 daily toil, do ill service to Grod, by arresting his 
 creatures in their progress towards the fulfil- 
 ment of their great end and aim. Why should 
 not the humblest begin in this life the course of 
 instruction which hereafter is to receive its com- 
 pletion, in " knowing even as we are known?" 
 
 " I will retire from business, and prepare for 
 another world" 
 
 Who is there who hath not heard some honest, 
 painstaking man uttering some such saying as 
 this, when old age is coming on? Yet well 
 meant as this maybe, and plausible as it soundeth 
 to the unthinking, I know no greater, though 
 alack no more common error than this notion, 
 that the common engagements of this world are 
 a hinderance to our preparation for the next: 
 for I do surely believe, and think I have the 
 warrant of scripture and reason therefor, that we 
 were sent into this probationary state to the end 
 that our souls might learn experience among 
 the diverse circumstances of active life, so as to 
 know good from evil, and never to hazard the 
 falling from glory when once attained, by any 
 
54 Or VULGAR ERRORS IN THE 
 
 such mistake as was committed by those spirits 
 that kept not their first estate. But if we retire 
 from temptation, we deny ourselves the school- 
 ing which Grod appointed for our better teaching, 
 and so far from avoiding the temptation to evil, 
 we increase it tenfold. For there is no such 
 good friend to virtue as that useful weariness 
 which leaveth no time for a selfish cogitation 
 over the means of gratifying the animal nature : 
 yea, he who, in his daily charge, be it what it 
 may, hath been just and true, hath taken no 
 undue advantage, nor oppressed any, if rich;— 
 who hath served truly, and in no way defrauded 
 his employers, either by negligence or dishonesty, 
 if poor; — and who hath lived in Christian love 
 and amity with all his fellow men, whether con- 
 nected with him by blood or otherwise ; hath 
 prepared well for another world, albeit his 
 prayers may have been short, and his time 
 actively employed, even to his dying day. 
 
 It is not for our "much speaking" that we 
 shall be heard; and the brief but earnest aspi- 
 ration of the heart towards Grod, which a wise 
 and good man doth use to sanctify the business 
 of the day withal, while pursuing the avocations 
 of this world; hath in it more of the vitality of 
 religion, than the dawdling meditations of one 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 55 
 
 who inaketh prayer the object of his life, rather 
 than the means of leading that life aright. We 
 pray for aid to perform our duties; but to use 
 many prayers, and perform few duties, is but a 
 mockery and a folly; for man thus disguiseth to 
 his own conscience his cowardice and indolence, 
 and fancieth that he is pious and virtuous, whilst 
 in truth he is only idle and useless. Doubtless 
 there is a time when increasing infirmity may 
 make a man shrink from the fatigue of business 
 which affbrdeth no respite from toil: but then 
 this greater quietude is but a concession neces- 
 sarily made to the needs of the body, and is not 
 at all to be considered as the means of im- 
 proving the health of the soul: on the contrary, 
 we have all seen and know, that it must be a 
 strong and well disciplined mind which can re- 
 sist the natural propension towards the vices 
 which arise out of this state of inaction; such 
 as peevishness, selfishness, and consequent care- 
 lessness of the comfort and happiness of others. 
 When we entertain any doubt as to the 
 soundness of our opinions, there is nothing 
 which doth so strengthen and clear our appre- 
 hension, as the recurring to what Lord Bacon 
 doth well term the great book of Grod's works. 
 Now we know that when Adam fell from his 
 
56 Or YTJLGAB EEROES EN" THE 
 
 first estate, God imposed on him 'a law, which 
 experience sheweth to be still the law of human 
 nature, that" in the sweat of his brow he should 
 eat bread." No man can propound to himself 
 that the loving Father of all his works would 
 either inflict a punishment for vengeance rather 
 than for amendment on the first offender, or re- 
 plenish the surface of this globe with beings 
 disqualified, by the very law of their existence, 
 from the pursuit and attainment of their ulti- 
 mate good : we may, therefore, reasonably con- 
 clude that the toil imposed on man was intended 
 to be the strengthener and safeguard of his vir- 
 tue, and to guide his frailty in the true path to 
 life eternal. We see it to be the appointment 
 of God, — for what he suffereth is so far his ap- 
 pointment, that he might prevent it, and doth 
 not : — I say we see it to be the appointment of 
 God that millions must go forth to their daily 
 toil, if they mean to eat their daily food : nay, 
 the very necessity for food, which is the cause 
 of this labour, is especially created by God. 
 Then if such be the order written in the book 
 of His works, we must, unless we are deter- 
 mined to shut our eyes, and not read therein, 
 conclude that retirement and inaction are not 
 the circumstances best fitted for the develope- 
 
WAT OF COMMON" S ATI]* as. 57 
 
 ment of the spiritual life within : which doth 
 indeed rather thrive and flourish upon the ful- 
 filled duty of each day ; even if it were no more 
 than the conscientiously doing an honest day's 
 work, for the allotted day's pay, whether seen 
 or not : and in like manner, vice pineth and 
 dieth in the mind, when quiet sleep, the result 
 of labour, filleth the hours which are not given 
 either to active employ ; or to the exercise of 
 those kindly social affections, which so readily 
 twine about the heart, when the space for 
 then- enjoyment is short, and the zest of their 
 enjoyment is not dulled by satiety. 
 
 Instead therefore of seeking a discharge from 
 all duty, as the means of improving the soul, 
 whose true life is the fulfilment of duty, we 
 should endeavour rather, as age approaches, to 
 cut out for ourselves occupation sufficient for 
 the diminished powers of the body, such as shall 
 give room for the exercise of that concern for 
 others, and carelessness of self, which form the 
 best grace of youth, and which may still hover, 
 like a bright halo round the head of age, making 
 grey hairs lovely, and giving earnest, even in 
 this life, of what will be the society of "just 
 men made perfect," in the next. 
 
58 OF YTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 " The poor leetle that we tread upon, 
 In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 
 As when a giant dies." 
 
 SHAKE SPEAEE. 
 
 The poet hath sometimes a knowledge that may 
 astound us of many things which, pertaining as 
 they do, to human nature generally, he hath, as 
 it were, with him in his closet, they being in his 
 own spirit: but of those things which are ex- 
 ternal to him he cannot have farther cognizance 
 than others of his age and country ; and, regard- 
 ing those, he doth only repeat, and thereby per- 
 petuate, the fashion of his own times. And 
 herein I note an error, inasmuch as his words 
 oft times gain undue weight in those latter cases 
 from his acknowledged skill in the first. For it 
 doth in no way derogate from his marvellous 
 powers, to say that such fashion of the time 
 may be ill grounded, so far as regardeth science, 
 since the business of the poet is to delectate 
 the imagination, and mend the heart, by his 
 lively pictures of human nature ; not to become 
 a teacher of natural history or philosophy ; there- 
 fore if, hi noting popular errors, I note also a 
 mistake of the above quoted most honoured 
 
WaY OE COMMON SAYINGS. 59 
 
 writer, I hold myself in no way disrespectful to 
 his memory. 
 
 Now I would commend to notice that though 
 the fins of fish, in regard to the arrangement of 
 the bones be typical of the human hand, no one 
 will affirm them to be capable of executing the 
 office whereto our hands are appointed; yet it 
 would be expecting nearly such a miracle as the 
 exercise of manual dexterity by a fish, were we 
 to attribute the like power of feeling to a beetle, 
 whose nerves are dependent on many separate 
 ganglia, as belongeth to a being in whose large 
 brain all the sensations conveyed by the spinal 
 cord from the delicately sensitive skin, are con- 
 centred, and held up, as it were, for reason to 
 take cognizance of, and relieve them when pain- 
 ful. Reasoning from analogy, we cannot either 
 assert or credit this, for in the human body the 
 action of the viscera is for the most part confided 
 to the regulation of such a set of ganglia and 
 their dependent nerves, connected but slightly 
 with the brain; and no one needeth to be told 
 that these actions do proceed with so little of 
 consciousness on our part, that a man shall 
 hardly know if his heart beateth or his stomach 
 digesteth, save when disease interrupteth these 
 
60 OP VULGAR ERRORS IN THE 
 
 functions : the natural conclusion herein would 
 therefore be, even if direct experiment had not 
 confirmed it, that a system of ganglia of this 
 kind ministereth little, if at all, to sensation. 
 And furthermore doth the beetle need human 
 keenness ? Is it the wont of the Almighty to 
 bestow powers which can never be exercised ? 
 What purpose doth sensitiveness to pain serve, 
 if not that of a faithful and ever ready monitor 
 to make us vigilant against such accidents and 
 circumstances as were formerly the occasion 
 thereof? And to what shall it profit a worm 
 beneath the sod that it should have power to 
 feel, and a smarting reason to dread those haps 
 and chances, against which it hath neither 
 wit to devise, nor skill to execute defences ? 
 Such a boon surely were a gift more worthy 
 of a daemon, than of the Grod whose name is 
 Love. And should any object to this scien- 
 tific truth, that it may breed cruelty to G-od's 
 creatures ; I answer that they are his crea- 
 tures ; and, therefore, that while he who loveth 
 cruelty would not be restrained, even if the 
 beetle had a human frame; he that loveth God 
 will respect even the smallest impress of his 
 hand. Nor is our estimate of the greatness 
 and goodness of the Creator hereby lessened, 
 
WAX OF COMMON" SAYINGS. 61 
 
 but rather increased; inasmuch as where he 
 hath not given means of escape, he hath not 
 given acute sensibility to suffering. Let no 
 man then call this an imperfection in his work; 
 for in our humble way, even, if a man excel in 
 fashioning the most exactly mechanical chrono- 
 meter, who shall think it scorn if he make also 
 a mousetrap ? on the contrary doth he not ra- 
 ther, in that he can well make a trap for humble 
 service, and a clock for time, to the guidance of 
 the mariner in safety through long voyages, 
 distantly image Him who hath placed the fish 
 in the sea for its humble satisfaction, and man 
 on the earth to prepare for eternity. Our God 
 bestoweth no powers that cannot work for good ; 
 — life, and consequently its preservation, is of 
 value to man, inasmuch as it is the shell of the 
 nut laid up for immortality, which shall hardly 
 gain its full proportions if the shell be de- 
 stroyed; to the animal of lower grade, life de- 
 prived of sensual gratification would be a 
 punishment ; they are, therefore, suffered to be- 
 come the prey of other animals ere they suffer 
 decrepitude, and their nervous system is such 
 as maketh their doom no evil. 
 
62 OF VT7LGAE EEEOES 1ST THE 
 
 "It is only a white lie.'''' 
 
 Theee is nothing more harmful to virtue than 
 the habit of dwelling always on the confines of 
 vice; for as we find the borderers in all coun- 
 tries do speak a sort of bastard tongue, which 
 savoureth of both the neighbouring languages ; 
 •so he who liveth always in the vicinage of evil, 
 will hardly keep his good pure and unmixed. 
 I have, therefore, many times wondered how 
 the phrase of " white lies" came into so common 
 usage ; for, if I mistake not, falsehood hath so 
 much of the iEthiop about it, that no soap will 
 wash it white. Nay, even its progeny at three 
 or four removes, will still retain an ugly mulatto 
 tinge. 
 
