ces. These sciences are but too apt to appear
abstract to common readers, even with all the precautions which we can
take to clear them from superfluous speculations, and bring them down to
every capacity.]

Most people, I believe, will naturally, without premeditation, assent to
the definition of the elegant and judicious poet:

Virtue (for mere good-nature is a fool) Is sense and spirit with
humanity.

[Footnote: The Art of preserving Health. Book 4]

What pretensions has a man to our generous assistance or good offices,
who has dissipated his wealth in profuse expenses, idle vanities,
chimerical projects, dissolute pleasures or extravagant gaming? These
vices (for we scruple not to call them such) bring misery unpitied, and
contempt on every one addicted to them.

Achaeus, a wise and prudent prince, fell into a fatal snare, which cost
him his crown and life, after having used every reasonable precaution to
guard himself against it. On that account, says the historian, he is a
just object of regard and compassion: his betrayers alone of hatred and
contempt [Footnote: Polybius, lib. iii. cap. 2].

The precipitate flight and improvident negligence of Pompey, at the
beginning of the civil wars, appeared such notorious blunders to Cicero,
as quite palled his friendship towards that great man. In the same
manner, says he, as want of cleanliness, decency, or discretion in
a mistress are found to alienate our affections. For so he expresses
himself, where he talks, not in the character of a philosopher, but in
that of a statesman and man of the world, to his friend Atticus. [Lib.
ix. epist. 10]. But the same Cicero, in imitation of all the ancient
moralists, when he reasons as a philosopher, enlarges very much his
ideas of virtue, and comprehends every laudable quality or endowment
of the mind, under that honourable appellation. This leads to the
THIRD reflection, which we proposed to make, to wit, that the ancient
moralists, the best models, made no material distinction among the
different species of mental endowments and defects, but treated
all alike under the appellation of virtues and vices, and made them
indiscriminately the object of their moral reasonings. The prudence
explained in Cicero's Offices [Footnote: Lib. i. cap. 6.] is that
sagacity, which leads to the discovery of truth, and preserves us from
error and mistake. MAGNANIMITY, TEMPERANCE, DECENCY, are there also at
large discoursed of. And as th