I must confess there is nothing that more pleases me, in all that I read in books, or see among mankind, than such passages as represent human nature in its proper dignity.

5.  As man is a creature made up of different extremes, he has something in him very great and very mean:  a skilful artist may draw an excellent picture of him in either of these views.  The finest authors of antiquity have taken him on the more advantageous side.  They cultivate the natural grandeur of the soul, raise in her a generous ambition, feed her with hopes of immortality and perfection, and do all they can to widen the partition between the virtuous and the vicious, by making the difference betwixt them as great as between gods and brutes.

6.  In short, it is impossible to read a page in Plato, Tully, and a thousand other ancient moralists, without being a greater and a better man for it.  On the contrary, I could never read any of our modish French authors, or those of our own country who are the imitators and admirers of that trifling nation, without being for some time out of humour with myself, and at every thing about me.

7.  Their business is, to depreciate human nature, and consider it under its worst appearances.  They give mean interpretations and base motives to the worthiest actions; they resolve virtue and vice into constitution.  In short, they endeavour to make no distinction between man and man, or between the species of men and that of brutes.  As an instance of this kind of authors, among many others, let any one examine the celebrated Rochefoucault, who is the great philosopher for administering of consolation to the idle, the envious, and worthless parts of mankind.

8.  I remember a young gentleman of moderate understanding, but great vivacity, who, by dipping into many authors of this nature, had got a little smattering of knowledge, just enough to make an atheist or a free thinker, but not a philosopher or a man of sense.  With these accomplishments, he went to visit his father in the country, who was a plain, rough, honest man, and wise though not learned.  The son, who took all opportunities to shew his learning, began to establish a new religion in the family, and to enlarge the narrowness of their country notions; in which he succeeded so well, that he had seduced the butler by his table talk, and staggered his eldest sister.

9.  The old gentleman began to be alarmed at the schisms that arose among his children, but did not yet believe his son’s doctrine to be so pernicious as it really was, till one day talking of his setting-dog, the son said he did not question but Trey was as immortal as any one of the family; and in the heat of the argument told his father, that for his own part he expected to die like a dog.  Upon which the old gentleman, starting up in a very great passion, cried out, Then, sirrah, you shall live like one; and taking his cane in his hand, cudgeled him out of his system.  This had so good an effect upon him, that he took up from that day, fell to reading good books, and is now a bencher in the Middle Temple.