“Cui cum tetigere parentem,
jam defecta vigent renovata robore membra:” 

["Whose broken limbs, when they touched his mother earth,
immediately new force acquired.”—­Lucan, iv. 599.]

does not this incorrigible coxcomb think that he assumes a new understanding by undertaking a new dispute?  ’Tis by my own experience that I accuse human ignorance, which is, in my opinion, the surest part of the world’s school.  Such as will not conclude it in themselves, by so vain an example as mine, or their own, let them believe it from Socrates, the master of masters; for the philosopher Antisthenes said to his disciples, “Let us go and hear Socrates; there I will be a pupil with you”; and, maintaining this doctrine of the Stoic sect, “that virtue was sufficient to make a life completely happy, having no need of any other thing whatever”; except of the force of Socrates, added he.

That long attention that I employ in considering myself, also fits rile to judge tolerably enough of others; and there are few things whereof I speak better and with better excuse.  I happen very often more exactly to see and distinguish the qualities of my friends than they do themselves:  I have astonished some with the pertinence of my description, and have given them warning of themselves.  By having from my infancy been accustomed to contemplate my own life in those of others, I have acquired a complexion studious in that particular; and when I am once interit upon it, I let few things about me, whether countenances, humours, or discourses, that serve to that purpose, escape me.  I study all, both what I am to avoid and what I am to follow.  Also in my friends, I discover by their productions their inward inclinations; not by arranging this infinite variety of so diverse and unconnected actions into certain species and chapters, and distinctly distributing my parcels and divisions under known heads and classes;

          “Sed neque quam multae species, nec nomina quae sint,
          Est numerus.”

     ["But neither can we enumerate how many kinds there what are their
     names.”—­Virgil, Georg., ii. 103.]

The wise speak and deliver their fancies more specifically, and piece by piece; I, who see no further into things than as use informs me, present mine generally without rule and experimentally:  I pronounce my opinion by disjointed articles, as a thing that cannot be spoken at once and in gross; relation and conformity are not to be found in such low and common souls as ours.  Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every piece keeps its place and bears its mark: 

“Sola sapientia in se tota conversa est.”

     ["Wisdom only is wholly within itself”—­Cicero, De Fin., iii. 7.]