Advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unexpected regret,
or convicts us of any fault which had escaped our notice, but because it
shews us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves; and the
officious monitor is persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation
is false, but because he assumes that superiority which we are not
willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desired to
conceal.
For this reason advice is commonly ineffectual. If those who follow the
call of their desires, without inquiry whither they are going, had
deviated ignorantly from the paths of wisdom, and were rushing upon
dangers unforeseen, they would readily listen to information that recals
them from their errours, and catch the first alarm by which destruction
or infamy is denounced. Few that wander in the wrong way mistake it for
the right, they only find it more smooth and flowery, and indulge their
own choice rather than approve it: therefore few are persuaded to quit
it by admonition or reproof, since it impresses no new conviction, nor
confers any powers of action or resistance. He that is gravely informed
how soon profusion will annihilate his fortune, hears with little
advantage what he knew before, and catches at the next occasion of
expense, because advice has no force to suppress his vanity.
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