Sir,The other, to wit, Pyrrhon, being at sea and in great danger, by reason of a tempest that arose, took particular notice (as the story goes) of a hog that was on board, which all the while very unconcernedly fed upon some corn which lay scattered about; he showed it to his companions, and told them that they ought to acquire by reading and philosophy such an apathy and unconcernedness in all accidents and dangers as they saw that poor creature naturally have.
Some heavenly flame inspires your breast;
Live great, rejoice, and be for ever blest.
1
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Again, as it is with those that are indisposed and
out of order,—some, if a tooth or finger do but ache,
presently run to a physician; others send for one to their
houses, if they find themselves but the least feverish and
desire his advice and assistance; but those that are either
melancholical, or but any ways crazed in their heads, cannot endure so much as the looks of a physician, but either
keep out of sight when he comes or command him to be
gone, being altogether insensible of their condition,—so, in persons that commit any heinous crime or fall into
any error, I look upon those as perfectly incurable, who
take it ill to be admonished of their fault and look upon
reproof and admonition as the greatest rudeness and incivility in the world, whereas those that can quietly hearken
and submit to the advice of friends and superiors deserve
a more favorable opinion, and may be thought to be of a
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much better disposition. But the greatest character of
hopeful men, and such as may be probably excellent proficients in time, belongs to those who, upon a commission
of a fault, immediately apply themselves to such as will
reprove and correct them; who plainly disclose their grief
and open their malady; who do not rejoice in concealing
their distemper, and are not content to have their troubles
unknown; lastly, who make a full confession of what they
have done amiss, and desire the help of a friend to examine and direct them for the future. Diogenes, I am
sure, was of this opinion. He said, that whosoever would
be certainly and constantly in the right must get either a
virtuous good friend or an incensed ill-natured enemy to
his monitor; the one by gentle admonition to reprove and
persuade him, the other to work upon him by severity, and
awe him into a virtuous course of life.
There is a sort of men in the world, that are so vain and
foolish as to take a pride in being the first discoverers of
their own imperfections; if they have but a rent or spot
in their clothes, or have got a torn pair of shoes on, they
are the most forward of any to tell it in company; and
(which is more) they are very apt, out of a silly, empty,
arrogant humor, to make themselves the subject of their
drollery, if they are of a dwarfish stature or any way deformed; yet (which is strange) these very men, at the very
same time, endeavor to excuse and palliate the internal imperfections of the mind and the more ugly deformities of
the soul, as envy, evil-custom, detraction, voluptuousness,
&c., and will not suffer any one either to see or probe them.
These are, as it were, so many sore places, and they cannot
endure to have them touched and meddled with. Such
men as these (I may be bold to say) have very few signs
of proficiency, or rather none at all.
Now, on the contrary, he that examines his own failings
with the greatest severity, that impartially blames or corrects
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himself as often as he does amiss, or (which is almost
as commendable) grows firmer and better by present advice, as well as more able and ready to endure a reprimand for the future, seems to me truly and sincerely to
have rejected and forsaken vice.
It is certainly our duty to avoid all appearance of evil,
and to be ashamed to give occasion even to be reputed
vicious; yet evil reports are so inconsiderable to a wise
man, that, if he have a greater aversion to the nature of
evil than to the infamy that attends it, he will not fear what
is said of him abroad, nor what calumnies are raised, if so
be he be made the better by them. It was handsomely
said of Diogenes, when he saw a young spark coming out
of a tavern, who at the sight of him drew back: Do not
retire, says he, for the more you go backward, the more
you will be in the tavern. Even so every vicious person,
the more he denies and palliates vice, the more aggravates
and confirms it, and with surer footing goes farther into
wickedness; like some persons of ordinary rank and quality,
who, while they assume above themselves, and out of arrogance would be thought rich, are made really poor and
necessitous, by pretending to be otherwise.
Hippocrates, a man of wonderful skill in physic, was
very ingenuous in this point, and fit to be imitated by the
greatest proficients in philosophy. He confessed publicly,
that he had mistaken the nature of the sutures in the skull,
and has left an acknowledgment of his ignorance upon
record, under his own hand; for he thought it very unworthy a man of his profession not to discover where he
was in the wrong, seeing others might suffer and err by
his authority. And, indeed, it had been very unreasonable, if he, whose business and concern it was to save others
and to set them right, should not have had the courage to
cure himself, and to discover his weakness and imperfections in his own faculty.
[p. 467]
Pyrrhon and Bion (two eminent philosophers) have given
rules of proficiency; but they seem rather signs of a complete habit of virtue, than a progressive disposition to it.
Bion told his friend, that they then might be assured of
their proficiency, when they could endure a reproof from
anybody with the same indifferency and unconcernedness
as they could hear the highest encomiums, even such a
one as this of the poet:
1 Odyss. VI. 187; XXIV. 402.
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