answer he would have given; yet it
would by no means have done for me. You see as plain as can be, that I
write as a man of erudition;--that even my similies, my allusions, my
illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,--and that I must sustain
my character properly, and contrast it properly too,--else what would
become of me? Why, Sir, I should be undone;--at this very moment that
I am going here to fill up one place against a critick,--I should have
made an opening for a couple.

--Therefore I answer thus:

Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever
read such a book as Locke's Essay upon the Human Understanding?--Don't
answer me rashly--because many, I know, quote the book, who have not
read it--and many have read it who understand it not:--If either of
these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will tell you in three
words what the book is.--It is a history.--A history! of who? what?
where? when? Don't hurry yourself--It is a history-book, Sir, (which may
possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a man's own mind;
and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe me, you
will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysick circle.

But this by the way.

Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into the
bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of obscurity and
confusion, in the mind of a man, is threefold.

Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and
transient impressions made by the objects, when the said organs are not
dull. And thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what
it has received.--Call down Dolly your chamber-maid, and I will give you
my cap and bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain that
Dolly herself should understand it as well as Malbranch.--When Dolly has
indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom
of her pocket hanging by her right side;--take that opportunity to
recollect that the organs and faculties of perception can, by nothing
in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing
which Dolly's hand is in search of.--Your organs are not so dull that I
should inform you--'tis an inch, Sir, of red seal-wax.

When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly fumbles too
long for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it will not receive
the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont to imprint