 " It is only a white lie," saith one, " it harm- 
 eth no one." But of such an one I would ask, 
 harmeth it not thyself ? will thy memory be as 
 strong if it be never exercised in accuracy of re- 
 collection, as it will be where the anxiety never 
 to trangress the exact truth, causeth a close 
 attention to all circumstances, which are after- 
 wards to be related as they happened, rather 
 than embellished with imaginary adjuncts. Fur- 
 thermore, doth any one ever tell a direct false- 
 hood for the first time without embarrassment 
 
WAY OF COMMOX SAYINGS. 63 
 
 and blushes ? and is not this the safeguard 
 which G-od himself hath appointed to our virtue, 
 so that the first step in evil being so painful, 
 we shall have no inclination to make a second. 
 Is it no harm to thee if by habit thou lose thy 
 sensibility to this voice of the good Spirit of 
 God, which is sent to guide thee in the right 
 road to heaven ? Nay, even as regardeth our 
 worldly convenience, it is rare if he who is known 
 to tell " white lies" with so little of inward con- 
 cern as to reveal no trace of it in his face, shall 
 gain credit for his serious words. Confidence 
 between man and man is thus shaken, and that 
 most sweet consciousness of having striven to 
 assimilate ourselves to Grod in the most essen- 
 tial attribute of his being, is altogether lost. 
 
 It is said of the philosopher Xenocrates, that 
 when an oath was proffered to him, previous to 
 giving his testimony in a court of justice, the 
 Athenians with one voice cried out, that it was 
 an insult to demand an oath from a man who 
 never in his life had uttered a falsehood ; and 
 he was not allowed to be sworn. Now it is to 
 be noted of this philosopher, that when he was 
 sent on an embassy to King Philip of Macedon, 
 that astute monarch, after his departure, de- 
 clared that Xenocrates was the only one of the 
 
64 OP YITLGAE EEEOES IN THE 
 
 Athenian chiefs whom he had been unable to 
 bribe. Such near frien ds are truth and honesty. 
 And what is the object of these " white lies ?" 
 Vanity it may be, that men may say we tell a 
 good story ; or it may be that we seek to enter- 
 tain the company by telling with a grave face 
 to a friend some untruth, which if he believe, 
 he shall thereby become an object of ridicule. 
 But is this to be deemed an exact squaring of 
 our actions by the golden rule of — " Do unto 
 others as ye would they should do unto you ?" 
 For, methinks, few do readily abide the being 
 flouted and jeered at themselves, however well 
 inclined they may be to jeer at others. And 
 here again, the loss doth in the end redound to 
 ourselves ; as indeed it doth whensoever we 
 break any law of God ; for many a man hath 
 lost a friend who would otherwise have been a 
 true and a good one, by unseasonable jesting of 
 this kind. And indeed I hold it generally to 
 be a vulgar error, deserving of reprobation, to 
 ismcj that God's laws are inscrutable, and hard 
 to practise as regardeth this world ; for I know 
 no precise law of the gospel which hath not a 
 direct view to our well-being in this present 
 world, insomuch that the very politeness which 
 is enforced in society as requisite to the comfort 
 
WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 65 
 
 and decorum thereof, is nothing more than a 
 feeble copy of the Christian graces which Saint 
 Paul hath enumerated in the thirteenth chapter 
 of his first Epistle to the Corinthians. Without 
 some truth we know well that society could not 
 go on, and it is an ill cleverness which striveth 
 to weigh how small a portion of it may serve 
 worldly purposes; for the soul in the meantime 
 is abridged of its proper food, and pineth and 
 wasteth away in a hopeless atrophy. 
 
OF GENIUS. 
 
 AMONG- the many errors common in the 
 world, there is no one more common, or 
 more hurtful, than the vulgar opinion respecting 
 genius : namely, that it is an especial gift from 
 heaven, whereby men become accomplished in 
 science or art, without any sweat of their own 
 brow ; a happiness which hath befallen no man, 
 I think, since Adam : and yet we may daily 
 hear persons excuse themselves from pm-suing 
 this or that study, because "they have no genius 
 for it" — a manifest self-deception; since ex- 
 cepting in the instance of music, wherein the 
 fineness of the organ supersedeth some of the 
 rudimentary part of learning, and a child shall 
 thus be found sometimes to accomplish at once, 
 what to others would cost a longer application, 
 I know of nothing that is to be gained without 
 labour. Nay, even among these early prodi- 
 gies, though for children, their skill be marvel- 
 lous, yet if this precocious display of talent be 
 not followed up by farther teaching and exerci- 
 
OF GENITJS. 67 
 
 tations, maturer years will disappoint the early 
 promise: and yet in this case the tools are in 
 a measure ready made, and their use familiar: 
 for the voice can execute without schooling, 
 much of what the ear demandeth. But in other 
 things it is not so — the painter must learn the 
 art of mixing and laying on of colours by a deep 
 study of the nature of the materials, and a long 
 experience of then effect ; their " behaviour " 
 under particular circumstances, as it may be an 
 experimental chemist would shape his phrase. 
 The sculptor, however great his conceptions, 
 must learn to temper and mould the clay of his 
 model, and to use the chisel skilfully : and if 
 astistshad disdained this patient toil, and trusted 
 to their heaven born genius, the world would 
 never have been delectated by the sight of their 
 works ; which yet we shall hear men term efforts 
 of such sublime genius that no one who is not so 
 gifted can ever hope to rival them. Could one 
 of these supine admirers of excellence ask these 
 men how they arrived at such a point of perfec- 
 tion, both in their conception and execution, he 
 would hear of days and nights devoted to unre- 
 mitting toil with a perseverance which nothing 
 could daunt : and will discover at last, that this 
 envied gift of genius, is nothing else but a mind 
 
68 OE GENIUS. 
 
 cultivated with an industry which others shrink 
 from, through their laziness of intellect. The 
 proper answer to a person who should thus laud 
 an artist's genius at the expence of his diligence, 
 exclaiming, "J should never accomplish this if 
 I were to work for my whole life," — would be, 
 " Work as I have done for two years only, and 
 see what will come thereof." — But thou shalt 
 find that thy admirer of genius will never con- 
 sent to an application as severe as the so called 
 gifted individual imposeth on himself; but will 
 go away repeating his parrot like words, in the 
 hope of satisfying himself in his supinity, and 
 persuading both himself and others, that his 
 idleness is no sin ; and so he will fancy that he 
 hath established an axiom, when he hath only 
 delivered himself of a declaration that he is 
 too indolent ever to excel. 
 
 Nor is this true in regard to art alone ; for 
 the mathematician, however powerful his mind, 
 must submit to long and wearisome calculations: 
 the chemist, the natural philosopher, the anato- 
 mist, must trace the course of nature with pa- 
 tient toil, ere they attain to any of those disco- 
 veries, which, when made, are hailed by the 
 world as the offspring of an almost divine in- 
 tellect. Kepler was contented to devote two 
 
OF GENIUS. 69 
 
 and twenty years to his calculations, ere he was 
 enabled to publish those true views of science 
 which have made his name immortal. Never 
 did any coin come fresher, and sharper stamped, 
 from the very mint of genius : for those views 
 overturned all the time honoured notions of 
 circular movements among the heavenly bodies, 
 and introduced that new principle of the ellipse, 
 which has led to all that mastership of astrono- 
 mical science that later observers have attained 
 to. But had he suffered his indolence to have 
 whispered to him during the failures and diin- 
 culties of that long period, — " It is useless to 
 pursue this, which I have evidently no genius 
 for ; eight or ten years have been wasted in try- 
 ing to advance, and I have made no progress," 
 — the world would have lost one of the brightest 
 names in the list of its great men ; and mari- 
 ners might still have been exposed to those 
 fearful dangers of the sea, which his discove- 
 ries in science have now taught men so far to 
 master. But Kepler had confidence in human 
 nature, and he persevered. 
 
 Doubtless it is the man who feeleth most 
 deeply the nobleness of the gift of reason which 
 Grod hath bestowed upon him, who will address 
 himself the most diligently to the work of 
 
70 of gesttjs. 
 
 making it available " for the glory of the Crea- 
 tor, and the relief of man's estate," — and this, 
 as I believe, is the true secret of genius. He 
 trusteth to his Lord, that the talent entrusted 
 to him will bring rich interest, if it be duly used, 
 and he doth so use it ; for in this trade there is 
 no fear of bankruptcy. Wrapped in the napkin, 
 it doth but tarnish, and cometh back to the 
 hands of his Lord the worse for its want of wear. 
 Let him then who would have genius, wrestle 
 for it as the patriarch Jacob wrestled with the 
 angel of the Lord, and though the night-long 
 struggle may leave his body the weaker, his 
 point will have been gained. 
 
OF SOME EEEOES EESPECTING THE 
 NATUEE OF EYIL SPIEITS. 
 
 WHILST treating of vulgar and frequent 
 errors in men's notions of things, me- 
 thrnks those which are so generally current re- 
 specting evil spirits, deserve specially to be ex- 
 amined ; for not only he there many falsehoods 
 thus received as truths, but these falsehoods do 
 minister, as it were, and pander to the ill dis- 
 positions of men ; and furnish an excuse where- 
 with to salve a wounded conscience, without 
 applying the sharp caustic of a true and fruit 
 bearing repentance. And truly the common 
 and vulgar notion of the Evil One, doth so much 
 trench upon the attributes of God, that when 
 we have, according to the adage, " given the 
 devil his due," — such as the vulgar apprehen- 
 sion of the great mass of the people doth make 
 it, I know not what distinction we leave for the 
 Deity. For the common notion is, that the de- 
 vil doth tempt us to evil by suggestions whereof 
 we have no note but the feeling such or such 
 
72 OF SOME EEEOES EESPECTING 
 
 thoughts or desires ; and of the millions which 
 are now living on the face of the earth, almost 
 every one at this moment that I am writing, 
 will be sensible of something within or without 
 him that warreth against perfection. "It is the 
 devil — the tempter," — saiththeunreasoning be- 
 liever: but is he then omnipresent, the attribute 
 of Infinity ? His suggestions, it is said, are to 
 our thoughts; but what can read them save Om- 
 niscience? Is God so wont to give his honour 
 to another, that he will thus throw two of the 
 brightest jewels of his crown of perfection to a 
 creature in rebellion against him ? " It is for the 
 trial of our faith," saith the unreasoning be- 
 liever: then doth the temptation come primarily 
 from G-od : but this Scripture doth forbid us to 
 conceive; for saith the Apostle, "Let no man 
 say he is tempted of God, when he is led away 
 of his own lusts, and enticed,"* by that animal 
 nature, namely, which we hold in common with 
 the brutes, and which requireth the control of 
 the rational part of us to keep it within due 
 bounds, so that the soul may not be imbued with 
 the taint of unruly earthly desires. And this 
 notion of the extreme power of the devil is the 
 
 * James i. 13, 14. 
 
THE 15TATUBE OP ETIL SPIEITS. 73 
 
 growth of the last two or three centuries ; for 
 we shall find all the legendary tales of the mid- 
 dle ages, figuring the evil spirit with the cha- 
 racteristics of the satyr of the Ethnicks ; easily 
 foiled and cheated by man, and vanquished 
 often, in strength or in wit, by the saint whom 
 he assailed, by bodily, not by spiritual tempta- 
 tions ; for I know of no instance among early 
 legends, when the tempter is represented as a 
 merely spiritual being. 
 
