which gave them to each other, and has thus entailed upon each a
thousand advantages in which they could otherwise never have shared.

ESSAY XVI. OF FRANKNESS AND RESERVE.

Animals are divided into the solitary and the are gregarious: the former
being only occasionally associated with its mate, and perhaps engaged in
the care of its offspring; the latter spending their lives in herds and
communities. Man is of this last class or division.

Where the animals of any particular species live much in society, it
seems requisite that in some degree they should be able to understand
each other's purposes, and to act with a certain portion of concert.

All other animals are exceedingly limited in their powers of
communication. But speech renders that being whom we justly entitle the
lord of the creation, capable of a boundless interchange of ideas and
intentions. Not only can we communicate to each other substantively our
elections and preferences: we can also exhort and persuade, and employ
reasons and arguments to convince our fellows, that the choice we have
made is also worthy of their adoption. We can express our thoughts, and
the various lights and shades, the bleedings, of our thoughts. Language
is an instrument capable of being perpetually advanced in copiousness,
perspicuity and power.

No principle of morality can be more just, than that which teaches us
to regard every faculty we possess as a power intrusted to us for the
benefit of others as well as of ourselves, and which therefore we are
bound to employ in the way which shall best conduce to the general
advantage.

"Speech was given us, that by it we might express our thoughts(34);" in
other words, our impressions, ideas and conceptions. We then therefore
best fulfil the scope of our nature, when we sincerely and unreservedly
communicate to each other our feelings and apprehensions. Speech should
be to man in the nature of a fair complexion, the transparent medium
through which the workings of the mind should be made legible.

(34) Moliere.

I think I have somewhere read of Socrates, that certain of his friends
expostulated with him, that the windows of his house were so constructed
that every one who went by could discover all that passed within. "And
wherefore not?" said the sage. "I do nothing that I would wish to have
concealed from any human eye. If I knew that all the world observed
every thing I did, I should feel no inducement to chan