he most priz'd--the
most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come
at--for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us,
so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding--or so ignorant of what
will do him good therein--who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in
his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or the
other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible,
or likely to be brought to pass.

Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at
the one--unless they laid hold of the other,--pray what do you think
would become of them?--Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities,
they must e'en have been contented to have gone with their insides
naked--this was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to
be supposed in the case we are upon--so that no one could well have been
angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they could
have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great perriwigs,
had they not raised a hue and cry at the same time against the lawful
owners.

I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning
and artifice--that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false
sounds--was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep
and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and
other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the
poor wits in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by
it--it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand
vulgar errors;--but this was not of the number; so that instead of
sitting down coolly, as such a philosopher should have done, to have
examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it--on the
contrary he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry,
and halloo'd it as boisterously as the rest.

This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since--but your
reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the
title to it is not worth a groat:--which by-the-bye is one of the many
and vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for
hereafter.

As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind
too freely--I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said to
their dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration--That I have
no abhorrence whatev