nt of
others, and to the diffusion of salutary truths through the world.

From the universality of these precepts many readers might be apt to
infer, that I am in my own person the bold and unsparing preacher of
truth, resolutely giving to every man his due, and, agreeably to
the apostle's direction, "instant in season, and out of season."
The individual who answers to this description will often be deemed
troublesome, often annoying; he will produce a considerable sensation
in the circle of those who know him; and it will depend upon various
collateral circumstances, whether he shall ultimately be judged a rash
and intemperate disturber of the contemplations of his neighbours, or
a disinterested and heroic suggester of new veins of thinking, by which
his contemporaries and their posterity shall be essentially the gainers.

I have no desire to pass myself upon those who may have any curiosity
respecting me for better than I am; and I will therefore here put down
a few particulars, which may tend to enable them to form an equitable
judgment.

One of the earliest passions of my mind was the love of truth and
sound opinion. "Why should I," such was the language of my solitary
meditations, "because I was born in a certain degree of latitude, in a
certain century, in a country where certain institutions prevail, and of
parents professing a certain faith, take it for granted that all this is
right?--This is matter of accident. 'Time and chance happeneth to all:'
and I, the thinking principle within me, might, if such had been the
order of events, have been born under circumstances the very reverse
of those under which I was born. I will not, if I can help it, be
the creature of accident; I will not, like a shuttle-cock, be at the
disposal of every impulse that is given me." I felt a certain disdain
for the being thus directed; I could not endure the idea of being made
a fool of, and of taking every ignis fatuus for a guide, and every stray
notion, the meteor of the day, for everlasting truth. I am the person,
spoken of in a preceding Essay(38), who early said to Truth, "Go on:
whithersoever thou leadest, I am prepared to follow."

(38) See above, Essay XIII.

During my college-life therefore, I read all sorts of books, on every
side of any important question, that were thrown in my way, or that I
could hear of. But the very passion that determined me to this mode of
proceeding, made me wary and circumspect in comi