more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendment found in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; so gross, obscure, and obtuse is our perception.  ’Tis said that this regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till we had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear:  and yet, by this means, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might be always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above four-and-twenty hours in our computation.  We have no other account of time but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only; and yet it is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one that we still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and what was the true use of it.  What does this saying of some mean, that the heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us, and put us into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarch says of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to the motion of the moon; what a fine condition are we in to keep records of things past.

I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing human reason is.  I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to them, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth:  they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes.  Pleasant talkers!  The knowledge of causes only concerns him who has the conduct of things; not us, who are merely to undergo them, and who have perfectly full and accomplished use of them, according to our need, without penetrating into the original and essence; wine is none the more pleasant to him who knows its first faculties.  On the contrary, both the body and the soul interrupt and weaken the right they have of the use of the world and of themselves, by mixing with it the opinion of learning; effects concern us, but the means not at all.  To determine and to distribute appertain to superiority and command; as it does to subjection to accept.  Let me reprehend our custom.  They commonly begin thus:  “How is such a thing done?” Whereas they should say, “Is such a thing done?” Our reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation:  let it but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth, and with inanity as well as with matter: 

“Dare pondus idonea fumo.”

          ["Able to give weight to smoke.”—­Persius, v. 20.]