 Good Doctor Martin Luther, who may be 
 considered as the father of our reformed 
 churches, speaketh of devils visiting his chamber 
 in the shapes of animals; a clear deception of the 
 senses, caused by undue excitement of the brain; 
 but also in his calmer moments he describeth 
 devils as melancholy spirits, inhabiting marshes, 
 and desolate places, and ruins; and not by any 
 means as having that ubiquity which is now 
 attributed to the universal tempter. Now this 
 description of the devil, given by him, is exactly 
 that which the ancients did give of their laifiaiv, 
 or dcenion, by the which word they described 
 the spirit of a dead man after it had quitted the 
 body: for they, conceiving it to have a separate 
 existence, did imagine it to be a wandering, and 
 somewhat unhappy being, specially inhabiting 
 
74 OE SOME EEEOES EESPECTENG 
 
 deserts and desolate places, or marshy forests, 
 such as were then to be found in Britain; which 
 country was, for that cause, then thought to he 
 a special residence of daemons. Nor was this 
 word understood by the Greeks in a had sense ; 
 for every disembodied spirit was, in their phrase, 
 a daemon ; good, or bad, according to the dis- 
 position of the former man. In those days, 
 when the apparently eternal stars were held to 
 be spiritual existences, self moved, and divine? 
 it was an easy transition to imagine the bright 
 ignes fatui, so commonly seen in the night in 
 marshy places, to have a something of this di- 
 vinity also, and thus it came to be thought that 
 if the stars were gods, these fiery exhalations 
 which did glance and move about, now seen 
 and now disappearing, were the appearances of 
 that half divinity, the soul of man : and thus 
 came the marshes of Britain and other places, 
 to be peopled in imagination with these daemons, 
 or disembodied souls : a belief which, like the 
 Zabianism, or star worship, whereof it was 
 part and parcel, did spread nearly over the 
 world in former times. 
 
 But there was also a form of this Zabianism 
 which grew into more fame about the time of 
 Darius the son of Hystaspes, through the inter- 
 
THE tfATTTBE OF EYIL SPIEITS. 75 
 
 vention of Zoroaster, under the title of the Ma- 
 gian doctrine ; whereby the influences of the 
 world were held to be divided between the Good 
 and Evil principle; the one typified by the sun 
 and light, — the other by the night and dark- 
 ness ; these two principles being co-eternal, and 
 in constant opposition to each other. This doc- 
 trine, which spread widely over the Persian em- 
 pire and its dependencies, tainted, in many in- 
 stances, the later Jewish faith, no less than that 
 of daemons which they had learned from the 
 Greeks, and haply also from the Egyptians : 
 and in the embodiment of Satan, first in the 
 book of Job, written at a time when Zabianism 
 was prevalent,* and after that in the writings 
 of the Rabbins, we find a mixture of the Magian 
 Evil Principle, and the Greek daemon, with 
 somewhat of their own faith besides. This was 
 the prevalent superstition in the times of our 
 Saviour Jesus Christ : and all violent diseases 
 were held to be caused by the intervention of 
 daemons, or souls of dead men, who, when ill 
 disposed, were supposed to enter into the living 
 body of another man, and thus to inflict tor- 
 ment upon the person thus possessed ; which 
 
 * See Job xxxi. 26—28. 
 
76 OF SOME EBBOES BESPECTEtfG 
 
 superstition our Saviour doth well describe 
 when he illustrateth his rebuke to the men of 
 that generation, by the example of the unclean 
 spirit, that when expelled, walketh through de- 
 sert, or desolate places, till he finally retumeth 
 with a company of seven others worse than him- 
 self, to torment the same man : in which de- 
 scription we see plainly that the spirit here spoken 
 of was none other than the before mentioned 
 caifiijjv of the Greeks, as well as the devil of the 
 famous Doctor Martin Luther. But now, to the 
 unlearned much confusion of ideas hath arisen 
 from the constant translation of ccu'^wv, or 
 dcemon, by devil ; because they attach to this 
 latter word a meaning which it is likely the 
 first translators never meant to give to it, 
 " He hath a devil and is mad,"* is a descrip- 
 tion at once of the assumed disease, and the 
 imagined cause thereof. 
 
 I have many times thought that it was owing 
 to the lofty and grandiose descriptions given in 
 the Paradise Lost, that men, since the time when 
 that poem came to be popular, have invested 
 Satan with a kind of attributes never before 
 assigned to him ; and as was natural to the 
 
 * John x. 20. Aai/xoviov !%a /cat /xaiverai. 
 
THE NATURE OE EVIL SPIRITS. 77 
 
 increasing spirituality of religion, have more and 
 more divested him of the notion of locality and 
 form, till the Evil One of this age is become in 
 effect and conceit of men, the Evil Principle of 
 the Magians : i.e. a power co-existing with, and 
 warring against the will of the good Deity. And 
 this, I must note as a most pestilent error, equally 
 unauthorized by Scripture and by reason: and 
 if any shall imagine this notion of theirs to be 
 borne out by some passages which are freely 
 quoted on such occasions, I must remind the 
 unlearned reader, first, that as I have said 
 already, many passages translated devil are in 
 the original daemon (^aifjuov) and that when the 
 word diabolus QiajSoXog) occurreth, this term, 
 in common parlance, meaneth an accuser or 
 slanderer, as when the apostle reproacheth the 
 women who are didboli, i.e. slanderers.* It is 
 to be farther borne in mind that the Christians of 
 that day were pursued by the heathen with all 
 manner of calumnies : and this will help us to 
 the true application of many of the passages 
 where this word is used in the Epistles of 
 
 *1 Tim. iii. 11. TvvdiKag waavTOjQ (rsfivag (xtj dia- 
 fioXsg . . .Tit. ii. 3. UptcfivTiSag hxravTojg kv Kararfj- 
 jxan hpoTrps.'ntiQ \ir\ SiafioXovg... 
 
78 OP SOME EEKOES RESPECTING 
 
 the Apostles; where it generally applies to those 
 accusers of the faithful: as when, 1 Tim. iii. 7, 
 it is required that the bishop shall have a good 
 report from them which are without, i.e. the 
 heathen, " lest he fall into reproach, and the 
 snareofthe slanderer ," or informer ■* QiafioXov.) 
 In like manner the apostle Peter, in the fourth 
 chapter of his first epistle, having warned his 
 converts not to be terrified at the fiery trial 
 of persecution, proceedeth in chap. v. 8,t to 
 recommend them to be sober minded and vigi- 
 lant; because their slanderous accuser was walk- 
 ing daily among them, seeking his prey : whom 
 they were to resist, by steadfastly adhering to 
 their Christian faith ; knowing also that not the 
 Christians only, but their brethren that were 
 in the world, i.e. the unconverted heathen 
 
 * AeT Sk avrbv Kal fiaprvpiav KaXrjv lx HV ^ L7ro T & v 
 £%(jj6ev, 'iva fit] eig oveiCicrfibv kinrkay /cat Trayida rov 
 diafSoXov. 
 
 + 'Nri-ipars, yprjyoprjcrara' on 6 dvridiicog vfxutv 8id(3o- 
 Xog, <hg Xsojv upvo/xevog irepnraTU ZrjTwv riva Ka.Ta.7riy. 
 tpy dvTi^7]Te <?eptoL ry rri^ei, eicoreg rd avrd ru>v iraQy- 
 [xdrojv ry iv kou/mij vfiwv dceX(p6rr]n k7rireXu(ydat' 
 wherein it may be observed that the lack of the Article 
 to the word diabolus doth deprive it of its Substantive 
 sense and make it in a manner an Adjective to dvrlci- 
 Kog. 
 
THE NATURE OF EYIL SPIRITS. 79 
 
 suffered the like afflictions. For it is well known 
 that from the days of Tiberius, downwards, the 
 informers so frequently held up to detestation 
 by Tacitus the historian, under the title of de- 
 latores, were the very scourge of society : no 
 man being safe from then pestilent accusations. 
 Much more might be said which the learned 
 critic will not want my aid to discover, and 
 which to the unlearned would haply seem wea- 
 risome, I shall not, therefore, pursue this exami- 
 nation of words, but call upon those who have 
 hitherto so lightly received this notion respect- 
 ing the great might of the tempter, to review it 
 by the light of reason and common sense : for 
 where were the goodness of Grod, had he endowed 
 a wicked Spirit with such power over the minds 
 of men, as to leave them small chance of dis- 
 thiguishing between his suggestions and those 
 of the ever blessed Spirit of Grace ? Such a thing 
 cannot be for a moment supposed of the loving 
 Father, who hath so cared for our well being 
 in all things : we may, therefore, well conclude, 
 that be these fallen angels what they may, as 
 to their inherent nature and state, their influ- 
 ence over us must be very slight, if not alto- 
 gether null: and the worst tempter will be 
 found to be that evil spirit in a fair form, — the 
 
80 EBKOES [RESPECTING EVIL SPIRITS. 
 
 corrupt soul of man; for bad companions are for 
 the most part the real seducers of the unwary; 
 and it is not an invisible suggestion that 
 leadeth us astray, but early misgovernment, and 
 the remembrance of evil books, evil conversa- 
 tion, and evil example which taint us with the 
 infection of sin; a poison which may be met 
 by the antidote of wise and holy instruction 
 previously administered, but which when re- 
 ceived without such preparation is for the most 
 part deadly. Thus bad men by making them- 
 selves the willing promoters of sin here, fit 
 themselves to be the companions of the Evil 
 One hereafter, and are indeed his angels or 
 agents upon earth. 
 
 4 
 
 444 
 
 44*44 
 
 4444444 
 
 444 
 4 
 
« v*ff\j JtJK> «a?^> J&» k/%K» »/m> i/vli «AF« «ATU iAI\) iATU 
 " "•^cy* '^jy* *\!v* ^i^w r \^v* '\^v* *vy* ""^y •v^* , ^|(y , r \A^ 
 
 AN INQUIEY IF IGNOEANCE BE 
 EEQTJISITE TO INNOCENCE. 
 
 PLAUSIBLE errors be like wild roses: they 
 bear indeed here and there a pleasant blos- 
 som, bnt it soon falleth : and their thick offsets 
 do choke the growth of better things. Among 
 these well sounding errors, I reckon the notion 
 held by some, that innocence is only to be pre- 
 served by ignorance of evil. Trnly it were a 
 pleasant thing to him who is weary of contem- 
 plating the vices and miseries of mankind, to 
 think that there were means of closing eyes, and 
 ears, and understanding, so as never to have 
 cognizance of these ills : but it is childish to 
 sigh after what is clearly impossible; and even 
 were this possible, I doubt much if our happi- 
 ness, either present or future, would be so great 
 as now it may be, if we do only avail ourselves 
 of the real use of knowing the evil, by choosing of 
 our own free will the good, and persevering in 
 the pursuit thereof. For to Jcnoiv evil, and to 
 do it, are two widely different things , 
 G 
 
82 AS INQUIEY IF IGNOEANCE 
 
 The only man who ever had full cognizance 
 of human nature, was he who being himself the 
 bodily shrine of the Deity, and his own human 
 soul in perfect union with its Divine Prototype, 
 could measure the influences of the corporeal on 
 the spiritual by mere self-examination ; and we 
 may well believe that when the ever blessed 
 God, as Saint Clement of Alexandria doth 
 strongly express it, came as a man, in order 
 through human lips" to teachman how he might 
 become a God," and to be as the Apostle hath it, 
 " an ensample " for our imitation, we may walk 
 safely under his guidance. Now a very few 
 words of his enemies' reproaches will show 
 that the saying of the heathen, homo sum et 
 humani nihil a me alienum puto, was not inap- 
 plicable to him. He was called by those who, 
 in that age also, thought a separation from the 
 evil world the best safeguard of innocence, " a 
 glutton and a wine bibber; a friend of publicans 
 and sinners,' ' which terms being taken with that 
 largeness of interpretation which belongeth to 
 the slanders of an enemy,— who generally hath 
 skill enough to ground his ill sayings upon some 
 apparent truth, — would seem to show that this 
 only perfect man who ever trod this earth of 
 ours, mixed among all sorts ; as if to show the 
 
BE KEQETSITE TO INNOCENCE. 83 
 
 beauty of holiness, contrasted with the ugliness 
 of vice; and thus to win men from their sins, by 
 making them love virtue better. God, who 
 knoweth all things, seeth every day more sin 
 than the worst of us would care to talk of in 
 common society; yet that complete knowledge 
 of evil, though it saddened, did not corrupt the 
 human soul of the Saviour ; he wept for his 
 "brethren according to the flesh;" — abhorred 
 vice, yet loved man ; — lived among us, — lived 
 among us too at a season when evil was rife, and 
 when the corruption of society generally had 
 arrived at a point that required no less an inter- 
 vention than that of God himself to check it. 
 All this he saw and knew, and yet, — with all 
 the infirmities, passions, and temptations of a 
 man, — he passed the dangerous season of youth 
 unspotted ; happy in his spiritual union with 
 God, and ready to bear all that evil men could 
 inflict, in order to ensure that union to all 
 eternity. 
 
