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military character. Men grew old in camps,
and acquired the highest renown by their war-
like achievements, without being once required
to face serious danger.

LORD MACAULAY :
Machiavelli, March, 1827.

ARROGANCE.

The study of art possesses this great and peculiar charm, that it is absolutely unconnected with the struggles and contests of ordinary life By private interests, by political questions, men are deeply divided and set at variance; but beyond and above all such party strifes they are attracted and united by a taste for the beautiful in art. It is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions, a taste able to exercise and to grat. ify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature,--the imagination and the judgment, love of emotion and power of reflection, the enthusiasm and the critical faculty, the senses and the reason. GUIZOT.

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety. DR. S. JOHNSON.

Life is, in fact, a system of relations rather than a positive and independent existence; and he who would be happy himself, and make others happy, must carefully preserve these relations. He cannot stand apart in surly and haughty egotism: let him learn that he is as much dependent on others as others are on him. A law of action and reaction prevails, from which he can be no more exempt than his more modest fellow-men; and, sooner or later, arrogance, in whatever sphere of the intellectual or moral development it may obtain, will, nay must, meet its appropriate punishment. The laws of nature, and the demonstrations of math-ertion of human nature; and what nature will ematics, are not more certain than those of our spiritual life, whether manifested in the individual or in society. Household Words.

But this evil of isolation belongs not exclusively to the one transcendent genius, or to the favoured few who have gained the highest eminences of thought or labour. Those who have advanced only a little way beyond their acquaintance in literary, artistic, or scientific attainments, are not a little proud of their acquisitions, and sometimes set up for much greater people than they really are. They claim privileges to which they have but a very slender title, if any, and become boastful, presumptuous, and overbearing. Alas! in the crudity of their knowledge, they are unaware of the lamentable extent of their ignorance, as also of the fatal boundary which necessarily limits the information of the most learned and the most knowing. They have not been taught with how much truth Socrates made the celebrated affirmation that " All he knew was that he knew nothing."

ART.

Household Words.

There is a great affinity between designing and poetry; for the Latin poets, and the designers of the Roman medals, lived very near one another, and were bred up to the same relish for wit and fancy. ADDISON.

Arts and sciences in one and the same century have arrived at great perfection; and no wonder, since every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies; the work then, being pushed on by many hands, must go forward.

DRYDEN.

The enemy of art is the enemy of nature. Art is nothing but the highest sagacity and ex

he honour who honours not the human?

LAVATER.

In no circumstance whatever can

man be

comfortable without art. The butterfly is independent of art, though it is only in sunshine that it can be happy. The beasts of the field can roam about by day, and couch by night on the cold earth, without danger to health or sense of misfortune. But man is miserable and speedily lost so soon as he removes from the precincts of human art, without his shoes, without his clothes, without his dog and his gun, without an inn or a cottage to shelter him by night. Nature is worse to him than a stepmother,-he cannot love her; she is a desolate and howling wilderness. He is not a child of nature like a hare. She does not provide him a banquet and a bed upon every little knoll, every green spot of earth. She persecutes him to death if he do not return to that sphere of art to which he belongs, and out of which she will show him no mercy, but be unto him a demon of despair and a hopeless perdition. RUSKIN.

The power, whether of painter or poet, to describe rightly what he calls an ideal thing, depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well, but either from actual sight, or sight of faith. RUSKIN.

Necessity and common sense produced all the common arts, which the plain folks who practised them were not idle enough to record. HORACE WALPOLE.

The object of science is knowledge; the objects of art are works. In art, truth is the means to an end; in science, it is the only end. Hence the practical arts are not to be classed among the sciences. WHEWELL.

ASSOCIATION.

