as they
are thought to be so: what harm is it then if all persons deride and
scoff you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and be yourself
thoroughly conceited of your deserts? And prithee, why should it be
thought any scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part of our
nature and essence; and as so, our not being wise can no more reasonably
be imputed as a fault, than it would be proper to laugh at a man because
he cannot fly in the air like birds and fowls; because he goes not on
all four as beasts of the field; because he does not wear a pair of
visible horns as a crest on his forehead, like bulls or stags: by the
same figure we may call a horse unhappy, because he was never taught
his grammar; and an ox miserable, for that he never learnt to fence: but
sure as a horse for not knowing a letter is nevertheless valuable, so a
man, for being a fool, is never the more unfortunate, it being by nature
and providence so ordained for each.

[Illustration: 142]

Ay, but (say our patrons of wisdom) the knowledge of arts and sciences
is purposely attainable by men, that the defect of natural parts may be
supplied by the help of acquired: as if it were probable that nature,
which had been so exact and curious in the mechanism of flowers, herbs,
and flies, should have bungled most in her masterpiece, and made man
as it were by halves, to be afterward polished and refined by his own
industry, in the attainment of such sciences as the Egyptians feigned
were invented by their god Theuth, as a sure plague and punishment to
mankind, being so far from augmenting their happiness, that they do not
answer that end they were first designed for, which was the improvement
of memory, as Plato in his Phaedrus does wittily observe.

In the first golden age of the world there was no need of these
perplexities; there was then no other sort of learning but what was
naturally collected from every man's common sense, improved by an easy
experience. What use could there have been of grammar, when all men
spoke the same mother-tongue, and aimed at no higher pitch of oratory,
than barely to be understood by each other? What need of logic, when
they were too wise to enter into any dispute? Or what occasion for
rhetoric, where no difference arose to require any laborious decision?
And as little reason had they to be tied up by any laws, since the
dictates of nature and common morality were restraint and obligation
sufficient: and as to a