 But he "came for our ensample:" innocence 
 therefore is made of other stuff than ignorance ; 
 yea we shall find that it is a substantive rather 
 than a negative quality ; and consisteth not so 
 much in a mere absence of evil, — for then the 
 house might be only swept and garnished to 
 
84 AN" OTQTJIEY IE ia^OEANCE 
 
 make it a readier home for the daemon when he 
 cometh, — as in the presence of good which 
 leaveth no room for him to enter. 
 
 And now, having shown that the ignorance 
 of evil is not necessary to innocence, the question 
 remaineth, which to parents and teachers is an 
 anxious one, how the knowledge of it may he 
 communicated without peril to virtue ? — and 
 here again that perfect "ensample " leaveth us 
 not to doubt. The knowledge of evil, along 
 with all other knowledge, was communicated to 
 the mind of the child at the earliest age wherein 
 it can receive knowledge ; since as his human 
 constitution was perfect in soul and body, so 
 the spiritual union with the Deity was also com- 
 plete from the first : therefore, to Christ, it was 
 among the first of his recollections as a human 
 being. Doth not this show us that the ordinary 
 course is wrong? We are wont to keep the 
 knowledge of ill from our children as long as 
 possible, so as for the most part to leave it to be 
 instilled into them by those who have a design 
 to corrupt, and therefore paint it in fair colours. 
 It was not so that the young child at Nazareth 
 was educated ; — he who, alone, of all men, was 
 educated by God himself. He saw, — for God's 
 own knowledge was in him, — the full ugliness 
 
BE BEQTJTSITE TO ENTTOCEIS'CE. 85 
 
 of vice, and all its eternal consequences, long 
 ere the animal frame had arrived at the point 
 when the voice of the tempter might have its 
 charms; and we have seen the results; strange, 
 that we should never yet have thought of try- 
 ing the same plan! I do most assuredly think 
 that more make shipwreck of their virtue out of 
 a childish and natural curiosity and inquisitive- 
 ness after new things, than out of any inherent 
 love of evil, and that were the constitution of ani- 
 mal nature early set forth to the child by parents 
 or teachers, with that gravity which becometh 
 them; and none of those allurements of sensual 
 pleasure held out, which are the great weapons 
 of the tempter; the child, knowing all that he 
 wisheth to know, at a time when as yet the pas- 
 sions are not awakened, would turn his thoughts 
 to other objects of more import, and greater 
 nobleness; and feel disgusted rather than allured 
 by the conversation of the impure and vicious in 
 after life: and this I say from experience and 
 conviction, no less regarding youth of one sex 
 than the other. I would speak thus, and indeed 
 have so spoken with good effect — " My child, 
 man, in his compound nature, belongeth to two 
 worlds: by this mortal and perishable body he 
 is bound to earth, and partaketh of the nature 
 
86 AIT INQUIRY IF IGNORANCE 
 
 of the beasts ; his internal constitution is almost 
 the same, he is generated, horn, and dieth like 
 them; but in his soul he holdeth something of 
 the nature of God, and hath the promise that if 
 he duly cherish this divine spark, he shall fin ally- 
 enjoy the felicity proper to God himself. We 
 are placed in this world to choose between ani- 
 mal and spiritual enjoyment; for happiness can 
 only be the result of having and doing what we 
 like to have and do ; and therefore God leaveth 
 us free. If we bind ourselves to earth by cherish- 
 ing all our animal propensions, and thinking 
 about all that pertaineth to our animal nature, 
 rather than to our spiritual, then we, having fixed 
 all our pleasures here, can never enjoy any other 
 kind of life ; and when this faileth us, which it 
 doth gradually in age, and entirely in death, we 
 have nothing left but useless regrets : whereas 
 if we only give the body so much consideration 
 as shall keep it hi health, and devote ourselves 
 to the pleasures of the mind; then we are every 
 day becoming more fit for the happiness God 
 hath promised us. Surely we are more noble 
 than the beasts, and it is pleasant to feel our own 
 dignity; yet he that talketh and thinketh only 
 of the things of the body, seemeth to forget that 
 he hath a rank above them. Would a woman 
 
BE EEQTJISITE TO INNOCENCE. 87 
 
 wish to become no better than a cow; a useful 
 animal, with no thought above bringing her off- 
 spring into the world, and caring for their food? 
 Is man formed with a divine soul merely to run 
 the wild career of an untamed colt ; to be bro- 
 ken by stripes to do his part in this world, with 
 no thought beyond it?" Should questions arise 
 out of such a conversation, let them be answered 
 fairly, gravely, and tridy. Let the child know 
 what his mother suffered in giving him birth : 
 he will love her the better, and when he cometh 
 to man's estate, that thought of bitter suffering, 
 and danger to life, will make the jest of the 
 libertine sound to his ears like the laugh of the 
 executioner. Nor, because I here use the mas- 
 culine gender, would I confine this knowledge 
 to that sex only: women no less than men must 
 look into the depths of life, ere they will be 
 able to make that free choice of the good, 
 whereon our eternal felicity doth depend : 
 women no less than men are exposed to the 
 arts of the tempter, and have no less need that 
 the childish hand should be trained to use the 
 weapons of defence. Gratify the young mind 
 by bringing before it the wonders of science, 
 not as a drudgery, but a recreation : accustom 
 the child to seek knowledge as a pleasure, and 
 
Sb A2T INQUIRY IF IGITOBA^CE 
 
 there is little fear that youth will be misspent, 
 or old age contemptible. 
 
 And here too, we may recur to the education 
 of the Saviour, of whose childhood two things 
 are recorded — the first, that at twelve years old 
 he astonished the doctors in the temple by his 
 thirst for knowledge, and the share of it which 
 he had already acquired; — the other, that this 
 true science, thus bestowed by his Divine Father 
 and Tutor, had no evil effect on his human soul; 
 but that he returned to his home, showed all 
 filial duty to his far more ignorant parents, and 
 won the affection of all by his amiable manners. 
 So true is it that real knowledge causeth no 
 vanity. And herein, before I conclude, I would 
 note one error more common and more fatal 
 than all the rest. Whilst contemplating the 
 Divine AOrOS which spake by the lips of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, we too often forget his com- 
 plete human nature, and whilst bowing in dis- 
 tant adoration to the ineffable Deity, we over- 
 look the man in whom he enshrined his glory. 
 But God doth nothing in vain ; he could have 
 spoken to us in the whirlwind, or have written 
 his commands in characters of fire before our 
 eyes : but he chose to come among us as one of 
 ourselves : he sought to lead us back to him by 
 
BE KEQTTISITE TO INNOCENCE. 8U 
 
 means of our social affections : to show a human 
 being so amiable that we might love, and imitate 
 because we loved him. Surely then it is the 
 greatest of all errors to cast away the benefits 
 of such an "ensample," and although Christ 
 lived in this world upwards of thirty years, to 
 turn our attention only to his death. If his life 
 had no benefit for us, why did he go through 
 all the stages of childhood and youth ? a better 
 notion is it which I have lately seen expressed. 
 " Christ," says the author, " showed himself 
 among us only as a child and a young man. 
 He well knew that he who followed his steps 
 so far, would need no guide for his old age." 
 
«\ey r \£y *jy *jy *\ty* •w* f w» '^jy *jv* *jy «vy» *\iv* 
 »/wV» J&» jw» j%k J%\} j&» «/m. «/6fU «/fl\» «AFU c/vv* «a!\i 
 
 OF EEEOES IN GEAMMAE. 
 
 IT would seem strange that in an age which 
 doth boast itself as literary, there should be 
 any need to enumerate errors of this kind, as 
 prevalent among those who have received what 
 in common parlance is called a good, or liberal 
 education : yet, from whatever cause, whether 
 from carelessness, or conceit of knowledge 
 which maketh study needless, it is a thing cer- 
 tain that many barbarisms have crept into the 
 writing and speaking of English, which a mode- 
 rate knowledge of grammar would have pre- 
 vented. It was indeed a common saying in the 
 last age, that this English tongue of ours hath 
 no forms of grammar proper to it; and that 
 therefore reading and writing do, as goodman 
 Dogberry is made to say, " come by nature," 
 without the necessity for any study thereof, save 
 such as is gained by the exercise in the Latin 
 and Greek tongues which in "grammar schools" 
 is required. Yet he who should fancy that he 
 could leam German phraseology and idiom by 
 
OF EEEOES Iff GEAMMAE. 91 
 
 the study of Latin, would be laughed to scorn 
 by all : why then should it be imagined that 
 the sister dialect hath in it less of grammatical 
 peculiarity ? 
 
 Unfortunately for lingual purity, the study 
 of grammar hath in it little to captivate the 
 imagination ; and most seem to shrink there- 
 from with a kind of horror, the result of the 
 severities of early pseclagogues ; and this ren- 
 dereth the correction of such like errors a task 
 of almost hopeless difficulty: yet that I may 
 acquit mine own conscience, and be in no way 
 an accessory to the murder of the king's or 
 queen's English, I shall endeavour to point out 
 some of the principal modes of defacing and 
 injuring this our ancient tongue. 
 
 I will note in the first place the confusion 
 made in the cases of pronouns by persons of 
 good learning in other matters, for though it 
 be well known that in the Teutonic family of 
 languages generally, the four cases chiefly to be 
 noted in the Greek, from whence the old Teu- 
 tones appear to have derived the main structure 
 of then' language, — do exist, — namely the nomi- 
 native, genitive, dative, and accusative : and 
 though it be equally well known that our tongue 
 is of that family, and so cognate to the Grerman 
 
92 OP EEEOES IN" GEAMMAE. 
 
 that the natives of that great country do speak 
 English with a facility unknown to any of the 
 southern nations of Europe, — yet in practice is 
 this matter wholly disregarded; and nominative 
 and accusative are strangely interchanged, to 
 the great discomfort of ears trained to gram- 
 matical accuracy. Thus you or ye may be used 
 indifferently in the nominative; but you is 
 always the accusative and dative: and preposi- 
 tions, it is well known, do not admit a nomi- 
 native case to follow them. Yet shall we find 
 poets defacing their pages with such oversights 
 as disgrace the following passage, which for its 
 poetic force and depth of feeling, did well de- 
 serve a less careless phraseology. 
 
 " Oh serious eyes, how is it that the light, 
 
 The burning rays that mine pour into ye, 
 
 Still find ye cold, and dead, and dark as night % 
 
 Oh lifeless eyes, can ye not answer me ? 
 
 Oh lips whereon mine own so often dwell, 
 
 Hath love's warm, fearful, thrilling touch, no spell 
 
 To waken sense in ye ? Oh misery ! 
 
 Oh breathless lips, can ye not speak to me V 
 
 Here ye occurs five times, and twice only is it 
 in its proper place as the nominative of the 
 verb : in each of the others it is either governed 
 by a preposition or a verb transitive, and there- 
 fore should have been you. To an ear accus- 
 
OF EEEOES m GEAMMAE. 93 
 
 tomed to a right construction of language such 
 a fault is not a little offensive, and the beauty 
 of poetry is as much vitiated thereby, as if, in 
 the human visage, the eye and eyebrow should 
 be continually changing their relative position, 
 and sometimes the one, sometimes the other, 
 should take the upper place. 
 
