11. Timogenes took away the life of a young fellow in a duel, for having spoken ill of Belinda, a lady whom he himself had seduced in his youth, and betrayed into want and ignominy.  To close his character, Timogenes, after having ruined several poor tradesmen’s families, who had trusted him, sold his estate to satisfy his creditors; but, like a man of honor, disposed of all the money he could make of it, in paying off his play-debts, or, to speak in his own language, his debts of honor.

12.  In the third place, we are to consider those persons, who treat this principle as chimerical, and turn it into ridicule.  Men who are professedly of no honour, are of a more profligate and abandoned nature, than even those who are actuated by false notions of it, as there is more hope of a heretic than of an atheist.  These sons of infamy consider honor with old Syphax, in the play before mentioned, as a fine imaginary notion, that leads astray young unexperienced men, and draws them into real mischief, while they are engaged in the pursuits of a shadow.

13.  These are generally persons, who, in Shakspeare’s phrase, are worn and hackney’d in the ways of men; whose imaginations are grown callous, and have lost all those delicate sentiments which are natural to minds that are innocent and undepraved.  Such old battered miscreants ridicule every thing as romantic, that comes in competition with their present interest, and treat those persons as visionaries who dare stand up in a corrupt age, for what has not its immediate reward joined to it.

14.  The talents, interest, or experience of such men, make them very often useful in all parties, and at all times.  But whatever wealth and dignities they may arrive at, they ought to consider, that every one stands as a blot in the annals of his country, who arrives at the temple of honor by any other way than through that of virtue.

GUARDIAN, Vol.  II.  No. 161.

Human Nature.

Mr. SPECTATOR,

1.  ’I have always been a very great lover of your speculations, as well in regard to the subject, as to your manner of treating it.  Human nature I always thought the most useful object of human reason, and to make the consideration of it pleasant and entertaining, I always thought the best employment of human wit:  other parts of philosophy may make us wiser, but this not only answers that end, but makes us better too.

2.  ’Hence it was that the oracle pronounced Socrates the wisest of all men living, because he judiciously made choice of human nature for the object of his thoughts; an enquiry into which as much exceeds all other learning, as it is of more consequence to adjust the true nature and measures of right and wrong, than to settle the distance of the planets, and compute the times of their circumvolutions.

3.  ’One good effect that will immediately arise from a near observation of human nature, is, that we shall cease to wonder at those actions which men are used to reckon wholly unaccountable; for as nothing is produced without a cause, so by observing the nature and course of the passions, we shall be able to trace every action from its first conceptions to its death.