d the point at once--'for what
hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to
any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain,
a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith's crucible, an oil bottle,
an old slipper, or a cane chair?'--I am this moment sitting upon one.
Will you give me leave to illustrate this affair of wit and judgment, by
the two knobs on the top of the back of it?--they are fastened on, you
see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place
what I have to say in so clear a light, as to let you see through the
drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and
particle of it was made up of sun-beams.

I enter now directly upon the point.

--Here stands wit--and there stands judgment, close beside it, just like
the two knobs I'm speaking of, upon the back of this self-same chair on
which I am sitting.

--You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its
frame--as wit and judgment are of ours--and like them too, indubitably
both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such
cases of duplicated embellishments--to answer one another.

Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this
matter--let us for a moment take off one of these two curious ornaments
(I care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands
on--nay, don't laugh at it,--but did you ever see, in the whole course
of your lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?--Why,
'tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as
much sense and symmetry in the one as in the other:--do--pray, get off
your seats only to take a view of it,--Now would any man who valued his
character a straw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a
condition?--nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain
question, Whether this one single knob, which now stands here like a
blockhead by itself, can serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one
in mind of the want of the other?--and let me farther ask, in case the
chair was your own, if you would not in your consciences think, rather
than be as it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at
all?

Now these two knobs--or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown
the whole entablature--being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all
others, as I have proved it, are the most needful--t