Yes, Man is the slave of association; and if there ever once has existed an argumentum ad hominem for or against a thing or a person, it is more than probable that, in exact accordance to the personal argument, we shall love or hate that thing or person forever after. An infantine surfeit of oysters may so extend its influence over a whole life as to make us forever regard with aversion that admirable mollusc; a whipping at school, while we were learning Greek or English history, may, according to the period it was inflicted in, impart to us doubts of the justice of Aristides, or absolute nausea respecting the patriotic virtue of Hampden. On the other hand, it may be questioned whether the eulogists of Saint Dunstan, of Bloody Queen Mary, and other execrated notabilities, may not have had holidays and sugar-plums, or a plumcake from home, just at the moment when they were successfully getting over the Dunstan or Mary period. Household Words.

ASTROLOGY.

This considered together with a strict account and critical examen of reason, will also distract the witty determinations of astrology.

SIR T. BROWNE.

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We speak of a person as jovial, or saturnine, or mercurial. Jovial, as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star and the happiest augury of all. gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as be

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He strictly adviseth not to begin to sow being born under the planet Saturn, who was confore the setting of the stars; which, notwithstanding, without injury to agriculture cannot be observed in England.

SIR T. BROWNE: Vulgar Errors. Towards the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his perfect health, according to his nativity, which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that I predicted them. JOHN DRYDEN:

To his Sons, Sept. 3, 1697.

Astrology, however, against which so much of the satire [in Hudibras] is directed was not more the folly of Puritans than of others. It had in that time a very extensive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in minds which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous undertakings care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious planet; and when the king was prisoner in Carisbrook Castle, an astrologer was consulted what hour would be found most favourable to an escape.

DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Butler. Figure-flingers and star-gazers pretend to foretell the fortunes of kingdoms, and have no foresight in what concerns themselves.

L'ESTRANGE.

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sidered to make those that owned his influence, and were born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself. Another we call mercurial, that is light-hearted, as those born under the planet Mercury were accounted to be. R. C. TRENCH.

ASTRONOMY.

When a man spends his life among the stars and planets, or lays out a twelvemonth on the spots of the sun, however noble his speculations may be, they are very apt to fall into burlesque. ADDISON.

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Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences which Plato exhorted his disciples to learn, but for reasons far removed from common habits of thinking. Shall we set down astronomy," says Socrates, " among the subjects of study?" [Plato's Republic, Book VII.] "I think so," answers his young friend Glaucon : "to know something about the seasons, the months, and the years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and navigation." It amuses me," says Socrates, "to see how afraid you are lest the common herd of men should accuse you of recommending useless studies." He then proceeds, in that pure and magnificent diction which, as Cicero said, Jupiter would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to ex plain that the use of astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of life, but to assist in raising

the mind to the contemplation of things which are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone. The knowledge of the actual motions of the heavenly bodies Socrates considers as of little value. The appearances which make the sky beautiful at night are, he tells us, like the figures which a geometrician draws on the sand, mere examples, mere helps to feeble minds. We must get beyond them; we must neglect them; we must attain to an astronomy which is as in dependent of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of the lines of an ill-drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very nearly, if not exactly, the astronomy which Bacon compared to the ox of Prometheus [De Augmentis, Lib. 3, cap. 4], a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed with rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat. He complained that astronomy had, to its great injury, been separated from natural philosophy, of which it was one of the noblest provinces, and annexed to the domain of mathematics. The world stood in need, he said, of a very different astronomy, of a living astronomy Astronomia viva], of an astronomy

which should set forth the nature, the motion, and the influences of the heavenly bodies, as they really are. ["Que substantiam et motum et influxum cælestium, prout re vera sunt, proponat." Compare this language with Plato's, * Τα δ' έν τῷ οὐρανῷ εάδομεν."]

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LORD MACAULAY: Lord Bacon, July, 1837.

Against filling the heavens with fluid mediums, unless they be exceeding rare, a great objection arises from the regular and very lasting motions of the planets and comets in all manner of courses through the heavens.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

ATHEISM.

