And should not that physician be whipped, who wished the plague amongst us, that he might put his art in practice? I was never of that wicked humour, though common enough, to desire that the trouble and disorders of this city should set off and do honour to my government; I heartily contributed all I could to their tranquillity and ease. He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that accompanied my administration, cannot however deprive me of the share of it that belongs to me by the title of my good fortune. I am of such a composition, that I would as willingly be happy as wise; and had rather owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any operation of my own. I had sufficiently published to the world my unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse than incapacity; which is, that I am not much displeased at it, and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of life that I have proposed to myself. Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment, but I have very near arrived at what I expected from my own performance, and yet have much surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do: for I am apt to promise something less than what I am able to perform, and than what I hope to make good. I assure myself that I have left no impressions of offence or hatred behind me, and that I will leave a regret or desire of me amongst them. I at least know very well that I never much affected it. -Méne huic confidere monstro, Méne salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos Me dost thou bid to trust the treach'rous deep! And oft betray'd, not know the monster main ? The year cut ten days shorter. CHAPTER X. Of Cripples. IT is now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter in France. How many changes may we expect to follow this reformation? This was properly removing heaven and earth at once; and yet nothing stirs from its place: my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, and of trading, together with the lucky and unlucky days, just at the same instant, where they had time out of mind assigned them. There was no error perceived in our old usage, nor is there amendment found in the new. So great an uncertainty there is throughout; so gross, obscure, and dull is our perception! It is said, that this regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the Bissextile, which is upon the whole a day of hindrance and confusion, till we had exactly satisfied that debt; which is not performed neither by this correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear and surely by the same means care might be taken for the future, by ordering, that after the revolution of such a year, or such a number of years, this supernumerary day might be always eclipsed, so that we could not henceforward exceed four-andtwenty hours in our misreckoning. We have no other account of time but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only, and yet it is a measure that to this day we have not fixed upon; such a one, that we still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and what was the true use of it. What does this saying of some "That the heavens, in growing old, press "nearer towards us, and put us to an uncertainty "even of hours and days? And that which Plu mean, "tarch says of the months, that astrology had not, "in his time, determined the motion of the moon?" So, what a fine condition are we in to keep records of things past! of the hu ing, which causes of a I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a The vanity free and roving thing human reason is. I ordinarily man unsee, that men, in things proposed to them, are derstandmore curious to find out the reason of a thing, than often seeka to find out the truth of it. They slip over supposi- for the tions, but nicely examine consequences. They fact, before leave the things, and fly to the causes. Pleasant dis- there is a certainty putants! The knowledge of causes only concerns of such him who has the conduct of things, not us, who are fact. only to undergo them, and who have a full and complete use of them according to our need, with out penetrating into their original and essence. Neither is wine more pleasant to him that knows its first qualities. On the contrary, both the body and soul alter and interrupt the right they have of the use of the world, and of themselves, by mixing with it in the opinion of learning. Effects concern us, but the means not at all. To determine and to distribute appertain to the superior and the governor, as it does to the subject and the learner to accept it. Let me resume our custom. They commonly begin thus: "How is such a thing done?" Whereas they should say, "Is such a thing done?" By our talk we are able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation. Let the tongue run, it builds as well in a vacuum as on the earth; and with inanity as well as matter: Dare pondus idonea fumo.* And can give weight to smoke. I find, that almost throughout we should say, "there is no such thing;" and would myself oft make use of this answer, but I dare not; for they * Persius, sat. v. ver. 20. dit false miracles ed in the world. cry, it is a defect produced from ignorance and weakness of understanding. And I am forced, for the most part, to play the impertinent for company, and to prate of frivolous and idle subjects, of which I believe not a word. Besides, in truth, it is a little rude flatly to deny a proposition; and there are few people but will affirm, especially in things hard to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name such witnesses whose authority stops our contradiction. By this means we know the foundations and means of a thousand things that never were; and the world scolds about a thousand questions, of which the pro and con are both false. ` Ita finitima sunt falsa ceris, ut in præcipitem locum non debeat se sapiens committere :* "False things are so "like the true, that a wise man should not trust him"self upon the precipice." Truth and lies have the same aspect, their port, taste, and paces are the same, and we look upon them with the same eye. I find that we are not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but we seek and offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as a thing conformable to our being. What cre- I have seen the birth of many miracles of my time, which although they were still-born, yet have have gain- we not failed to foresee what they would have come to, had they lived. It is but finding the end of the clue, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater distance between nothing, and the minutest thing in the world, than there is between that and the greatest. Now, the first that are tinctured with this beginning of novelty, when they set out their history, find, by the opposition they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and caulk that place with some false piece. Besides that, Insita hominibus libidine alendi de industria rumores: "Men having a natural lust to propagate "reports," we naturally make a conscience of re *Cic. Acad. Quæst. lib. iv. cap, 21. storing what has been lent us, without some usury and addition of our own invention. Private error first creates public error; and afterwards, in turn, public error causes a particular one; thus all this fabric rises by patchwork from hand to hand, so that the remotest witness knows more than those that are nearest; and the last informed is more certain than the first. It is a natural progress; for whoever believes any thing, thinks it a work of charity to persuade another into the same opinion. Which the better to do, he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own invention, as he conceives necessary to obviate the resistance or want of conception he supposes in others. I myself, who make a particular conscience of lying, and am not very solicitous of gaining credit and authority to what I say, yet find, that in the arguments I have in hand, being warmed with the opposition of another, or by the proper heat of my own narration, I swell and puff up my subject by voice, motion, vigour, and force of words; and likewise by extension and amplification; not without prejudice to the naked truth: but I do it on condition nevertheless, that to the first who brings me to recollection, and who asks me the plain and real truth, I presently surrender, and deliver it to him without exaggeration, without emphasis, or any interlarding of my own. A quick and earnest way of speaking, as mine is, is apt to run into hyperbole. There is nothing to which men commonly are more inclined, than to give way to their own opinions. Where the ordinary means fail us, we add command and force, fire and sword. It is a misfortune to be at that pass, that the best touchstone of the truth, must be the multitude of believers, in a crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise. Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nihil sapere, vulgare. Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba:* "As if any thing were so common as * Cic. de Div. lib. ii. cap. 39. Item Aug. de Civit. Dei, lib. vi cap. 10. |