The most frequent reproach of the scholastick race is the want of
fortitude, not martial but philosophick. Men bred in shades and silence,
taught to immure themselves at sunset, and accustomed to no other weapon
than syllogism, may be allowed to feel terrour at personal danger, and
to be disconcerted by tumult and alarm. But why should he whose life is
spent in contemplation, and whose business is only to discover truth, be
unable to rectify the fallacies of imagination, or contend successfully
against prejudice and passion? To what end has he read and meditated, if
he gives up his understanding to false appearances, and suffers himself
to be enslaved by fear of evils to which only folly or vanity can expose
him, or elated by advantages to which, as they are equally conferred
upon the good and bad, no real dignity is annexed.
Such, however, is the state of the world, that the most obsequious of
the slaves of pride, the most rapturous of the gazers upon wealth, the
most officious of the whisperers of greatness, are collected from
seminaries appropriated to the study of wisdom and of virtue, where it
was intended that appetite should learn to be content with little, and
that hope should aspire only to honours which no human power can give or
take away[j].
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