After having treated of these false zealots in religion, I cannot forbear mentioning a monstrous species of men, who one would not think had any existence in nature, were they not to be met with in ordinary conversation-I mean the zealots in atheism. One would fancy that these men, though they fall short, in every other respect, of those who make a profession of religion, would at least outshine them in this particular, and be exempt from that single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervours of religion. But so it is, that infidelity is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended on it.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 185. Atheism, by which I mean a disbelief of a Supreme Being, and consequently of a future state, under whatsoever titles it shelter itself, may likewise very reasonably deprive a man of this cheerfulness of temper. There is something so particularly gloomy and offensive to human nature in the prospect of non-existence,

that I cannot but wonder, with many excellent writers, how it is possible for a man to outlive the expectation of it.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 381.

A wise man, that lives up to the principles of reason and virtue, if one considers him in his solitude, as in taking in the system of the universe, observing the mutual dependence and harmony by which the whole frame of it hangs together, beating down his passions, or swelling his thoughts with magnificent ideas of Provi dence, makes a nobler figure in the eye of an intelligent being, than the greatest conqueror amidst all the pomps and solemnities of a triumph. On the contrary, there is not a more ridiculous animal than an atheist in his retireHis mind is incapable of rapture or elevation. He can only consider himself as an insignificant figure in a landscape, and wandering up and down in a field or a meadow, under the same terms as the meanest animals about him, and as subject to as total a mortality as they; with this aggravation, that he is the only one amongst them who lies under the apprehension of it!

ment.

In distresses, he must be of all creatures the most helpless and forlorn; he feels the whole pressure of a present calamity, without being relieved by the memory of anything past, or the prospect of anything that is to come. Annihilation is the greatest blessing that he proposes to himself, and a halter or a pistol the only refuge he can fly to. But, if you would behold one of these gloomy miscreants in his poorest figure, you must consider him under the terrors or at the approach of death.

ADDISON and STEELE: Tatler, No. 111.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind: and therefore God never wrought miracles to convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy convince atheism, because his ordinary works inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and and Deity. linked together, it must needs fly to providence LORD BACON :

Essay XVII.: Of Atheism.

They that deny a God destroy a man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys, likewise, magnanimity, and the raising human nature. LORD BACON :

Essay XVII.: Of Atheism.

Not that we are so low and base as their atheism would depress us; not walking statues of clay, not the sons of brute earth, whose final inheritance is death and corruption.

BENTLEY.

There are several topics used against atheism and idolatry; such as the visible marks of divine wisdom and goodness in the works of the creation, the vital union of souls with matter, and the admirable structure of animate bodies. BENTLEY.

The mechanical atheist, though you grant him his laws of mechanism, is inextricably puzzled and baffled with the first formation of animals. BENTLEY.

We may proceed yet further, with the atheist; and convince him that not only his principle is absurd, but his consequences also as absurdly deduced from it. BENTLEY.

Whatsoever atheists think on, or whatsoever they look on, all do administer some reasons for suspicion and diffidence, lest possibly they may be in the wrong; and then it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!

BENTLEY.

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All creatures ignorant of their own natures, could not universally in the whole kind, and in every climate and country, without any difference in the whole world, tend to a certain end, if some overruling wisdom did not preside over the world and guide them: and if the creatures have a Conductor, they have a Creator; all things are "turned round about by his counsel, that they may do whatsoever he commands them, upon the face of the world in the earth." So that in this respect the folly of atheism appears. Without the owning a God, no account can be given of those actions of creatures, that are an imitation of reason.

CHARNOCK: Attributes.

A secret atheism, or a partial atheism, is the spring of all the wicked practices in the world: the disorders of the life spring from the ill dispositions of the heart.

For the first, every atheist is a grand fool. If he were not a fool, he would not imagine a thing so contrary to the stream of the universal reason of the world, contrary to the rational dictates of his own soul, and contrary to the testimony of every creature, and link, in the chain of creation: if he were not a fool, he would not strip himself of humanity, and degrade himself lower than the most despicable

brute.

CHARNOCK: Attributes.

