at
study in themselves, and there they found the best part of human
composition; the worst they learned by long experience of the folly,
ignorance, and immorality of most beside them. Their philosophy, on
both sides, was not wholly speculative, for that is barren, and
produces nothing but vain ideas of things which cannot possibly be
known, or, if they could, yet would only terminate in the
understanding; but it was a noble, vigorous and practical philosophy,
which exerted itself in all the offices of pity, to those who were
unfortunate, and deserved not so to be. The friend was always more
considered by them than the cause; and an Octavius, or an Antony in
distress, were relieved by them, as well as a Brutus or a Cassius; for
the lowermost party, to a noble mind, is ever the fittest object of
good-will. The eldest of them, I will suppose, for his honour, to have
been of the academic sect, neither dogmatist nor stoick; if he were
not, I am sure he ought, in common justice, to yield the precedency to
his younger brother. For stiffness of opinion is the effect of pride,
and not of philosophy; it is a miserable presumption of that knowledge
which human nature is too narrow to contain; and the ruggedness of a
stoick is only a silly affectation of being a god,--to wind himself up
by pullies to an insensibility of suffering, and, at the same time, to
give the lie to his own experience, by saying he suffers not, what he
knows he feels. True philosophy is certainly of a more pliant nature,
and more accommodated to human use; _Homo sum, humani a me nihil
alienum puto._ A wise man will never attempt an impossibility; and
such it is to strain himself beyond the nature of his being, either to
become a deity, by being above suffering, or to debase himself into a
stock or stone, by pretending not to feel it. To find in ourselves the
weaknesses and imperfections of our wretched kind, is surely the most
reasonable step we can make towards the compassion of our
fellow-creatures. I could give examples of this kind in the second
Atticus. In every turn of state, without meddling on either side, he
has always been favourable and assisting to opprest merit. The praises
which were given by a great poet to the late queen-mother, on her
rebuilding Somerset Palace, one part of which was fronting to the mean
houses on the other side of the water, are as justly his:

For the distrest and the afflicted lie
Most in his thoughts, and always in h