e he cannot
unstarch his gravity, nor put on a more pleasant countenance. If he
engage in any discourse, he either breaks off abruptly, or tires out the
patience of the whole company, if he goes on: if he have any contract,
sale, or purchase to make, or any other worldly business to transact, he
behaves himself more like a senseless stock than a rational man; so as
he can be of no use nor advantage to himself, to his friends, or to
his country; because he knows nothing how the world goes, and is wholly
unacquainted with the humour of the vulgar, who cannot but hate a person
so disagreeing in temper from themselves.

And indeed the whole proceedings of the world are nothing but one
continued scene of Folly, all the actors being equally fools and madmen;
and therefore if any be so pragmatically wise as to be singular, he
must even turn a second Timon, or man-hater, and by retiring into some
unfrequented desert, become a recluse from all mankind.

But to return to what I first proposed, what was it in the infancy of
the world that made men, naturally savage, unite into civil societies,
but only flattery, one of my chiefest virtues? For there is nothing else
meant by the fables of Amphion and Orpheus with their harps; the first
making the stones jump into a well-built wall, the other inducing the
trees to pull their legs out of the ground, and dance the mor-rice after
him. What was it that quieted and appeased the Roman people, when they
brake out into a riot for the redress of grievances? Was it any sinewy
starched oration? No, alas, it was only a silly, ridiculous story, told
by Menenius Agrippa, how the other members of the body quarrelled with
the belly, resolving no longer to continue her drudging caterers, till
by the penance they thought thus in revenge to impose, they soon
found their own strength so far diminished, that paying the cost of
experiencing a mistake, they willingly returned to their respective
duties. Thus when the rabble of Athens murmured at the exaction of the
magistrates, Themistocles satisfied them with such another tale of the
fox and the hedge-hog; the first whereof being stuck fast in a miry bog,
the flies came swarming about him, and almost sucked out all his blood,
the latter officiously offers his service to drive them away; no, says
the fox, if these which are almost glutted be frighted off, there will
come a new hungry set that will be ten times more greedy and devouring:
the moral of this