As when a man comes into a palace, built according to the exactest rule of art, and with an unexceptionable conveniency for the inhabitants, he would acknowledge both the being and skill of the builder; so whosoever shall observe the disposition of all the parts of the of seasons, the swarms of different creatures, world, their connection, comeliness, the variety and the mutual offices they render to one another, cannot conclude less, than it was contrived by an infinite skill, effected by infinite power, and governed by infinite wisdom. None can imagine a ship to be orderly conducted without a pilot; nor the parts of the world to perform their several functions without a wise guide; considering the members of the body cannot perform theirs, without the active presence of the soul. The atheist, then, is a fool to deny that which every creature in his constitution asserts, and thereby renders himself unable to give a satisfactory account of that constant uniformity in the motions of the creaCHARNOCK: Attributes.

tures.

History doth not reckon twenty professed atheists in all ages in the compass of the whole world: and we have not the name of any one absolute atheist upon record in Scripture: yet it is questioned, whether any of them, noted in history with that infamous name, were downright deniers of the existence of God, but rather because they disparaged the deities commonly worshipped by the nations where they lived, as being of a clearer reason to discern that those qualities, vulgarly attributed to their gods, as lust and luxury, wantonness and quarrels, were unworthy of the nature of a god.

CHARNOCK: Attributes.

Beyond all credulity is the credulousness of atheists, who believe that chance could make the world, when it cannot build a house.

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An atheist, if you take his word for it, is a very despicable mortal. Let us describe him by his tenet, and copy him a little from his own original. He is, then, no better than a heap of organized dust, a stalking machine, a speaking head without a soul in it. His thoughts are bound by the laws of motion, his actions are all prescribed. He has no more liberty than the current of a stream or the blast of a tempest; and where there is no choice there can be no merit. JEREMY COLLIER.

Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill living.

It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property. JEREMY COLLier.

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Atheists are confounded with Pantheists, such as Xenophanes among the ancients, or Spinoza and Schelling among the moderns, who, instead of denying God, absorb everything into him. FLEMING.

Those that would be genteelly learned need not purchase it at the dear rate of being atheists. GLANVILL.

Those the impiety of whose lives makes them regret a deity, and secretly wish there were none, will greedily listen to atheistical notions. GLANVILL.

Settle it therefore in your minds, as a maxim never to be effaced or forgotten, that atheism is

an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every useful restraint and to every virtuous affection; that leaving nothing above us to excite awe, nor round us to awaken tenderness, it wages war with heaven and with earth: its first object is to dethrone God, its next to destroy man.

ROBERT HALL: Modern Infidelity.

The atheists taken notice of among the ancients are left branded upon the records of history. LOCKE.

Men are atheistical because they are first vicious; and question the truth of Christianity because they hate the practice.

SOUTH.

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The system, then, of reasoning from our own conjectures as to the necessity of the Most High doing so and so, tends to lead a man to proceed from the rejection of his own form of Christianity to a rejection of revelation altogether. But does it stop here? Does not the same system lead naturally to Atheism also? Experience shows that that consequence, which reason might have anticipated, does often actually take place. WHATELY :

Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Atheism.

ATHENS.

Of remote countries and past times he [Johnson] talked with wild and ignorant presumption. "The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, " were a people of brutes, Adam Ferguson he used similar language. a barbarous people." In conversation with Sir

The boasted Athenians," he said, "were barbarians. The mass of every people must be barbarous where there is no printing." The fact was this: he saw that a Londoner who could not read was a very stupid and brutal fellow; he saw that great refinement of taste and activity of intellect were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read much; and, because it was by means of books that people acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with which he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of human mind can be cultivated by means of the strongest and clearest evidence, that the books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes; and the largest library to which he had access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak four or five times every month. phanes: he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristoand the paintings of Zeuxis: he knew by heart the choruses of Eschylus: he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the street reciting the shield of Achilles or the death of Argus; he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and war: he was a soldier, he was a judge, compelled every day to weigh trained under a liberal and generous discipline: the effect of opposite arguments. These things were in themselves an education; an education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to the manners. All this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who made his mark; much such a person as black Frank before he went to school; and far inferior to a parish clerk or a printer's devil.

LORD MACAULAY: Croker's Edition of Boswell's Johnson, Sept. 1831.

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