antastic name, a thing of no use, no value,
either in opinion or effect, of which I think those ergotisms and petty
sophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it, are the cause. And
people are much to blame to represent it to children for a thing of so
difficult access, and with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect.
Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostly
countenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I
had like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting
and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit
there. Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot
of philosophers set chatting together, said to them,--[Plutarch, Treatise
on Oracles which have ceased]--"Either I am much deceived, or by your
cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no, very deep
discourse." To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied:
"Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of
the verb ------ is spelt with a double A, or that hunt after the
derivation of the comparatives ----- and -----, and the superlatives ----
and ------, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science: but
as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those
that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad."

"Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro
Corpore; deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque
Inde habitum facies."

["You may discern the torments of mind lurking in a sick body; you
may discern its joys: either expression the face assumes from the
mind."--Juvenal, ix. 18]

The soul that lodges philosophy, ought to be of such a constitution of
health, as to render the body in like manner healthful too; she ought to
make her tranquillity and satisfaction shine so as to appear without, and
her contentment ought to fashion the outward behaviour to her own mould,
and consequently to fortify it with a graceful confidence, an active and
joyous carriage, and a serene and contented countenance. The most
manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like
that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
'Tis Baroco and Baralipton--[Two terms of the ancient scholastic
logic.]--that render their disciples so dirty and ill-favoured, and not
she; they do not so much as know