 Furthermore there groweth out of this disre- 
 gard of the just declension of pronouns by some 
 authors of good repute, a notion that they are 
 in fact indeclinable, and that therefore the cases 
 must always be expressed by cncumlocutions. 
 Thus many a pretender to fine writing would 
 fancy he had done well by using the preposition 
 of, in lieu of the genitive case, and will say, of 
 whom, rather than, tohose ; although, according 
 to the grammar and idiom of our tongue, the 
 use of the genitive whose be far the more pro- 
 per : for the one relative pronoun who, is thus 
 declined, 
 
 Mas. Fern. Neut. 
 
 Norn. Who Which 
 
 Gen. Whose Which 
 
 Dat. & Ace. Whom Which 
 
 and the idiom of the Teutonic family of lan- 
 guages doth require, for beauty and strength of 
 expression, the use of the genitive case, wherever 
 the hissing sound thereof doth not so far make 
 
94 OP EREOES IN GEAMMAE. 
 
 it unpleasant to the ear as to require it to be 
 avoided euphonies gratia. 
 
 Beside this confusion in the pronouns, another 
 error doth very commonly find place in conversa- 
 tion and periodical publications, and sometimes 
 also in writers of a better order ; namely, the 
 putting of an adverb where the true construc- 
 tion of the language doth require a conjunction. 
 The true place of the adverb, as the name doth 
 in a measure import, is after the verb, i.e. added 
 to it, while the conjunction goeth before it ; yet 
 we shall commonly hear the adverbs of time 
 directly and immediately, placed in the stead 
 of the conjunctive phrase as soon as. If the 
 adverb be ever allowed a place before the verb 
 in good writing, it is then merely a companion 
 of a preposition giving intensity and preciseness 
 to it,as it doth also in somecases to anoun adjec- 
 tive, as ' directly after hearing' — ' immediately 
 on hearing' — or with an adjective, as ' directly 
 good' — 'immediately relative to' — but never 
 should it be used in the fashion of — ' directly 
 he heard' — instead of ' as soon as he heard.' 
 
 Then again we find all writers and teachers 
 eschewing with especial care, the placing of a 
 preposition at the end of a sentence : yet in the 
 Hocli Teutsch, or German, which is the younger 
 
OP EEEOES EN" GEA1IMAE. 95 
 
 sister of English Saxon, it is a rule that under 
 certain circumstances it shall be so placed ; and 
 in the racy, idiomatic language of our elder 
 writers it is frequently found to be so ; though 
 perhaps few discover why this style to our ears 
 soundeth better and more forcible. Inclined to, 
 — hoped for, and the like, are phrases of this 
 nature, and as happily this old Saxon form re- 
 taineth its hold in the spoken, though it be 
 losing it in the written language, we may per- 
 adventure hope that writers will at last find out 
 that when addressing English ears, they should 
 use the English tongue. 
 
 There is another fault heard frequently in 
 common parlance, but not yet, as I think, writ- 
 ten ; videlicet, the use of the noun adjective 
 like with a verb and its nominative, a position 
 which it hath no claim to, in the room of the 
 conjunction as. Thus we shall hear school 
 boys and young college men say ' I did that like 
 he did,' instead of — l as he did' — an error, which 
 though it have not yet found its way into print, 
 will do so ere long, unless this mode of speaking 
 be corrected. 
 
 And so much may suffice for the errors in 
 grammar of such as are by courtesy supposed 
 well instructed on such points. But there is a 
 
96 OE EEEOES IN GEAMMAE. 
 
 further error in books especially devoted to the 
 science which is of yet greater import, as it not 
 unfrequently may vitiate the sense of a transla- 
 tion, and thus deceive the unlearned reader. 
 Every foreigner who would learn English,know- 
 eth to his cost, that if in the just use of shall, 
 and will, lieth one of the main beauties of the 
 language, so also doth its greatest difficulty: yet 
 it is for him both sad and strange that no one 
 hath clearlyset it forth in any work of grammar. 
 In such works I do constantly find the future 
 tense of verbs written I shall or will as though 
 their use were indifferent : a fault which leadeth 
 to many mistakes, and much mockery of stran- 
 gers, by those who from long habit have gained 
 the true use of these words. Neither is this 
 without ill effect in the most important of all 
 writings ; for in more than one passage in Holy 
 Writ acareless putting of one word for the other 
 by the translators doth strangely confound our 
 understanding thereof. Eor according to com- 
 mon usage, which in a living and spoken tongue 
 is the best rule of signification, the simple future 
 tense runneth thus, 
 
 I shall We shall j 
 
 Thou wilt Ye will > go 
 He will They will ) 
 
OF EEEOES IN GEAMMAE. 97 
 
 and if any one will change this arrangement, he 
 will perceive that he sayeth not what he meaneth 
 to express ; as is well seen in the oft repeated 
 jest of the Frenchman in the water, exclaiming 
 "I icill be drowned — nobody shall help me," 
 wherein by confounding the different persons 
 of the simple future tense, an extraordinary per- 
 version of sense is occasioned. Let us but re- 
 verse the order thus 
 
 I will We will \ 
 
 Thou shalt Ye shall > go 
 He shall They shall ) 
 
 and we shall find that in this form, which for 
 distinction's sake I shall call the second future; 
 it hath an imperative force not by any means 
 belonging to the first. And though this dis- 
 tinction be wanting in those modern tongues 
 which are derived from the Latin, which hath it 
 not, yet we find it to exist in some measure in 
 the Greek, which hath an imperative future ; 
 and in the Hebrew, which hath besides the sim- 
 ple active voice, and the future thereunto be- 
 longing, another voice which is causative : the 
 future whereof partaketh of the nature of our 
 second future, as above noted, and this voice the 
 Rabbins are wont to call Siphil. Now in that 
 passage of the book of Genesis where the Loed 
 
 H 
 
98 OF EEEOES IN GEA1IMAE. 
 
 GrOD is said to speak to Adam and his wife after 
 their transgression, the tense used is not in 
 Hiphil, hut in the simple active future, notwith- 
 standing which the translators have rendered 
 it by ' thou slialt? whereby the notions of the 
 unlearned are much confounded, and they do 
 rather see therein a stern judge condemning, 
 than a good father telling his children the 
 necessary consequences of what they had done ; 
 they having been forewarned that, according to 
 the nature given them, such consequences must 
 ensue. A serious evil resulting from a seem- 
 ingly small grammatical fault ! 
 
 It might well nigh be thought from the com- 
 monness of this confusion in books professing to 
 treat on grammar, that the English nation was 
 jealous of all others, and resolved by keeping 
 the key of their language in a labyrinth, to pre- 
 vent any but themselves from attaining to the 
 use thereof: a great reproach to the people, 
 were it true ; but scarcely a less reproach is it, 
 that there should be so general an ignorance of 
 grammar rules as to render the right speaking 
 our language a matter of custom only, no one 
 being able to give any good reason therefor. 
 

 OF CERTAIN ERRORS CURRENT IN 
 
 REGARD TO DISEASE AND 
 
 MEDICINE. 
 
 IN times past when a man fell sick, lie was 
 wont, if lie were great enough to find that 
 expense practicable, to send to some oracle for 
 counsel; as Ahaziah, albeit he might have 
 known better, seeing that he was of Israelitish 
 blood, sent messengers unto Baal, the god of 
 flies, at Ekron, to inquire concerning the dis- 
 ease he was suffering from ; and if this habit 
 infected even the people chosen to be the de- 
 positaries of the truth, we may well guess how 
 prevalent it must have been among the heathen. 
 To this succeeded the belief in particular shrines 
 of Christian saints, and you shall even yet see, 
 it may be, in some chapel of this kind in a re- 
 mote place, where the ancient superstition sur- 
 viveth merely under a change of name, as great 
 a number of ex voto offerings of silver and 
 waxen eyes, legs, arms, and the like, as ever 
 covered the walls of the temple atDelphi. Now- 
 
100 OE EEEOES T$ EEGAED TO 
 
 adays superstitions of this kind have taken a 
 fresh course, and notwithstanding that they no 
 longer enrich the priests of iEsculapius, or of 
 Apollo, or of Isis, they nevertheless set up for 
 themselves some living idol, and he being sup- 
 posed, like the Pythoness of old, to be inspired 
 with a certain divine afflatus, they pay their 
 offerings to him as religiously as ever did any 
 ancient votary of the god or the saint, and trust 
 to him with as implicit a faith ; witness the tales 
 I have heard of a certain Mr. St. John Long, 
 who, in regard to the excoriations he practised 
 upon his votaries, might haply be considered as 
 an avatar of that Ekronitish god of flies, whose 
 fame tempted even the king of Israel to apply- 
 to him: for with the aid of some French or 
 German critic I doubt not it might be proved 
 that Baal-zebub was none other than an em- 
 plastrum of cantharides. 
 
 But leaving that matter to those who are 
 skilled in such etymologies, I will affirm that 
 there is no medical practitioner of good sense 
 and erudition who doth not regret that any such 
 oracular veneration should be bestowed on him, 
 seeing that it is for the most part no less harm- 
 ful to himself than it is to the patient, who ig- 
 norantly expecteth him to work miracles when 
 
disease and medicine. 101 
 
 he can only bring to his aid the patient attention 
 of an experienced and carefully educated man. 
 Yea, ofttimes, in order to satisfy the unreason- 
 ing patient, who indeed is usually most wi^sl 
 tient, he hath to hold language which savoureth 
 more of the charlatan than of the wise and cau- 
 tious examiner of nature, and thus may lose 
 credit in the eyes of the better instructed, while 
 he is applying himself to the calming of an un- 
 easy mind, which fevereth the body the more 
 from the not well knowing what it hath to 
 dread. 
 
 It is an ill finish to a thing in itself good, that 
 the division and subdivision of labour which in 
 later times hath produced so much excellence in 
 arts mechanical, hath been carried also into 
 learned professions and sciences, wherein such 
 minute division is not profitable, but the con- 
 trary thereof. For each man applying himself 
 with eagerness to his own particular calling, 
 doth thereupon conclude that others do the like ; 
 and thus imagineth that he may trust them for 
 all those parts of science which pertain more 
 immediately to their especial vocation: and thus 
 he* seeketh not to inform, himself enough there- 
 upon to be able to judge of the competence of 
 him whose counsel he seeketh, be it physician 
 
102 Or EEEOES IN EEGAED TO 
 
 or surgeon, lawyer or priest: albeit in his ca- 
 pacity of a human being living in society, he be 
 personally and deeply interested in all the ques- 
 tions which these faculties do profess to treat of. 
 Yet so little doth the applicant ofttimes know 
 of his own affair, that he puzzleth his oracle. 
 Thus a lawyer shall often be hard put to it, to 
 gather from his client those points which chiefly 
 bear upon his case; and the physician hath no 
 less difficulty in detecting the symptoms which 
 shall guide him to a true knowledge of the dis- 
 ease : the ignorance of the patient thus hebeti- 
 zing, as it were, the art of the doctor, by con- 
 cealing, or forgetting, it may be, as a matter of 
 no signification, the more important though per- 
 haps less troublesome symptom, and detailing 
 at inconvenient length what might well be 
 passed over. Thus many a man hath become 
 permanently insane because a headache, or a 
 little more than usual watchfulness, are held to 
 be things scarcely worth attention; and no me- 
 dical aid is called in, or any remedy attempted, 
 till the brain is so seriously diseased as probably 
 to make all remedies vain. No year passeth 
 wherein there is not some instance of suicide 
 committed by persons who had for a time com- 
 plained of headache, and seemed depressed in 
 
DISEASE AND MEDICINE. 103 
 
 spirits; but whose friends, considering this to 
 be a matter of no concernment, had paid slight 
 heed thereto ; and only remembered it for their 
 own advantage, as preventing the forfeiture of 
 goods consequent on a verdict oifelo de se, in- 
 stead of noting it for that of the sufferer, by 
 taking measures for reducing that diseased ac- 
 tion in the brain, which was indeed the cause 
 of the pain first, and next of the insane self- 
 destruction which followed. I do note therefore 
 as an error of much evil consequence, the no- 
 tion which some men have, that ignorance of 
 every thing relating to anatomy and medicine 
 is safe and even desirable, so long as some me- 
 dical practitioner, no matter what his skill, may 
 be within reach. 
 
