great scholar, many a profound philosopher, many a dogmatical casuist. And it serves to set the complaints about want of time and the shortness of human life, in a very ridiculous but a true light. All men are taught their opinions, at least on the most important subjects, by rote, and are bred to defend them with obstinacy. They might be taught true opinions; but whether true or false, the same zeal for them and the same attachment to them, is everywhere inspired alike. The Tartar believes as heartily that the soul of Foe inhabits in his Dairo as the Christian believes the hypostatic union or any article in the Athanasian creed. Now this may answer the ends of society in some respects, and do well enough for the vulgar of all ranks: but it is not enough for the man who cultivates his reason, who is able to think, and who ought to think for himself. To such a man, every opinion that he has not himself either framed, or examined strictly and then adopted, will pass for nothing more than what it really is, the opinion of other men; which may be true or false for aught he knows. And this is the state of uncertainty in which no such man can remain with any peace of mind, concerning those things that are of greatest importance to us here, and may be so hereafter. He will make them therefore the objects of his first and greatest attention. If he has lost time he will lose no more; and when he has acquired all the knowledge he is capable of acquiring on these subjects, he will be the less concerned whether he has time to acquire any further. Should he have passed his life in the pleasures or business of the world; whenever he sets about this work, he will soon have the advantage over the learned philosopher. For he will soon have secured what is necessary to his happiness, and may sit down in the peaceful enjoyment of that knowledge, or proceed with greater advantage and satisfaction to the acquisition of new knowledge; whilst the other continues his search after things that are in their nature, to say the best of them, hypothetical, and precarious, and superfluous.

But this is not the only rule, by observing of which we may redeem our time, and have the advantage over those who imagine they have so much in point of knowledge over your lordship or me, for instance, and who despise our ignorance. The rule I mean is this: to be on our guard against the common arts of delusion spoken of already; which, everyone is ready to confess, have been employed to mislead those who differ from him. Let us be diffident of ourselves, but let us be diffident of others too: our own passions may lead us to reason wrong; but the passions and interest of others may have the same effect. It is in every man's power, who sets about it in good earnest, to prevent the first; and when he has done so, he will have a conscious certainty of it. To prevent the last, there is one, and but one sure method; and that is, to remount, in the survey of our opinions, to the first and even remotest principles on which they are founded. No respect, no habit,

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EVERY MAN'S REASON IS EVERY MANS ORACLE.

no seeming certainty whatever, must divert us from this; any affectation of diverting us from it ought to increase our suspicion; and the more important our examination is, the more important this method of conducting it becomes. Let us not be frighted from it, either by the supposed difficulty or length of such an inquiry; for, on the contrary, this is the easiest and the shortest, as well as the only sure way of arriving at real knowledge; and of being able to place the opinions we examine in the different classes of true, probable, or false, according to the truth, probability, or falsehood of the principles from whence they are deduced. If we find these principles false, and that will be the case in many instances, we stop our inquiries on these heads at once, and save an immense deal of time that we should otherwise misspend. The Mussulman who enters on the examination of all the disputes that have arisen between the followers of Omar and Ali and other doctors of his law, must acquire a thorough knowledge of the whole Mahometan system, and will have as good a right to complain of want of time, and the shortness of human life, as any pagan or Christian divine or philosopher: but without all this time and learning, he might have discovered that Mahomet was an impostor, and that the Koran is a heap of absurdities.

In short, my lord, he who retires from the world with a resolution of employing his leisure, in the first place to re-examine and settle his opinions, is inexcusable if he does not begin with those that are most important to him, and if he does not deal honestly by himself. To deal honestly by himself, he must observe the rule I have insisted upon, and not suffer the delusions of the world to follow him into his retreat. Every man's reason is every man's oracle: this oracle is best consulted in the silence of retirement, and when we have so consulted, whatever the decision be, whether in favour of our prejudices or against them, we must rest satisfied; since nothing can be more certain than this, that he who follows that guide in the search of truth, as that was given him to lead him to it, will have a much better plea to make whenever or wherever he may be called to account, than he who has resigned himself, deliberately or inadvertently, to any authority upon earth.

When we have done this, concerning God, ourselves, and other men, concerning the relations in which we stand to Him and to them; the duties that result from these relations, and the positive will of the Supreme Being, whether revealed to us in a supernatural, or discovered by the right use of our reason in a natural way-we have done the great business of our lives. Our lives are so sufficient for this, that they afford us time for more, even when we begin late; especially if we proceed in every other inquiry by the same rule. To discover error in axioms, or in first principles grounded on facts, is like the breaking of a charm. The enchanted castle, the steepy rock, the burning lake, disappear; and the paths that lead to truth, which we imagined to be so

long, so embarrassed, and so difficult, show as they are, short, open, and easy. When we have secured the necessaries, there may be time to amuse ourselves with the superfluities, and even with the trifles of life. 'Dulce est desipere,' said Horace: 'Vive la bagatelle!' says Swift. I oppose neither, not the Epicurean, much less the Christian philosopher; but I insist that a principal part of these amusements be the amusements of study and reflection, of reading and conversation. You know what conversation I mean, for we lose the true advantage of our nature and constitution if we suffer the mind to come, as it were, to a stand. When the body, instead of acquiring new vigour, and tasting new pleasures, begins to decline, and is sated with pleasures or grown incapable of taking them, the mind may continue still to improve and indulge itself in new enjoyments. Every advance in knowledge opens a new scene of delight, and the joy that we feel in the actual possession of one, will be heightened by that which we expect to find in another; so that, before we can exhaust this fund of successive pleasures, death will come to end our pleasures and our pains at once. 'In his studiis laboribusque viventi, non intelligitur quando 'obrepit senectus; ita sensim sine sensu ætas senescit, nec subito 'frangitur, sed diuturnitate extinguitur.'

