SECTION III.

On the Knowledge of the World.

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HOWEVER great may be the advantages afforded by a life of retirement for the acquisition of self-knowledge, it may thought they are more than balanced by its disadvantages in relation to the knowledge of the world; a science extolled by many as paramount to all others, and which they imagine can only be acquired by an intimate and regular intercourse with society.

Under the knowledge of the world, taking it extensively, may be comprised these three things; first, the knowledge of its exterior, or of its visible manners, with the nature and forms of its business; secondly, the knowledge of its interior, or of its secret principles, views, and dispositions; and, lastly, of its value, or of the rate we

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ought to set upon the various objects which it offers to our pursuit.

I. The manners, when taken separately from the principles which produce them, constitute the surface of life, and are so much subject to every breath of fashion, that in these western parts of the world, and eminently in the land wherein we live, they seldom retain, for any length of time, one uniform appearance, An Arab or a

Chinese is the same now that his ancestors were two thousand years ago; but should one of our great grandfathers rise from the dead, and revisit us, he would scarcely be able to persuade himself that he was in the region of Old England. Even the course of a few years is sufficient to induce such a change in our dress, our deportment, and other modes of life, as to give a new face to the country. The retired Englishman must therefore learn to content himself, as well as he can, with his ignorance of the shifting forms under which his fellow-citizens are pleased to exhibit themselves;

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and to resign this fugitive and local science to those whose situation enables them, as one of our poets has expressed it,

To catch the manners living as they rise.

It must likewise be admitted, that the recluse is equally shut out from an exact knowledge of business, which, like all other practical skill, can only be acquired in the school of experience. Here then, as in the former instance, we allow the man of the world to bear away the palm without contest; he must suffer us, however, in what remains, to dispute his claim to superiority.

II. The knowledge of the world in the second sense we have stated, or to know the general principles and views by which it is governed, peculiarly belongs to him who has learned to retire inward, and to watch the secret workings of his own mind; for since no direct access can be had to the motives of any one's actions except our own, it is evident that, without

this previous self-inspection, our knowledge of the world can be little more than theatrical.

We might illustrate this, were it necessary, by a familiar instance. Suppose a person curious to explore the principles upon which watches were constructed, and that there was one, and only one, of this sort of time-keeper which he could take to pieces, and so reduce its several parts, its spring, its balance, and its wheels, with the regular adjustment of the whole, to a minute examination; it may now be asked whether he might not, by this method alone, come to understand the general nature and construction of watches; and whether it is probable that a bare survey of the external forms of all other watches would supply his omission in this instance? Or rather, if it be not almost certain, that such a superficial view, after all that he could collect from it, would leave him much in the dark respecting the internal movements and principles in question?

Apply this to the case before us, and the argument will conclude more strongly; since, in the structure of the little machine here mentioned, an ingenious artificer might possibly introduce powers before unknown, whereas the principles of the human constitution are fixed and determined, and exist the same in every individual of the entire species. As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man*. This sentence of a profound observer of men and things, stands confirmed by the experience and suffrage of all ages. There is therefore no need to wander into foreign countries, to visit the courts of princes, or the huts of peasants, or to resort to places of business or amusement, to obtain a general knowledge of human nature in its moral constitution and qualities; he who looks narrowly into himself will find it

there.

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Nor is it by means of self-inspection thus known in general only, but likewise

* Prov. xxvii. 19.