 I have seen this wilful ignorance carried yet 
 farther, indeed to such a point that were it not 
 so grave a matter, that a jest thereon would 
 savour too much of levity, I could gather good 
 matter for laughter thereout. For I remember 
 once hearing it said by a lawyer of good ability, 
 when speaking of a preacher whose church he 
 frequented, " I have been told by persons who 
 are judges of such things, that his sermons are 
 very good. I cannot myself understand them, 
 but that is not my business:" and yet this man 
 
104 OF EEEOES IN EEGAED TO 
 
 was no scoffer, or despiser of sacred things; but 
 he had seemingly considered the priest as a 
 sort of commissary, paid, and bound by his 
 engagement, to supply food for the souls of a 
 certain district, the which if he did not furnish, 
 it may be that the man of law, judging of an- 
 other world by that part of this which was his 
 chief concernment, imagined that there would 
 be a legal remedy in the High Court of Heaven ; 
 and haply, dreamed of an action for damages 
 if, through negligence of the appointed teacher, 
 he should be defrauded of his share of future 
 happiness. 
 
 Now if it be folly so to leave another to cater 
 for our life eternal, as if misery could be borne 
 by proxy, and we should suffer no loss provided 
 the blame of the loss could bethrown on another; 
 I think we must accuse him of a folly only lesser 
 in degree than this one, who should so entirely 
 trust another in regard to his bodily health, as 
 to risk the losing it whilst hoping to restore it: 
 for the lack of skill, or the lack of attention in 
 him who is thus trusted, can neither be detected 
 nor checked by a man wholly ignorant of his 
 own frame and constitution, of the nature of the 
 pharmaceutical preparations employed, of their 
 probable effects, or of the benefit which the pre- 
 
DISEASE A^D MEDICINE. 105 
 
 scriber expect eth that be will derive therefrom. 
 The mere mistake of a chemist's boy may thus 
 put his life to hazard, for he knoweth not what 
 he swallow eth: or if the practitioner be unskil- 
 ful, no mistake may be needed to increase the 
 risk. Neither doth some scientifical acquaint- 
 ance with these matters make a refractory or a 
 hypochondriacal patient, as some profess to ap- 
 prehend ; for quiet submission to our lot doth 
 usually grow out of a rational knowledge of how 
 far it may admit of amendment, how far it must 
 be borne: and on the other hand, there is no 
 obstinacy like that of ignorance, and no phan- 
 tasm so difficult to remove as that which cannot 
 be reasoned with. For though the imagination, 
 when prseternaturally excited, may work won- 
 ders through the influence exercised by the brain 
 over the muscular fibre, by means of the nerves 
 thence proceeding, yet is this but a sorry kind 
 of curative process; seeing that it is uncertain, 
 and will oftener be turned against the practi- 
 tioner, than, may be, it can second him. 
 
 There is no charlatan, how ridiculous soever 
 may be his pretensions when tried by the light 
 of sober reason, that doth not find his followers, 
 even in this age of fancied enlightenment ; and 
 those who consult this lying oracle shall many 
 
106 OP EEEOES IN EEGAED TO 
 
 times be found, on inquiry, to be persons of very 
 sufficient acuteness and good sense in their own 
 vocation : yet the clearness of their intellect 
 availeth them not in this matter, which is even 
 of more concernment to comfort than either 
 riches or greatness. But there is one class 
 more especially the prey of such pretenders, vi- 
 delicet, the female sex, who being, by the erro- 
 neous notions in regard to the fitting education 
 for a woman, kept, for the most part, in pro- 
 found ignorance of every useful part of know- 
 ledge, listen to and credit what is told them, 
 because they have never been sufficiently in- 
 doctrinated to be able to detect a fallacy either 
 in science or argument. And yet, who needeth 
 so much to know something of anatomy and 
 pharmacy as they, who by their natural con- 
 stitution are less fortified than the other sex 
 against the assaults of disease ? 
 
 Howmuchof the imprudence which incurreth 
 sickness, and the waywardness which ill beareth 
 it, would be prevented if men in their youth 
 were taught to know so much of the human 
 corporeal frame as to be able to measure their 
 own powers, and neither over nor under task 
 them ! For he who demandeth too much from 
 his muscles or his brain, will strain, and damage 
 
DISEASE AND MEDICINE. 107 
 
 them: but he who demandeth not enough, doth 
 himself a yet more irreparable injury; for then 
 they gain not their due development, and are 
 unfit for use when the occasion calleth for their 
 exertion. And indeed I must herein accuse 
 those of mine own profession of some misappre- 
 hension; for you shall find the medical attend- 
 ant ofttimes deny his patient the use of books, 
 or of writing or of such like amusement, as 
 holding that this kind of occupation will fatigue, 
 and thus retard the cure. Yet the same physi- 
 cian will desire that the sick person shall be 
 taken out of bed for refreshment, and ease of 
 body, so soon as the severity of disease is some- 
 what abated ; nay that, if possible, he shall be 
 removed to another chamber for the sake of a 
 fresher air than that contaminated by his own 
 fevered breath. Hath then the brain no func- 
 tion also which is to be attended to, in order to 
 restore its healthy influence over the other 
 parts ? Who among us hath not seen how much 
 the discontents and griefs of the mind impair 
 digestion, and interrupt the regular course of 
 the circulation, with the due secretions there- 
 from resulting ? And shall we imagine to re- 
 store the patient by refusing amusement, and 
 keeping him constantly pining under the sick- 
 
108 OF EEEOES IN BEGAKD TO 
 
 ness of hope deferred, thinking of his sufferings 
 because he hath nothing else to think of, and 
 fevering himself with restless wishes for what 
 he cannot have ? Leave him his book — he will 
 read till he is weary, and then he will sleep. — » 
 Suffer him to write — if his arm or his head ache 
 in consequence, he will soon lay aside his pen 
 and seek repose to fit himself to resume it ; and 
 in mean time, if the symptoms be not very ur- 
 gent, his sufferings will be forgotten, and the 
 cheerfulness of health will return,, and aid the 
 cure, it may be, more than all the drugs thou 
 canst administer. 
 
 When even a healthy man is put into soli- 
 tary confinement, we have had good experience 
 in sundry lamentable cases, that his bodily con- 
 stitution sinketh under the unnatural state of 
 mind thereby engendered. Wilt thou shut up 
 one who is suffering already from sickness, and 
 haply with no society save that of a stupid nurse, 
 without any means of amusing his mind ? Shall 
 he have no employment but the counting the 
 beats of his fevered pulse, or the stripes or the 
 flowers in the paper or bed-furniture, it may be ; 
 or figuring horrid faces from shadows, — or the 
 fancying landscapes in the veins of the marble 
 chimneypiece, — or the gazing on some portrait, 
 
DISEASE AND MEDICINE. 109 
 
 haply, till lie fancieth the eyes move, and he 
 almost shrieketh at the frightful creation of his 
 own phantasy. Is this the way to promote con- 
 valescence ? My worthy brother, thou art but 
 half a master of the healing art if thou hast 
 never learned to bring the mind to aid in the 
 body's cure. So mighty an agent existeth not 
 in the whole round of natural causes; and thou 
 mayest thank thy favourable stars if it be thy 
 fate to find a patient who can and will mentally 
 recreate himself during sickness ; for he will live 
 by the force of intellectual activity, where the 
 weak and desponding would sink and die. 
 
 But methinks, I hear it said, "I do not deny 
 my patients fitting amusement — they may read 
 a novel — they may delectate themselves with 
 the visits of the Apothecary, who will listen to 
 all their complaints, and besides giving a large 
 share of pity, will delight them with abundance 
 of talk touching the news of the day." — But 
 this is not the healthy exercise of the mind ; it 
 is by forgetting ailments, not by talking about 
 them, that the cure is promoted ; nor is it to 
 be supposed that the idle desultory gossip of 
 the neighbourhood, or the absorbing interest of 
 a work of fiction, whose merit consists in the 
 taking such hold of the imagination that it can- 
 
110 OF EEEOES EN" EEGAED TO 
 
 not be dismissed at will; — furnish that train of 
 gently consecutive and satisfactory reflections, 
 which may soothe into quiet sleep : for the brain, 
 suffering somewhat of the debility of the rest of 
 the body, beareth not sudden jerks and disrup- 
 tions of thought, but dehghteth in following one 
 subject, or shifting into another by easy stages 
 as it were. The delectations of the wise and 
 good, therefore, dining illness are very different 
 from the abovementioned, and we shall find that 
 their favourite recreations will be the truths of 
 science and of religion, the book of God's 
 works, and the book of God's laws. These bring 
 us into immediate communion with the Deity, 
 and as the fabled Antseus gained fresh strength 
 from touching his mother earth, so doth man — 
 the son of the Highest, gain power from bring- 
 ing his soul into contact with his Almighty 
 Father. Earth and its concerns are so brief, 
 so small, to him whose mind hath been thus 
 employed, that even should the illness promise 
 to be life-long, the thought bringeth no despon- 
 dency. How can it do so to one who hath no 
 mind to return to the paltry littleness of every 
 day life ? Many a great mind hath matured in a 
 sick room works which make it evident that the 
 vigour of intellect — the light of heaven, it may 
 be,beamingontheinward eye, — hath triumphed 
 
DISEASE AFD MEDICIKE. HI 
 
 over the ills of the body. Oh leave the sick 
 man his books ; leave him his lofty thoughts ; his 
 hope that even in this seclusion he is not wholly 
 useless ; his strong will, his upward aspirations / 
 I remember some years ago visiting often an 
 excellent man who had long been suffering se- 
 verely, and whose age left small hope that he 
 would ever recover health. He was wise enough 
 to seek mental recreation, good enough to seek 
 such as gave him peace and hope, nor shall I 
 easily forget the animation which lighted up his 
 pale face as he talked of his favourite pursuit. 
 He had undertaken a critical translation of the 
 gospels, and his delight when he could throw 
 any new light on an obscure passage was bound- 
 less. I asked him once how soon he should finish 
 his work. " Never," was his answer ; " had I 
 other pressing business to attend to, I might 
 conclude this ; — but now, what can I have so 
 soothing as this blessed book always before my 
 eyes ? The desire to make my rendering more 
 perfect, gives a definite object and a zest to all 
 my other reading, and I am amused without 
 losing sight of what I love. A work of fiction 
 may serve to divert for an hour a fellow that 
 hath never had an ache in his shoulders, but to 
 one who hath little to enjoy in life save the hope 
 of quitting it, there is no book like this. All 
 
