noble than poetry, I purposed as soon as I should have made myself perfect master of logic, to elucidate all useful truths, and banish error from among mankind. What benefit these ambitious projects may have done me, I know not: perhaps my present labours might be owing to some remains of them; for I well remember that while the design of these dissertations lay in embryo in my head, they promised a much more shining appearance than I find them now make upon paper. "If masters can find no other way of making their lads apply to their learning willingly, but by exciting an emulation among them, I would not deprive them of the use of this instrument. But there may be a commendation which has no personal comparison in it, and the pleasures, the advantages, the credit of a proficiency in learning may be displayed in sufficiently alluring colours, without suggesting a thought of superiority over others, or of being the foremost. I acknowledge that it is a very nice point to distinguish between the desire of excellence. and the desire of excelling, and the one is very apt to degenerate insensibly into the other: yet I think it may be effected by an attentive and skilful tutor, and the first will answer all the good purposes of the latter without running the hazard of its inconveniences. It is evident that in one point of view there is nothing more pernicious than the general disposition of parents to bring up children with a notion of their extraordinary parts and consequence: for being taught to look upon themselves as superior to every one else, they will naturally despise what is fit for their talents and situation, aim at things out of their reach, gain a general ill-will, and involve themselves in quarrels and difficulties by claiming a respect and deference to which they are not entitled. “And we find in fact that the best and greatest men, those who have done the most essential services to mankind, have been the most free from the impulses of vanity. Lycurgus and Solon, those two excellent lawgivers, appear to have had none: So crates, the prime apostle of reason, Euclid and Hippocrates, had none: whereas Protagoras with his brother sophists, Diogenes, Epicurus, Lucretius, the Stoics who were the bigots, and the latter Academics who were the freethinkers of antiquity, were overrun with it. And among the moderns, Boyle, Newton, Locke, have made large improvements in the sciences without the aid of vanity; while some others I could name, having drawn in copiously of that intoxicating vapour, have laboured only to perplex and obscure them. This passion always chooses to move alone in a narrow sphere, where nothing noble or important can be achieved, rather than join with others in moving mighty engines, by which much good might be effected. Where did ambition ever glow more intensely than in Cæsar? whose favourite saying, we are told, was, that he would rather be the first man in a petty village than the second in Rome. Did not Alexander, another madman of the same kind, reprove his tutor, Aristotle, for publishing to the world those discoveries in philosophy he would have had reserved for himself alone?—We may therefore fairly conclude that the world would go on infinitely better if men would learn to do without it; and we may rank it among those evils permitted by Providence to bring forth some unknown good, but which we should neither encourage in ourselves or others." $3. Of Forcing the Mind. I was a scholar: seven useful springs Of cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man: Then, an it were mortal. O hold, hold, at that Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt, |