d will have, of arriving at perfection; and, on
the other hand, with dread of the grief and shame you will give me if you
do not. May the first be the case! God bless you!

LETTER LXIV

LONDON, February 7, O. S. 1749.

DEAR BOY: You are now come to an age capable of reflection, and I hope
you will do, what, however, few people at your age do, exert it for your
own sake in the search of truth and sound knowledge. I will confess (for
I am not unwilling to discover my secrets to you) that it is not many
years since I have presumed to reflect for myself. Till sixteen or
seventeen I had no reflection; and for many years after that, I made no
use of what I had. I adopted the notions of the books I read, or the
company I kept, without examining whether they were just or not; and I
rather chose to run the risk of easy error, than to take the time and
trouble of investigating truth. Thus, partly from laziness, partly from
dissipation, and partly from the 'mauvaise honte' of rejecting
fashionable notions, I was (as I have since found) hurried away by
prejudices, instead of being guided by reason; and quietly cherished
error, instead of seeking for truth. But since I have taken the trouble
of reasoning for myself, and have had the courage to own that I do so,
you cannot imagine how much my notions of things are altered, and in how
different a light I now see them, from that in which I formerly viewed
them, through the deceitful medium of prejudice or authority. Nay, I may
possibly still retain many errors, which, from long habit, have perhaps
grown into real opinions; for it is very difficult to distinguish habits,
early acquired and long entertained, from the result of our reason and
reflection.

My first prejudice (for I do not mention the prejudices of boys, and
women, such as hobgoblins, ghosts, dreams, spilling salt, etc.) was my
classical enthusiasm, which I received from the books I read, and the
masters who explained them to me. I was convinced there had been no
common sense nor common honesty in the world for these last fifteen
hundred years; but that they were totally extinguished with the ancient
Greek and Roman governments. Homer and Virgil could have no faults,
because they were ancient; Milton and Tasso could have no merit, because
they were modern. And I could almost have said, with regard to the
ancients, what Cicero, very absurdly and unbecomingly for a philosopher,
says with regard to Plato, 'Cum quo er