“Dominus novit cogitationes sapientum, quoniam vanae sunt.”

     ["The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.” 
     —­Ps. xciii.  II; or I Cor. iii. 20.]

These exquisite subtleties are only fit for sermons; they are discourses that will send us all saddled into the other world.  Life is a material and corporal motion, an action imperfect and irregular of its own proper essence; I make it my business to serve it according to itself: 

“Quisque suos patimur manes.”

     ["We each of us suffer our own particular demon.”—­AEneid, vi. 743.]

     “Sic est faciendum, ut contra naturam universam nihil contendamus;
     ea tamen conservata propriam sequamur.”

     ["We must so order it as by no means to contend against universal
     nature; but yet, that rule being observed, to follow our own.” 
     —­Cicero, De Offcc., i. 31.]

To what end are these elevated points of philosophy, upon which no human being can rely? and those rules that exceed both our use and force?

I see often that we have theories of life set before us which neither the proposer nor those who hear him have any hope, nor, which is more, any inclination to follow.  Of the same sheet of paper whereon the judge has but just written a sentence against an adulterer, he steals a piece whereon to write a love-letter to his companion’s wife.  She whom you have but just now illicitly embraced will presently, even in your hearing, more loudly inveigh against the same fault in her companion than a Portia would do;—­[The chaste daughter of Cato of Utica.]—­and men there are who will condemn others to death for crimes that they themselves do not repute so much as faults.  I have, in my youth, seen a man of good rank with one hand present to the people verses that excelled both in wit and debauchery, and with the other, at the same time, the most ripe and pugnacious theological reformation that the world has been treated withal these many years.  And so men proceed; we let the laws and precepts follow their way; ourselves keep another course, not only from debauchery of manners, but ofttimes by judgment and contrary opinion.  Do but hear a philosophical lecture; the invention, eloquence, pertinency immediately strike upon your mind and move you; there is nothing that touches or stings your conscience; ’tis not to this they address themselves.  Is not this true?  It made Aristo say, that neither a bath nor a lecture did aught unless it scoured and made men clean.  One may stop at the skin; but it is after the marrow is picked out as, after we have swallowed good wine out of a fine cup, we examine the designs and workmanship.  In all the courts of ancient philosophy, this is to be found, that the same teacher publishes rules of temperance and at the same time lessons in love and wantonness; Xenophon, in the very bosom of Clinias, wrote against the Aristippic virtue.  ’Tis not that there is any miraculous conversion in it that makes them thus wavering; ’tis that Solon represents himself, sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in that of a legislator; one while he speaks for the crowd, and another for himself; taking the free and natural rules for his own share, feeling assured of a firm and entire health: