A

TRITICAL ESSAY

UPON THE

FACULTIES OF THE MIND.

SIR,

BE

To

EING fo great a lover of antiquities, it was reafonable to fuppofe, you would be very much obliged with any thing, that was new. I have been of late offended with many writers of effays and moral difcourfes for running into tale topicks and threadbare quotations, and not handling their fubject fully and clofely: all which errors I have carefully avoided in the following effay, which I have propofed as a pattern for young writers to imitate. The thoughts and obfervations being entirely new, the quotations untouched by others, the fubject of mighty importance, and treated with much order and perfpicuity, it hath coft me a great deal of time; and I defire you will accept and confider it as the utmost effort of my genius.

VOL. III.

S

Philo

Philofophers fay, that man is a micro

cofm, or little world, resembling in miniature every part of the great: and, in my opinion, the body natural may be compared to the body politick: and if this be fo, how can the epicurean's opinion be true, that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms; which I will no more believe, than that the accidental jumbling of the letters of the alphabet could fall by chance into a moft ingenious and learned treatise of philofophy. Rifum teneatis amici ? [HOR.] This falfe opinion muft needs create many more; it is like an error in the firft concoction, which cannot be corrected in the fecond; the foundation is weak, and whatever fuperftructure you raise upon it, muft of neceffity fall to the ground. Thus men are led from one error to another, until with Ixion they embrace a cloud instead of June; or like the dog in the fable, lose the substance in gaping at the fhadow. For fuch opinions cannot cohere; but like the iron and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, must separate and break in pieces. I have read in a certain author,

that

that Alexander wept, because he had no more worlds to conquer; which he needed not have done, if the fortuitous concourse of atoms could create one; but this is an opinion fitter for that many-headed beaft the vulgar to entertain, than for fo wife a man as Epicurus; the corrupt part of his fect only borrowed his name, as the monkey did the cat's claw to draw the chefnut out of the fire.

However, the first step to the cure is to know the disease; and though truth may be difficult to find, because, as the philofopher obferves, fhe lives in the bottom of a well, yet we need not, like blind men, grope in open day-light. I hope I may be allowed among fo many far more learned men to offer my mite, fince a ftander-by may fometimes perhaps fee more of the game, than he that plays it. But I do not think a philofopher obliged to account for every phænomenon in nature, or drown himself with Ariftotle, for not being able to folve the ebbing and flowing of the tide, in that fatal fentence he past upon himself, Quia te non capio, tu capies me. Wherein he was at once the $ 2

judge

judge and the criminal, the accufer and executioner. Socrates on the other hand, who faid he knew nothing, was pronounced by the oracle to be the wifeft man in the world.

But to return from this digreffion, I think it as clear as any demonftration in Euclid, that nature does nothing in vain ; if we were able to dive into her fecret receffes, we fhould find that the smallest blade of grass, or moft contemptible weed, has its particular use; but she is chiefly admirable in her minutest compofitions, the leaft and most contemptible infect most difcovers the art of nature, if I may fo call it, though nature, which delights in variety, will always triumph over art: and as the poet obferves,

Naturam expellas furca licet, ufque

recurret.

HOR.

But the various opinions of philofophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind, as Pandora's box did those of the body, only with this

difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom. And if truth be not fled with Aftrea, fhe is certainly as hidden as the fource of Nile, and can be found only in Utopia. Not that I would reflect on those wife fages, which would be a fort of ingratitude; and he that calls a man ungrateful, fums up all the evil that a man can be guilty of,

Ingratum fi dixeris, omnia dicis.

But what I blame the philofophers for (though fome may think it a paradox) is chiefly their pride; nothing lefs than an ipfe dixit, and you must pin your faith on their fleeve. And though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine fpun garment of the divine Plato. It is reported of this Diogenes, that when Alexander came to fee him, and promised to give him whatever he would afk, the cynick only answered, Take not from me what thou canst not give me, but Stand from between me and the light; which was almost as extravagant as the philofo

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pher