e
faculties; action, on the determination of the will. The one assigns
reasons for things, the other puts causes into act. Abraham Tucker
relates of a friend of his, an old special pleader, that once coming out
of his chambers in the Temple with him to take a walk, he hesitated at
the bottom of the stairs which way to go--proposed different directions,
to Charing Cross, to St. Paul's--found some objection to them all, and
at last turned back for want of a casting motive to incline the scale.
Tucker gives this as an instance of professional indecision, or of that
temper of mind which having been long used to weigh the reasons for
things with scrupulous exactness, could not come to any conclusion at
all on the spur of the occasion, or without some grave distinction to
justify its choice. Louvet in his Narrative tells us, that when several
of the Brisotin party were collected at the house of Barbaroux (I think
it was) ready to effect their escape from the power of Robespierre,
one of them going to the window and finding a shower of rain coming on,
seriously advised their stopping till the next morning, for that the
emissaries of government would not think of coming in search of them in
such bad weather. Some of them deliberated on this wise proposal,
and were nearly taken. Such is the effeminacy of the speculative and
philosophical temperament, compared with the promptness and vigour of
the practical! It is on such unequal terms that the refined and romantic
speculators on possible good and evil contend with their strong-nerved,
remorseless adversaries, and we see the result. Reasoners in general
are undecided, wavering, and sceptical, or yield at last to the weakest
motive as most congenial to their feeble habit of soul.(1)

Some men are mere machines. They are put in a go-cart of business, and
are harnessed to a profession--yoked to Fortune's wheels. They plod on,
and succeed. Their affairs conduct them, not they their affairs. All
they have to do is to let things take their course, and not go out of
the beaten road. A man may carry on the business of farming on the same
spot and principle that his ancestors have done for many generations
before him without any extraordinary share of capacity: the proof is, it
is done every day, in every county and parish in the kingdom. All
that is necessary is that he should not pretend to be wiser than his
neighbours. If he has a grain more wit or penetration than they, if his
vanity