This, my lord, is the wisest and the most agreeable manner in which a man of sense can wind up the thread of life. Happy is he whose situation and circumstances give him the opportunity and means of doing it! Though he should not have made any great advances in knowledge, and should set about it late, yet the task will not be found difficult unless he has gone too far out of his way, and unless he continues too long to halt, between the dissipations of the world and the leisure of a retired life.

-Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam,

Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis,—

You know the rest. I am sensible, more sensible than any enemy I have, of my natural infirmities and acquired disadvantages; but I have begun, and I will persist; for he who jogs forward on a battered horse in the right way, may get to the end of his journey, which he cannot do who gallops the fleetest courser of Newmarket out of it.

Adieu, my dear lord. Though I have much more to say on this subject, yet I perceive, and I doubt you have long perceived, that I have said too much, at least for a letter, already. The rest shall be reserved for conversation whenever we meet, and then I hope to confirm, under your lordship's eye, my speculations by my practice. In the mean time let me refer you to our friend Pope. He says I made a philosopher of him; I am sure he has contributed very much, and I thank him for it, to the making a hermit of me.

BOLINGBROKE'S

REFLECTIONS UPON EXILE'

[ADVERTISEMENT.-That the public may not be imposed upon by any lame and unequal translation of the following treatise, from the French, in which language part of it has been lately printed, and retailed in a monthly Mercury: it is judged proper to add it here, at the end of this second volume, from the author's original manuscript, as he himself had finished it for the press.]

MDCCXVI.

DISSIPATION of mind and length of time are the remedies to which the greatest part of mankind trust in their afflictions. But the first of these works a temporary, the second a slow, effect; and both are unworthy of a wise man. Are we to fly from ourselves that we may fly from our misfortunes, and fondly to imagine that the disease is cured because we find means to get some moments of respite from pain? Or shall we expect from time, the physician of brutes, a lingering and uncertain deliverance? Shall we wait to be happy till we can forget that we are miserable, and owe to the weakness of our faculties a tranquillity which ought to be the effect of their strength? Far otherwise. Let us set all our past and our present afflictions at once before our eyes (Sen. De con. ad Hel.). Let us resolve to overcome them, instead of flying from them, or wearing out the sense of them by long and ignominious patience. Instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incision knife and the caustic, search the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate and radical cure.

The recalling of former misfortunes serves to fortify the mind against later. He must blush to sink under the anguish of one wound, who surveys a body seamed over with the scars of many, and who has come victorious out of all the conflicts wherein he received them. Let sighs, and tears, and fainting under the lightest strokes of adverse fortune, be the portion of those unhappy people whose tender minds a long course of felicity has enervated; while such, as have passed through years of calamity, bear up, with a noble and immoveable constancy, against the heaviest. Uninterrupted misery has this good effect, as it continually torments, it finally hardens.

1 Several passages of this little treatise are taken from Seneca: and the whole is written with some allusion to his style and manner, 'Quanquam non omnino temere sit, quod de sen⚫tentiis illius queritur Fabius,' etc.—ERAS., De sen. jud.

Such is the language of philosophy; and happy is the man who acquires the right of holding it. But this right is not to be acquired by pathetic discourse. Our conduct can alone give it us; and therefore, instead of presuming on our strength, the surest method is to confess our weakness, and, without loss of time, to apply ourselves to the study of wisdom. This was the advice which the oracle gave to Zeno (Diog. Laert.), and there is no other way of securing our tranquillity amidst all the accidents to which human life is exposed. Philosophy has, I know, her Thrasos, as well as war; and among her sons many there have been, who, while they aimed at being more than men, became something less. The means of preventing this danger are easy and sure. It is a good rule, to examine well before we addict ourselves to any sect; but I think it is a better rule, to addict ourselves to none. Let us hear them all, with a perfect indifferency on which side the truth lies and, when we come to determine, let nothing appear so venerable to us as our own understandings. Let us gratefully accept the help of every one who has endeavoured to correct the vices, and strengthen the minds of men; but let us choose for ourselves, and yield universal assent to none. Thus, that I may instance the sect already mentioned, when we have laid aside the wonderful and surprising sentences, and all the paradoxes of the Portic, we shall find in that school such doctrines as our unprejudiced reason submits to with pleasure, as nature dictates, and as experience confirms. Without this precaution, we run the risk of becoming imaginary kings, and real slaves. With it, we may learn to assert our native freedom, and may live independent on fortune.

In order to which great end, it is necessary that we stand watchful, as sentinels, to discover the secret wiles and open attacks of this capricious goddess, before they reach us (Sen. De con. ad Hel.). Where she falls upon us unexpected, it is hard to resist; but those who wait for her, will repel her with ease. The sudden invasion of an enemy overthrows such as are not on their guard; but they who foresee the war, and prepare themselves for it before it breaks out, stand, without difficulty, the first and the fiercest onset. I learned this important lesson long ago, and never trusted to fortune even while she seemed to be at peace with me. The riches, the honours, the reputation, and all the advantages which her treacherous indulgence poured upon me, I placed so that she might snatch them away without giving me any disturbance. I kept a great interval between me and them. She took them, but she could not tear them from me. No man suffers by bad fortune but he who has been deceived by good. If we grow fond of her gifts, fancy that they belong to us and are perpetually to remain with us, if we lean upon them, and expect to be considered for them: we shall sink into all the bitterness of grief, as soon as these false and transitory benefits pass away, as soon as our vain and childish