we ought immediately to subscribe to the propositions,
however specious, that are now for the first time presented to us. It
is our duty to lay up in our memory the suggestions offered upon any
momentous question, and not to suffer them to lose their inherent weight
and impressiveness; but it is only through the medium of consideration
and reconsideration, that they can become entitled to our full and
unreserved assent.

The nature of belief, or opinion, has been well illustrated by Lord
Shaftesbury(32). There are many notions or judgments floating in the
mind of every man, which are mutually destructive of each other. In this
sense men's opinions are governed by high and low spirits, by the state
of the solids and fluids of the human body, and by the state of the
weather. But in a paramount sense that only can be said to be a man's
opinion which he entertains in his clearest moments, and from which,
when he is most himself, he is least subject to vary. In this emphatical
sense, I should say, a man does not always know what is his real
opinion. We cannot strictly be said to believe any thing, in cases
where we afterwards change our opinion without the introduction of some
evidence that was unknown to us before. But how many are the instances
in which we can be affirmed to be in the adequate recollection of all
the evidences and reasonings which have at some time occurred to us, and
of the opinions, together with the grounds on which they rested, which
we conceived we had justly and rationally entertained?

The considerations here stated however should by no means be allowed to
inspire us with indifference in matters of opinion. It is the glory and
lustre of our nature, that we are capable of receiving evidence, and
weighing the reasons for and against any important proposition in the
balance of an impartial and enlightened understanding. The only effect
that should be produced in us, by the reflection that we can at last by
no means be secure that we have attained to a perfect result, should be
to teach us a wholsome diffidence and humility, and induce us to confess
that, when we have done all, we are ignorant, dim-sighted and fallible,
that our best reasonings may betray, and our wisest conclusions deceive
us.

(32) Enquiry concerning Virtue, Book 1, Part 1, Section ii.

ESSAY XIV. OF YOUTH AND AGE.

Magna debetur pueris reverentia.

Quintilian.

I am more doubtful in