112 OF EEEOES IN EEGAED TO 
 
 others pall and weary, excepting as they connect 
 themselves with the great end of man's being, 
 and the foundation of his expectations. I sleep 
 quietly when I finish the day in such guise." 
 By thus giving, as he himself expressed it, a 
 definite object to his excursive reading, it gained 
 a sufficient interest to render the mind active : 
 history, travels, philology, all bore in some way 
 on his pursuit ; and it was pleasant to see the 
 joyful and triumphant air with which he would 
 sometimes hold up to me a book he had just 
 purchased, exclaiming " I shall find something 
 here for my work." To the day of his death he 
 never ceased to retouch his darling translation. 
 There is also another error which groweth 
 out of, and is in a measure dependent on the 
 notions which the learned in medicine have un- 
 wittingly encouraged. You shall hear it given 
 as a symptom of one disease that it causeth 
 great depression of spirits, of another that it is 
 attended by peculiar irritability of temper ; and 
 so on through all the moods which suffering 
 may be expected to produce in untaught or un- 
 trained minds ; who, as a dog howleth when he 
 is chained up, or snarleth and snappeth at any 
 one who would administer relief to him when 
 injured, yield to all animal emotions, and are 
 
DISEASE AND MEDICIITE. 113 
 
 sad or gay as the course of the blood prompteth. 
 But this, though alack ! it be a common, is yet 
 by no means a necessary consequence of disease, 
 and though the physician may need to know this 
 when he hath to deal with ill regulated minds, 
 he is wrong if he expect that this shall always 
 be the case, and still more wrong if he assert 
 it so to be. For thus shall he perchance, on the 
 one hand, mistake hugely the case of one who 
 hath so little of the animal in him that he will 
 not howl when he is hurt ; and on the other 
 encourage in weak minded persons the yielding 
 to the impulses of peevishness and ill humour, as 
 thinking them such natural consequences of dis- 
 ease as to admit of no restraint : and thus haply 
 the health of the attendant friends shall be more 
 damaged by the weariness of trying to soothe 
 one who thinketh he hath licence for his fret- 
 fulness, than his who thus weareth out those 
 who would minister to his comfort. Selfish- 
 ness is an ugly vice at all times ; but sickness 
 hath double horrors if the moral constitution 
 be broken down as well as the bodily: for 
 surely he must have more than ordinarily long 
 legs who would think to step into the blessed- 
 ness of heaven, from the querulous peevishness 
 which hath made his sick room a hell, 
 i. 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY 
 
 AS TOUCHING THE 
 
 FEMALE SEX. 
 
 I SHOULD, I think, hardly satisfy my rea- 
 ders, I am sure I should not satisfy myself, 
 were I to conclude this my discourse without 
 farther inquiry into those false opinions which I 
 have already taken occasion to notice in a more 
 "brief and cursory manner, with regard to the true 
 position of women in society, as in this later age 
 it is constituted. For herein it seemeth to me 
 that many errors, bequeathed to us by our an- 
 cestors, do continue to bear fruit of more bitter 
 consequence than any that was plucked in 
 Paradise, and as in that fault, albeit the woman 
 may ofttimes be the agent in the evil, all do eat 
 thereof to their great discomfort and detriment. 
 "Wherefore I propose, good reader, to note some 
 of these errors, their causes, and, according to 
 my poor apprehension, their remedy also : so 
 that, be thou male or female, thou shalt per- 
 
CONDITION OF THE FEMALE SEX. 115 
 
 adventure find this inquiry not wholly useless 
 to thy present instruction and future good. 
 
 The first step of such an inquiry must be set 
 very far back, for as the first scene in the drama 
 of human existence was laid in Eden, so we must 
 take that for our starting point : since there, if 
 ever, we shall find what is the true relation of 
 the sexes in society. Arid if it be said that 
 both forfeited their claim to that true relation 
 when they quitted that sweet garden; be it re- 
 membered that in all the dealings of God with 
 man since that time, the object of his dispensa- 
 tions has been the reinstatement of his erring 
 children in the same, yea even in a better state 
 than that which, their animal and sensual nature 
 tempted them for a time to abandon : there- 
 fore we do properly fulfil his will, and advance 
 his kingdom, by endeavouring to ascertain that 
 true and pristine state, and, as far as in us lieth, 
 to restore it. 
 
 Woman then in Paradise was the independent 
 companion and help-mate of man ; for where 
 food was to be had for the plucking, she had no 
 lack of other strength than she possessed to aid 
 her in the procuring it; and where she had no 
 enemies, she needed no protection. The aid 
 therefore which she could lend, or receive, could 
 
116 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 
 
 only be that spiritual and intellectual assistance 
 which, human creatures are ever prone to seek 
 from each other ; since finite beings always hope 
 to gain something more of the infinite by gather- 
 ing to themselves the intellectual possessions of 
 others as well as their own. And if, as I conceive, 
 the somewhat more delicate organization, and 
 larger proportionate brain of woman, doth give 
 her, cceteris paribus, the advantage of quicker 
 perception, and greater promptitude in mental 
 operation, we may well opine that she was "a 
 help meet for man" in all wherein he needed 
 help, but answerable for her conduct to God 
 alone, from whom she had received the good 
 gift of reason, and freedom to use it. Would 
 we then indeed return to our pristine happiness, 
 and enjoy the comfort of that interchange of 
 mental pleasures which was destined for man as 
 a species, we should return also towards that 
 pristine state of things. But how standeth the 
 case now? Population presseth hard, in this 
 long settled country, on the means of subsist- 
 ence, and woman hath daily more and more to 
 learn the lesson that she is but the female of 
 that species, the law of whose nature is labour : 
 for the first fault ha vrng been that of the animal 
 
AS TOUCHING- THE EEMALE SEX. 117 
 
 part, Grod by his merciful decree (loving, even 
 in reproof,) weakened its influence, by requiring 
 from it enough of toil to keep it in subjection to 
 the higher and better rule of the rational soul. 
 Such thenbeingthe natural state of the human 
 race, food being made essential to life, and labour 
 requisite to the procurance of food, is the posi- 
 tion of woman in society such, either by law or 
 custom, as to enable her to comply with that law 
 which was given for such good purpose, and 
 which no human customs or human decrees can 
 supersede ? Is she, by custom and law, allowed 
 to labour for the means of support, or if she hath 
 acquired it, to keep it ? and if she be not, what 
 good reason hath society to give for so glaring an 
 injustice ? A woman may marry, I shall be told, 
 and then the husband will maintain her. He 
 who answereth thus knoweth that he answereth 
 not truly. "Where subsistence is hard to be 
 won, if the woman bringeth nothing to the com- 
 mon stock, marriage is often impracticable, un- 
 less for a fool that looketh not to the future ; and 
 many a woman must remain single for the lack 
 of this world's goods: many more would remain 
 single rather than sell their persons for food and 
 raiment, — for a mercenary marriage is but a 
 
118 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 
 
 market transaction, — if they had any means of 
 honourable labour whereby to eat bread, the 
 sweeter for being that of independence. 
 
 Why then should we longer stave off the put- 
 ting the question which sooner or later must be 
 asked? — Women are found dying of inanition, 
 unable to obtain the wherewith to still the pangs 
 of hunger — why is this ? — Why is suicide, why is 
 crime the hopeless resort of her who in common 
 parlance, though not in common usage, is held 
 to be the cherished companion and "better half" 
 of man ? This question hath never yet received 
 a satisfactory answer, and haply some may be 
 found to flout at mine, though indeed mockery 
 be no refutation. I reply that woman's position 
 in society is a false one; that healthy, not ex- 
 cessive labour being the law of our existence, 
 she hath nevertheless been either debarred from 
 using it to good purpose, or else doomed to 
 endure it in crushing excess, by defective 
 teaching, which hath obliged her to labour 
 with her hands rather than her head ; — by un- 
 natural restraints ; — by idle or ill maxims : — and 
 when man striveth to overturn the law of God 
 and nature, he is apt to make wild work of it ; 
 and, like the builders of Babel, to find that the 
 fabric he hath sought to raise will remain to 
 
AS TOUCHING THE FEMALE SEX. 119 
 
 future generations but a ruinous monument of 
 his own folly. 
 
 Let us not any longer disguise facts : from the 
 moment that a female child is born into the world 
 she is subjected to an unjust inequality by the 
 laws of this realm: she cannot exercise or enjoy 
 the rights of a free citizen, even if her lot have 
 fallen in fair pasture, and her father having left 
 her wherewith to live, she hath remained single 
 and kept it. If she marry, her very individual 
 existence is merged in that of her husband; the 
 property that she hath in possession is taken 
 from her, or placed peradventure in the hands 
 of trustees, by whose negligence or fraud it is 
 often wasted; and if she afterwards obtain any 
 thing by labour or inheritance, it is not hers, 
 but her husband's : nay she is no longer con- 
 sidered even as a rational and individual agent 
 in the eyes of the law. 
 
 Nor is public opinion more just : — go into a 
 school for poor children where the males are 
 receiving such an education as may fit them for 
 clerks and shopmen, bailiffs or gardeners : and 
 if thou remark on the incomplete instruction 
 afforded to the female children, the reply will be 
 — "The gentlemen say it is good enough for 
 girls." — G-o a step or two higher: ye shall find 
 
120 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 
 
 that the father keepeth his daughters ignorant 
 of business ; for why should they be taught what 
 they will never have occasion to exercise ? and 
 if he sometimes think that after his death they 
 may be destitute, he endeavoureth that they 
 shall have two or three showy accomplishments, 
 and even those insufficiently taught them, that 
 they may take the situation of a governess ; and 
 thus the would-be-teachers soon come to be more 
 numerous than the scholars that need them. 
 Look higher yet : science and philosophy are 
 held to be "unfeminine ;" and those that call for 
 a better system of teaching shall be mockingly 
 asked, " Would ye make female professors ?" 
 
 What then remaineth for a woman who must 
 eat, and hath no one to give her bread ? — She 
 may toil with her needle. — What sort of mainte- 
 nance this is, late inquiries have shown : she 
 may work sixteen hours out of the twenty -four, 
 or perhaps all the night as well as all the day, 
 and when she hath ruined health and eyesight, 
 find that she still hath not wherewith to live : 
 or she may go out as a. governess if she can ob- 
 tain that office, even for no better remuneration 
 than her board, or starve when she cannot : or 
 she may enter upon a course of sin and shame 
 if she be young and handsome ; or commit 
 
AS TOTJCHEfG- THE FEMALE SEX. 121 
 
 suicide if this fail her. Is this the boon that 
 fathers give their daughters? — Did the law give 
 women the rights of free citizenship, parents 
 would take care that their female, as well as their 
 male children shouldreceive such an education as 
 should enable them to administer their affairs ; 
 or if fathers gave their daughters a better educa- 
 tion, the law would probably view women with 
 more favour; but by thus arguing in a vicious 
 circle, refusing women their rights because they 
 are held unable to exercise them, and then deny- 
 ing them a useful education because they have 
 no rights to exercise, we inflict unmerited suffer- 
 ings on a large portion of our species, and render 
 those idle and adulatory sayings which are ad- 
 dressed to women in the heyday of their youth 
 and beauty, the cruellest of all mockeries. 
 
 Give the female the same chance as the male, 
 let her mind be strengthened by study, and her 
 body by exercise; let her see what the world is 
 upon whose mercies she is to be cast; and if the 
 care of the law have left her any one right in 
 this so-named free country, let her learn to use 
 it, in order to obtain truer justice for her sex 7 
 that the next generation may not find crime, 
 starvation, or suicide, the three alternatives 
 offered for the acceptance of those whom the 
 
122 condition or SOCIETY 
 
 world prateth to of "woman's proper sphere," — 
 nor if strong moral feeling hath eschewed vice, 
 and absolute, bitter, biting want hath unsettled 
 the brain, be told that the wild endeavour to 
 exchange the lingering pangs of hunger for a 
 speedier death is a punishable offence:- — a 
 lunatic asylum, not a prison, is for the most 
 part the proper place for such offenders. 
 
