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The depravity of mankind is so easily discoverable, that nothing but the
desert or the cell can exclude it from notice. The knowledge of crimes
intrudes uncalled and undesired. They whom their abstraction from common
occurrences hinders from seeing iniquity, will quickly have their
attention awakened by feeling it. Even he who ventures not into the
world, may learn its corruption in his closet. For what are treatises of
morality, but persuasives to the practice of duties, for which no
arguments would be necessary, but that we are continually tempted to
violate or neglect them? What are all the records of history, but
narratives of successive villanies, of treasons and usurpations,
massacres and wars?
But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the
expression of some rare and abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension
of some obvious and useful truths in a few words. We frequently fall
into errour and folly, not because the true principles of action are not
known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may,
therefore, be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who
contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be
easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to
recur habitually to the mind.
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