And pray, Sir! I have been asked by more than one--do your orthodox never fall into mistake, nor rise into absurdity? They not only do both, but they admit it of each other very freely; individually, they are convinced of sin, but not of any particular sin. There is not a syndoxer among them all but draws his line in such a way as to include among paradoxers a great many whom I should exclude altogether from this work. My worst specimens are but exaggerations of what may be found, occasionally, in the thoughts of sagacious investigators. At the end of the {364} glorious dream, we learn that there is a way to Hell from the gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction: and that this is true of other things besides Christian pilgrimage is affirmed at the end of the Budget of Paradoxes. If D'Alembert[665] had produced _enough_ of a quality to match his celebrated mistake on the chance of throwing head in two throws, he would have been in my list. If Newton had produced _enough_ to match his reception of the story that Nausicaa, Homer's Phaeacian princess, invented the celestial sphere, followed by his serious surmise that she got it from the Argonauts,--then Newton himself would have had an appearance entered for him, in spite of the _Principia_. In illustration, I may cite a few words from _Tristram Shandy_:
"'A soldier,' cried my uncle Toby, interrupting the Corporal, 'is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a man of letters.'--'But not so often, an' please your honor,' replied the Corporal. My uncle Toby gave a nod."
I now proceed to die out. Some prefatory remarks will follow in time.[666] I shall have occasion to insist that all is not barren: I think I shall find, on casting up, that two out of five of my paradoxers are not to be utterly condemned. Among the better lot will be found all gradations of merit; at the same time, as was remarked on quite a different subject, there may be little to choose between the last of the saved and the first of the lost. The higher and better class is worthy of blame; the lower and worse class is worthy of praise. The higher men are to be reproved for not taking up things in which they could do some good: the lower men are to be commended for taking up things in which they can do no great harm. The circle problem is like Peter Peebles's lawsuit:
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"'But, Sir, I should really spoil any cause thrust on me so hastily.'--'Ye cannot spoil it, Alan,' said my father, 'that is the very cream of the business, man,--... the case is come to that pass that Stair or Arniston could not mend it, and I don't think even you, Alan, can do it much harm.'"
I am strongly reminded of the monks in the darker part of the Middle Ages. To a certain proportion of them, perhaps two out of five, we are indebted for the preservation of literature, and their contemporaries for good teaching and mitigation of socials evils. But the remaining three were the fleas and flies and thistles and briars with whom the satirist lumps them, about a century before the Reformation:
"Flen, flyys, and freris, populum domini male caedunt; Thystlis and breris crescentia gramina laedunt. Christe nolens guerras qui cuncta pace tueris, Destrue per terras breris, flen, flyys, and freris. Flen, flyys, and freris, foul falle hem thys fyften yeris, For non that her is lovit flen, flyys ne freris."[667]
I should not be quite so savage with my second class. Taken together, they may be made to give useful warning to those who are engaged in learning under better auspices: aye, even useful hints; for bad things are very often only good things spoiled or misused. My plan is that of a predecessor in the time of Edward the Second:
"Meum est propositum genti imperitae Artes frugi reddere melioris vitae."[668]
To this end I have spoken with freedom of books as books, of opinions as opinions, of ignorance as ignorance, of {366} presumption as presumption; and of writers as I judge may be fairly inferred from what they have written. Some--to whom I am therefore under great obligation--have permitted me to enlarge my plan by assaults to which I have alluded; assaults which allow a privilege of retort, of which I have often availed myself; assaults which give my readers a right of partnership in the amusement which I myself have received.
For the present I cut and run: a Catiline, pursued by a chorus of Ciceros, with _Quousque tandem? Quamdiu nos? Nihil ne te?_[669] ending with, _In te conferri pestem istam jam pridem oportebat, quam tu in nos omnes jamdiu machinaris!_ I carry with me the reflection that I have furnished to those who need it such a magazine of warnings as they will not find elsewhere; _a signatis cavetote_:[670] and I throw back at my pursuers--_Valete, doctores sine doctrina; facite ut proxima congressu vos salvos corporibus et sanos mentibus videamus._[671] Here ends the Budget of Paradoxes.
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