ation of
mankind is little else but driving a trade of dissimulation.

"If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is
better: for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is
not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends
to? Now the best way in the world to seem to be anything is really to be
what he would seem to be. Besides that, it is many times as troublesome
to make good the pretence of a good quality as to have it; and if a man
have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want it; and then
all his pains and labour to seem to have it are lost."

XXVII.

_THE DUBIOUS._

"Man, on the dubious waves of error tossed,
His ship half-foundered, and his compass lost,
Sees, far as human optics may command,
A sleeping fog, and fancies it dry land:
Spreads all his canvas, every sinew plies;
Pants for 't, aims at it, enters it, and dies!"
COWPER.

This is a talker of an opposite stamp to the dogmatist. The one knows
and asserts with imperial positiveness, the other with childish
trepidation and hesitancy. "It is so, it can't be otherwise, and you
must believe it," is the dictatorial spirit of the dogmatist. "It may be
so, I am not certain, I cannot vouch for its truthfulness: in fact, I am
rather inclined to doubt it, but I would not deny nor affirm, or say one
word to dispose you either way," is the utterance of the spirit of
Dubious. He is an oscillator, a pendulum, a wave of the sea, a
weathercock. He has no certain dwelling-place within the whole domain of
knowledge, in which to rest the sole of his feet with permanency. He
sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels nothing with certainty, and hence
he knows nothing by his senses but what is enveloped in the clouds of
doubtfulness. He tenaciously guards himself in the utterance of any
sentiment, story, or rumour, lest he expose himself to apprehension. His
own existence is a fact of which he speaks with caution. His
consciousness _may be_ a reality of which he can say a word. As to his
soul, he does not like to speak of that with any assurance. The being of
a God is a doctrine in the clouds, and he cannot affirm it with
confidence. There _may be_ such places as China, India, Africa, etc.;
but as he has never seen them, he dare not venture his full belief in
their existence. Whatever he has seen, and whatever he ha