 When the fanaticism of a past age sent human 
 beings to the stake, a few pounds of gunpowder 
 to tie about the neck, was held a charitable gift, 
 which kind hearts, more merciful than the laws, 
 offered to the sufferer. Yea our own holy 
 martyrs, Ridley and Latimer, disdained not 
 such aid: but when a woman is doomed, by this 
 hard hearted and false judging age, to die by 
 the lingering torture of want, magistrates and 
 judges refuse the coup de grace, and insist that 
 the suffering shall be borne unabridged, out of 
 an assumed concern for the souls of those 
 whose bodies have been left to perish. 
 
 Far be it from me to countenance that rash 
 impatience of life which leadeth man to cut 
 short the span which Grod hath assigned to him: 
 but if, by harshness or neglect, we so embitter 
 the existence of some wretched being, that in 
 spite of the instinctive love of life, it is found a 
 
AS TOrOHING THE FEMALE SEX. 123 
 
 burthen too heavy to be endured longer; who 
 ought to bear the blame of the sin? The laws 
 and customs which cause the evil, or the un- 
 happy woman, whose brain, reeling under the 
 repeated shocks of suffering; or of remorse — if 
 hunger have been staved off by sin; — perpe- 
 trateth an act of violence on herself, whereof 
 it is for God, not man, to take cognizance ? 
 
 If indeed the numbers of the nation exceed 
 its means of subsistence, let the evil be boldly 
 met: the world is wide, and other lands can 
 offer soil to till when England overfloweth : but 
 let both sexes be placed in a situation to struggle 
 fairly with the difficulty. It is mean, it is hypo- 
 critical, to disguise the secret wish to mono- 
 polize all profitable employment, underthe show 
 of a tender concern for the best interests of 
 " the weaker sex." If we indeed feel that such 
 rivals hi the counting-house, the mart, or the 
 lecture-room, would endanger the subsistence of 
 men, while enabling women to maintain them- 
 selves; let us at least boldly avow it, and de- 
 vise a remedy openly. Throw open then the 
 field of intellectual labour: let the female be 
 taught to lighten the toil of the body by the 
 work of the mind: teach her the skill of arith- 
 metic; — what is there in the work of a book 
 
124 CONDITION OP SOCIETY 
 
 keeper which she might not well and profitably 
 discharge ? open to her the wells of ancient lite- 
 rature and modern science, and when they are 
 open, forbid her not to drink thereof herself, 
 and to draw thence enough to quench the thirst 
 of others also. Ye will not have a female pro- 
 fessor, forsooth; but do ye not sit and applaud 
 night after night while actresses address crowded 
 theatres? May a woman repeat the words of 
 others in public, but not repeat her own? May 
 she exhibit her person on the stage in such 
 dances as are there performed, and not exhibit 
 an experiment in chemistry ? May she sing 
 idle lays to hundreds, but not speak wisdom to 
 them? And is this the boasted care which 
 public opinion taketh of female morals? 
 
 It might be matter for longer discourse than 
 I have space for, were I closely to examine, and 
 trace back to their causes in every instance, the 
 evils here noted: but a few of these causes it 
 may be well to state briefly. And foremost 
 among these standeth the inferiority of the wo- 
 man in regard to physical strength; the which, 
 when many tribes of the great human family 
 (from some of which tribes we of this realm 
 are descended) became rude and barbarous, and 
 warred often for then hunting grounds, or found 
 
AS TOTJCEXN'G THE FEMALE SEX. 125 
 
 it more to their taste to seize the goods of 
 others, than to labour for themselves, — did 
 make females in great measure dependent on 
 the stronger sex for support : and dependence 
 among rude nations hath many of the charac- 
 ters of slavery. During the season of semi- 
 barbarism which succeeded to this, after Eng- 
 land had become a settled kingdom under the 
 Teuton races, the code whereon our common 
 as well as much of our statute law is founded, 
 was established ; and hereon was grafted, not 
 long after, the Norman feudality ; whereby war- 
 like suit and service became the main title to 
 property, and the king's legislative council con- 
 sisted of such only as held fiefs : for in those 
 days the church also was militant in the worst 
 sense of the word, and the bishop had his vas- 
 sals, and parcelled out his land in knights' fees. 
 At the period when William of Warenne could 
 cast his sword upon the table when called upon 
 to prove the title to his estate, and that wise 
 and stronghanded monarch, Edward, the first 
 of that name, found himself obliged to submit 
 to this glaive law; it is clear that the female 
 sex had very small chance of obtaining any re- 
 gard to their rights as human beings : for the 
 rude warrior of that day recognised no right in 
 
126 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 
 
 any who had not a sword wherewith to main- 
 tain it. The wife of a baron was a part of 
 his state, his daughter a part of his property: 
 learning he had none of himself, and he needed 
 none in his companion. 
 
 The churchman, the only man in those days 
 who had any skill in letters, was doomed to a 
 life of celibacy by the asceticism which had cor- 
 rupted the simplicity of Christianity : therefore 
 he sought for no " help meet for him" in his 
 studies ; and knew nothing of any females but 
 either such as were shut away from all liberal 
 science within the walls of a convent, or such 
 as ministered only to his baser animal needs: 
 and this ascetic rule, which held that a saint 
 was disgraced by the very society which his 
 mild Master sought and loved, added the finish- 
 ing stroke to woman's degradation. The war- 
 rior despised the feeble hand that could not 
 wield the lance, but he also sometimes pitied 
 and cherished the weak woman who clung to 
 him for protection : it was reserved for a cor- 
 rupted religious faith to take from her even her 
 self respect ; to banish her foot from the holiest 
 spots; to esteem her touch defilement! — yea 
 woman, whose courage had braved the terrors 
 of Jewish prejudice straining law to destroy the 
 
AS TOUCHING THE FEMALE SEX. 127 
 
 innocent, and, despite of priests and rulers, fol- 
 lowed to the cross Him whom all but his gentle 
 woman-like disciple John had forsaken or for- 
 sworn, — was held an unclean creature by those 
 who professed to be His servants. There is a 
 tale told of a certain Quaker who having been 
 bitten by a dog, apostrophized him thus — " I 
 will not kill thee, but I will give thee a bad 
 name" — and he raised the cry of " bad dog" 
 which being soon mistaken for " mad," the 
 poor beast was hunted till he became mad in 
 good earnest : and thus woman, when an ill 
 name had been given her at first, however un- 
 deservedly, became subject to treatment which 
 ofttimes caused her at last to deserve it. 
 
 A different age hath now arisen ; but it is so 
 much the instinct of man to do again what he 
 hath been accustomed to do and to see done, 
 that old habits and opinions still make a stout 
 fight for the upper hand, and yield only inch by 
 inch to the pressure of the times. But never- 
 theless they do yield, and it is therefore at this 
 time especially, that such an inquiry as I have 
 endeavoured to institute is likely to be useful. 
 The world hath been so constituted by its Crea- 
 tor, that in all the relations of life man must 
 still find woman by his side; and by that com- 
 
128 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 
 
 panionship he must be influenced for the better 
 or the worse : how much all might be benefited 
 were that influence always for the better, I will 
 not here undertake to conjecture, but this I do 
 know, that where a man findeth in a wife, or 
 a daughter, or a sister, the real "help meet for 
 him," he enjoy eth a reduplication of his mental 
 and even bodily powers ; and by her loving la- 
 bour and sweet companionship findeth his toils 
 and cares so lightened of their weight, that he 
 would almost wish to have them for the sake of 
 finding them so dexterously and gently shared 
 and soothed. In this therefore, as in all other 
 things, the doer of injustice findeth, like him 
 whoswingetha flail unskilfully, that itreturneth 
 on his own head with the more force, the greater 
 the strength he hath exerted; and man, by his 
 injustice to woman, hath lost much of that 
 solace and help which was designed for him by 
 his Creator. And it might be matter for curious 
 remark on the constitution of human nature, 
 that the injustice is now done rather as a matter 
 of habit than for any good reason : for no one 
 in this age will maintain that either man or 
 woman is disqualified for parts of trust or ho- 
 nour by the lack of physical strength, or warlike 
 
AS TOUCHING THE EEMALE SEX. 129 
 
 skill : neither in this reformed church will any 
 man hold himself defiled by the society of 
 womankind. Nay, in matters of science and 
 literature, if a woman have courage enough to 
 brave the flouting of fools, and the opposition of 
 relations, and gain erudition in spite of the out- 
 cry raised against woman's learning, — when she 
 hath at last achieved fame, her labours will also 
 give her consideration in society. But it is a 
 false and a bad social state when what is riglit 
 to do, is not also honourable to do. When 
 God hath given intellect, and an immortal soul 
 to be guided and prepared for its better state 
 by the use thereof, we sin against our Creator 
 if we set human prejudice higher than God's 
 law. "In Christ there is neither male nor 
 female, bond nor free." 
 
 But herein, nevertheless, prejudice holdeth its 
 own, maugre God's will : for law and custom 
 having debarred females from profitable employ- 
 ment, a father looketh only to the fitting his 
 daughters for the market, seeing he can no other- 
 wise rid himself of the charge of their mainte- 
 nance than by shifting the onus from his own 
 shoulders to those of a husband : and for this 
 cause he holdeth that a form which may capti- 
 
 K 
 
130 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 
 
 vate some roving fancy in the dance, is of more 
 value than those qualities which may make the 
 possessor useful, and consequently happy: there- 
 fore female children are right early taught that 
 the care of the o^side is of more consequence 
 than that of the in : and that if the surface of 
 the cranium he daintily ornamented, it matters 
 not what may he the state of the "brain beneath 
 it. If such teaching bear its natural fruit, what 
 is the wonder ? One who hath for fifteen years 
 been taught that the catching of a husband is 
 the great business of life, and who hath to set 
 before her eyes what is to please man rather 
 than G-od, — when she hath succeeded in her 
 chace, affordeth small comfort to the prisoner 
 she hath taken : who may be ruined by her 
 extravagance, deprived of his peace by her ill- 
 humour, or disgraced by her misconduct. 
 
 I have stated these matters roundly, and 
 roughly, for doth not the chirurgeon need to use 
 rough and sharp remedies when a gangrene is 
 spreading in the body ? and this, the gangrene 
 of the body social, requireth something of the 
 like treatment : for what hath been the custom 
 for any long* time, hath a kind of prescriptive 
 right in men's minds ; and ye shall often find it 
 
AS TOUCHING THE FEMALE SEX. 131 
 
 a hard matter to prevail on men to see that 
 they have no rational ground for their prac- 
 tice, so much is it become hallowed by age. 
 
 Reader, I now bid thee farewell ! — If thou be 
 a father, lay to thine inmost heart the dread 
 truth that Grod will require at thy hands the 
 immortal souls which he hath bestowed on thee, 
 for their nurture in the way of life ; and remem- 
 ber that the making thy sons fierce and quar- 
 relsome, by way of being "manly," and thy 
 daughters idle and useless, under the notion that 
 they will thereby become more "feminine," is 
 not the part of a man who hath a denizen of the 
 world of spirits entrusted to his training for 
 good or for evil. If thou be a woman, forget 
 not, — albeit, my lesson may sound harsh to flat- 
 tered ears, — that thou wert not sent into this 
 world to waste thy hours in indolent repose ; that 
 every human being hath his allotted work, and 
 that since God hath not seen fit to tell any one 
 beforehand what that work will be, he must pre- 
 pare lihnself by anxious culture in all directions, 
 to execute it well when the task is assigned. 
 Though bred to the expectation of riches, the 
 hour may eome*when thou wilt find thy learning 
 thy only dower ; but whether that hour come or 
 
132 CONDITION OF THE FEMALE SEX. . 
 
 not, one far more certain will yet arrive ; that, 
 namely, wherein we must give an account of 
 every wasted minute and idle word ; — look to it 
 then, that Time shall pay good interest in 
 Eternity. 
 
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