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Johos when

THE ENGLISH READER.

it, that I may redeem my confolation in my last hour.

PART I

friend. Do not refuse me this

Dio. I cannot endure men, who defpife death, and set my power at defiance.

Da. Thou canst not, then, endure virtue.

Dio. No: I cannot endure that proud, difdainful virtue, which contemns life; which dreads no punishment; and which is infenfible to the charms of riches and pleasure.

Da. Thou seeft, however, that it is a virtue, which is not infenfible to the dictate of honour, justice, and friendthip.

Dio. Guards, take Pythias to execution. We fhall fee whether Damon will continue to defpife my authority.

Da. Pythias, by returning to fubmit himself to thy pleasure, has merited his life, and deferved thy favour ; but I have excited thy indignation, by refigning myself to thy power, in order to fave him: be fatisfied, then, with this facrifice, and put me to death.

Py. Hold, Dionyfius! remember, it was Pythias alone who offended thee: Damon could not.

Dio. Alas! what do I fee and hear! where am I? How miferable; and how worthy to be fo! I have hitherto known nothing of true virtue. I have spent my life in darknefs and error. All my power and honours are insufficient to produce love. I cannot boast of having acquired a single friend, in the course of a reign of thirty years. And yet thefe two perfons in a private condition, love one another tenderly, unrefervedly confide in each other, are mutually happy, and ready to die for each other's prefervation.

Py. How couldft thou, who haft never loved any person, expect to have friends? If thou hadft loved and respected men, thou wouldst have fecured their love and respect. Thou haft feared mankind; and they fear thee; they de teft thee.

Dio. Damon, Pythias, condefcend to admit me as a third friend, in a connection fo perfect. I give you your lives; and I will load you with riches.

Da. We have no defire to be enriched by thee; and, in regard to thy friendship, we cannot accept or enjoy it till thou become good and juft. Without thefe qualities, thou canft be connected with none but trembling flaves, and bafe flatterers. To be loved and efteemed by memof tree

and generous minds, thou must be virtuous; affectionate,difinterested, beneficent; and know how to live in a fort of equality with those who share and deferve thy friendship. FENELON, Archbishop of Cambray.

SECTION III.

LOCKE AND BAYLE.

Chriflianity defended against the cavils of feeplicifm. Bayle. Yes, we both were philofophers; but my philofophy was the deepest. You dogmatized I doubted. Locke. Do you make doubting a proof of depth in philofophy? It may be a good beginning of it; but it is a

bad end.

Bay. No: the more profound our fearches are into the nature of things, the more uncertainty we fhall find; and the most subtile minds fee objections and difficulties in every fyftem, which are overlooked or undiscoverable by ordinary understandings.

Locke. It would be better then to be no philofopher, and to continue in the vulgar herd of mankind, that one may have the convenience of thinking that one knows fomething. I find that the eyes which nature has given me, fee many things very clearly, though fome are out of their reach, or difcerned but dimly. What opinion ought I to have of a phyfician, who fhould offer me an eyewater, the use of which would at first so sharpen my fight, as to carry it farther than ordinary vifion; but would in the end put them out? Your philofophy is to the eyes of the mind, what I have fuppofed the doctor's noftrum to be to those of the body. It actually brought your own excellent underftanding, which was by nature quickfighted, and rendered more fo by art and a fubtility of logic peculiar to yourself, it brought, I fay, your very acute understanding to fee nothing clearly and enveloped all the great truths of reafon and religion in mifts of doubt.

Bay. I own it did; but your comparison is not just. I did not fee well, before I used my philofophic eyewater: I only fuppofed I faw well; but I was in an error, with: all the rest of mankind. The blindnefs was real, the perceptions were imaginary. I cured myself first of those falle imaginations, and then I laudably endeavoured to

cure other men.

Locke. A great cure indeed! and don't you think that, in return for the fervice you did them, they ought to erect you a itatue?

Bay. Yes; it is good for human nature to know its own weaknefs. When we arrogantly prefume on a ftrength we have not, we are always in great danger of hurting ourfelves, or at least of deferving ridicule and contempt, by vain and idle efforts..

Locke. I agree with you, that human nature fhould know its own weakness but it should also feel its ftrength, and try to improve it. This was my employment as a philofopher. I endeavoured to discover the real powers of the mind, to fee what it could do, and what it could not; to retrain it from efforts beyond its ability; but to teach it how to advance as far as the faculties given to it by nature, with the utmoft exertion and moft proper culture of them, would allow it to go. In the vaft ocean of philofophy, I had the line and the plummet always in my hands. Many of its depths I found myfelf unable to fathom; but, by caution in founding, and the careful obfervations I made. in the course of my voyage, I found out fome truths of fo much ufe to mankind, that they acknowledge me to havebeen their benefactor.

