and Philosophical Societies. 85 
rolls on beside him, and scarce accounts his turbid 
and frothy effusions among the number of its tribu- 
tary rills. In the mean time he grows more and 
more proud of what he knows, more and more for- 
getful of the extent of his ignorance. He 1s athirst 
for compliment and applause; and seeks to magni- 
fy the credit of the society to which he belongs, in 
proportion as his own reputation init is recognized. 
And if at length he approaches the top of the de- 
tached eminence on which he is stationed, he seems 
to fancy himself arrived at the pinnacle of know- 
ledge; unobservant of the distant hills which rise 
higher and higher around him, and lead on to moun- 
tains concealing their summits in the clouds. 
When vanity has thus taken possession of the 
head, it usually happens that darker passions become 
inmates of the heart. He who is puffed up with 
overweening ideas of his own merit easily proceeds, 
if it can indeed be called an additional step, to think 
contemptuously of others. The natural conse- 
quences of these dispositions are partiality, jealousy, 
envy, impatience of contradiction, unkind senti- 
ments towards the person differing in opinion, and 
a secret desire to detract from the credit of success- 
ful fellow-labourers in the field of literature and 
philosophy. ; 
The vanity by which, proportionally to the de- 
gree in which it exists, these most criminal tempers 
of the mind are fomented, is to be extinguished on- 
