unless we print it in our
minds by daily meditation, and so bring a _good will_ to a good habit.
And we must practice what we preach, for _philosophy_ is not a subject
for popular ostentation, nor does it rest in words, but in things. It
is not an entertainment taken up for delight, or to give a taste to
leisure, but it fashions the mind, governs our actions, tells us what
we are to do, and what not. It sits at the helm, and guides us through
all hazards; nay, we can not be safe without it, for every hour gives
us occasion to make use of it. It informs us in all the duties of
life, piety to our parents, faith to our friends, charity to the
miserable, judgment in counsel; it gives us _peace_, by _fearing_
nothing, and _riches_, by _coveting nothing_.

There is no condition of life that excludes a wise man from
discharging his duty. If his fortune be good, he _tempers_ it; if bad,
he _masters_ it; if he has an estate, he will exercise his virtue in
plenty, if none, in poverty; if he can not do it in his country, he
will do it in banishment; if he has no command, he will do the office
of a common soldier. Some people have the skill of reclaiming the
fiercest of beasts: they will make a lion embrace his keeper, a tiger
kiss him, and an elephant kneel to him. This is the case of a wise man
in the extremest difficulties; let them be never so terrible in
themselves, when they come to him once, they are perfectly tame. They
that ascribe the invention of tillage, architecture, navigation, etc.,
to wise men, may perchance be in the right, that they were invented by
wise men; but they were not invented by wise men, as _wise men_; for
wisdom does not teach our fingers, but our minds: fiddling and
dancing, arms and fortifications, were the works of luxury and
discord; but wisdom instructs us in the way of nature, and in the arts
of unity and concord; not in the instruments, but in the government of
life; nor to make us live only, but to live happily. She teaches us
what things are good, what evil, and what only appear so; and to
distinguish betwixt true greatness and tumor. She clears our minds of
dross and vanity; she raises up our thoughts to heaven, and carries
them down to hell; she discourses on the nature of the soul, the
powers and faculties of it; the first principles of things; the order
of providence: she exalts us from things corporeal to things
incorporeal; and retrieves the truth of all: she searches nature,
gives law