To Philosopher And Historian The

[the Sceptic] Must Acknowledge, If He Will Acknowledge Any Thing, That All Human Life Must Perish, Were His Principles To Prevail.all Discourse, All Action Would Immediately Cease, And Men Remain In A Total Lethargy, Till The Necessities Of Nature, Unsatisfied, Put An End To Their Miserable Existence.

Were A Stranger To Drop On A Sudden Into This World, I Would Show Him, As A Specimen Of Its Ills, A Hospital Full Of Diseases, A Prison Crowded With Malefactors And Debtors, A Field Of Battle Strewed With Carcasses, A Fleet Foundering In The Ocean, A Nation Languishing Under Tyranny, Famine, Or Pestilence. To Turn The Gay Side Of Life To Him, And Give Him A Notion Of Its Pleasures; Whither Should I Conduct Him? To A Ball, To An Opera, To Court? He Might Justly Think, That I Was Only Showing Him A Diversity Of Distress And Sorrow.

Nothing Is So Improving To The Temper As The Study Of The Beauties Either Of Poetry, Eloquence, Music, Or Painting.

The Greater Part Of Mankind May Be Divided Into Two Classes; That Of Shallow Thinkers Who Fall Short Of The Truth; And That Of Abstruse Thinkers Who Go Beyond It.

Nothing Is More Surprising Than The Easiness With Which The Many Are Governed By The Few.