othing: a man must learn that he
is nothing but a fool, a much more ample, and important instruction. The
false steps that my memory has so often made, even then when it was most
secure and confident of itself, are not idly thrown away; it vainly
swears and assures me I shake my ears; the first opposition that is made
to its testimony puts me into suspense, and I durst not rely upon it in
anything of moment, nor warrant it in another person's concerns: and were
it not that what I do for want of memory, others do more often for want
of good faith, I should always, in matter of fact, rather choose to take
the truth from another's mouth than from my own. If every one would pry
into the effects and circumstances of the passions that sway him, as I
have done into those which I am most subject to, he would see them
coming, and would a little break their impetuosity and career; they do
not always seize us on a sudden; there is threatening and degrees

"Fluctus uti primo coepit cum albescere vento,
Paulatim sese tollit mare, et altius undas
Erigit, inde imo consurgit ad aethera fundo."

["As with the first wind the sea begins to foam, and swells, thence
higher swells, and higher raises the waves, till the ocean rises
from its depths to the sky."--AEneid, vii. 528.]

Judgment holds in me a magisterial seat; at least it carefully endeavours
to make it so: it leaves my appetites to take their own course, hatred
and friendship, nay, even that I bear to myself, without change or
corruption; if it cannot reform the other parts according to its own
model, at least it suffers not itself to be corrupted by them, but plays
its game apart.

The advice to every one, "to know themselves," should be of important
effect, since that god of wisdom and light' caused it to be written on
the front of his temple,--[At Delphi]--as comprehending all he had to
advise us. Plato says also, that prudence is no other thing than the
execution of this ordinance; and Socrates minutely verifies it in
Xenophon. The difficulties and obscurity are not discerned in any
science but by those who are got into it; for a certain degree of
intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not, and we
must push against a door to know whether it be bolted against us or no:
whence this Platonic subtlety springs, that "neither they who know are to
enquire, forasmuch as they know; nor they who do n