ht the best
employment of human wit: other parts of philosophy may make us wiser,
but this not only answers that end, but makes us better too.

2. 'Hence it was that the oracle pronounced _Socrates_ the wisest of all
men living, because he judiciously made choice of human nature for the
object of his thoughts; an enquiry into which as much exceeds all other
learning, as it is of more consequence to adjust the true nature and
measures of right and wrong, than to settle the distance of the planets,
and compute the times of their circumvolutions.

3. 'One good effect that will immediately arise from a near observation
of human nature, is, that we shall cease to wonder at those actions
which men are used to reckon wholly unaccountable; for as nothing is
produced without a cause, so by observing the nature and course of the
passions, we shall be able to trace every action from its first
conceptions to its death.

4. 'We shall no more admire at the proceedings of _Cataline_ and
_Tiberius_, when we know the one was actuated by a cruel jealousy; the
other by a furious ambition; for the actions of men follow their
passions as naturally as light does heat, or as any other effect flows
from its cause; reason must be employed in adjusting the passions, but
they must ever remain the principles of action.

5. 'The strange and absurd variety that is so apparent in men's actions,
shews plainly they can never proceed immediately from reason; so pure a
fountain emits no such troubled waters: they must necessarily arise from
the passions, which are to the mind as the winds to a ship; they only
can move it, and they too often destroy it; if fair and gentle, they
guide it into the harbour; if contrary and furious, they overset it in
the waves.

6. 'In the same manner is the mind assisted or endangered by the
passions; reason must then take the place of pilot, and can never fail
of securing her charge if she be not wanting to herself; the strength of
the passions will never be accepted as an excuse for complying with
them: they were designed for subjection; and if a man suffers them to
get the upper hand, he then betrays the liberty of his own soul.

7. 'As nature has framed the several species of beings as it were in a
chain, so man seems to be placed as the middle link between angels and
brutes; hence he participates both of flesh and spirit by an admirable
tye, which in him occasions perpetual war of passions; and as a man
inclines