ccasions. False
Reasoning is most effectually exposed by Plain Sense; but Wit is the best
opponent to False Ridicule, as Just Ridicule is to all the absurdities
which dare to assume the venerable names of Philosophy or Religion. Had
we made such a proper use of our agreeable talents; had we employed our
ridicule to strip the foolish faces of Superstition, Fanaticism, and
Dogmatical Pride of the serious and solemn masks with which they are
covered, at the same time exerting all the sharpness of our wit to combat
the flippancy and pertness of those who argue only by jests against
reason and evidence in points of the highest and most serious concern, we
should have much better merited the esteem of mankind.

DIALOGUE XXIII.

PERICLES--COSMO DE MEDICIS, THE FIRST OF THAT NAME.

_Pericles_.--In what I have heard of your character and your fortune,
illustrious Cosmo, I find a most remarkable resemblance with mine. We
both lived in republics where the sovereign power was in the people; and
by mere civil arts, but more especially by our eloquence, attained,
without any force, to such a degree of authority that we ruled those
tumultuous and stormy democracies with an absolute sway, turned the
tempests which agitated them upon the heads of our enemies, and after
having long and prosperously conducted the greatest affairs in war and
peace, died revered and lamented by all our fellow-citizens.

_Cosmo_.--We have indeed an equal right to value ourselves on that
noblest of empires, the empire we gained over the minds of our
countrymen. Force or caprice may give power, but nothing can give a
lasting authority except wisdom and virtue. By these we obtained, by
these we preserved, in our respective countries, a dominion unstained by
usurpation or blood--a dominion conferred on us by the public esteem and
the public affection. We were in reality sovereigns, while we lived with
the simplicity of private men; and Athens and Florence believed
themselves to be free, though they obeyed all our dictates. This is more
than was done by Philip of Macedon, or Sylla, or Caesar. It is the
perfection of policy to tame the fierce spirit of popular liberty, not by
blows or by chains, but by soothing it into a voluntary obedience, and
bringing it to lick the hand that restrains it.

_Pericles_.--The task can never be easy, but the difficulty was still
greater to me than to you. For I had a lion to tame, from whose
intractable fury th