Bay. Their ignorance makes them think fo. Some. other philofopher will come hereafter, and fhow thofe truths to be falfehoods. He will pretend to discover other truths of equal importance. A later fage will arise, perhaps among men now barbarous and unlearned, whofe fagacious difcoveries will difcredit the opinions of his admired predeceffor. In philofophy, as in nature, all changes its form, and one thing exifts by the deftruction of another.

Locke. Opinions taken up without a patient inveftigation, depending on terms not accurately defined, and principles begged without proof, like theories to explain the phenomina of nature, built on fuppofitions instead of experiments, muft perpetually change and deftroy one another. But fome opinions there are, even in matters not obvious to the common fenfe of mankind, which the mind has received on fuch rational grounds of affent, that they are as immoveable as the pillars of heaven; cr (to speakphilofophically) as the great laws of Nature, by which, under God, the univerfe is fuftained. Can you fericufly

think, that, becaufe the hypothefis of your countryman Defcartes, which was nothing but an ingenious, well imagined romance, has been lately exploded, the fyftem of Newton, which is built on experiments and geometry,the two most certain methods of difcovering truth, will ever fail; or that, because the whims of fanatics and the divinity of the schoolmen, cannot now be fupported, the doctrines of that religion, which I, the declared enemy of all enthusiasm and falfe reafoning, firmly believed and maintained, will ever be fhaken ?

Bay. If you had asked Defcartes, while he was in the height of his vogue, whether his fyftem would ever be confuted by any other philofophers, as that of Ariftotle had been by his, what anfwer do you fuppofe he would

have returned?

Locke. Come, come, you yourfelf know the difference) between the foundations on which the credit of thosedyftems, and that of Newton is placed. Yourfcepticifm is more affected than real. You found it a fhorter way to a great reputation, (the only with of your heart,) to object, than to defend ; to pull down, than to fet up. And your talents were admirable for that kind of work. Then your huddling together in a Critical Dictionary, a pleafant tale, orbbfcenejelt, and a grave argument against the Christian religion, a witty confutation of fome abfurd author, and an artfultfophifm to impeach fome respectable truth, was (particularly commodious to all our young fmarts and fmatterers in free thinking. But what mifchief have you not done to human fociety? You have endeavoured) and with fome degree of fuccefs, to shake those foundations, on which the whole moral world, and the greatfabric of focial happiness, entirely reft. How could you, as a philofopher, in the fober hours of reflection, anfwer for this to your confcience, even fuppofing you had doubts of the truth of a fyftem, which gives to virtue its fweetest hopes, toumpenitent/vice its greatest fears, and to true penitence its best confolations; which reftrains even the leaft approaches to guilt, and yet makes thofe allowances for thelinfirmities yof our nature, which the ftoie pride denied to it, but which its real imperfection, and the goodness of its infinitely benevolent Creator, fo. evi-ently require?

Bay. The mind is free; and it loves to exert its freedom. Any restraint upon it is a violence done to its nature, and a tyranny, against which it has a right to rebel.

Locke. The mind, though free, has a governor within itself, which may and ought to limit the exercife of its freedom. That governor is reason.

:

Bay. Yes but reafon, like other governors, has a policymore dependent upon uncertain caprice, than upon any fixed laws. And if that reason, which rules my mind oryours, has happened to fet up a favourite notion, it not only fubmits implicitly to it, but defires that the fame refpect fhould be paid to it by all the rest of mankind. Now I hold that any man may lawfully oppofe this defire in another ; and that if he is wife, he will do his utmost endeavours to check it in himself.

Locke. Is there not alfo a weaknefs of a contrary nature to this you are now ridiculing? Do we not often take a pleasure to show our own power, and gratify our own pride, by degrading the notions fet up by other men, and generally respected?

Bay. I believe we do ; and by this means it often happens that, if one man build and confecrate a temple to folly, another pulls it down.

Locke. Do you think it beneficial to human fociety, to have all temples pulled down?

Bay. I cannot fay that I do.

Locke. Yet I find not in your writings any mark of diftinction, to fhow us which you mean to fave.

Bay. A true philofopher, like an impartial hiftorian, must be of no fect.

Locke. Is there no medium between the blind zeal of a fectary, and a total indifference to all religion?

Bay. With regard to morality, I was not indifferent. Locke. How could you then be indifferent with regard to the fanctions religion gives to morality? how could you publifh what tends fo directly and apparently to weaken in mankind the belief of thofe fanctions? was not the facrificing the great interefts of virtue to the little motives of vanity ?

Buy. A man may act indifcreetly, but he cant do wrong, by declaring that, which on a full difcuffior of the queftion, he fincerely thinks to be true.