BOOK I.] LEARNING EXALTS MANKIND. 67 



inuring the mind to balance the reasons on both sides, and 

 reject the first offers of things, or to accept of nothing but 

 what is first examined and tried. It prevents vain admira 

 tion, which is the root of all weakness : things being admired 

 either because they are new, or because they are great. A3 

 for novelty, no man can wade deep in learning, without dis 

 covering that he knows nothing thoroughly ; nor can we 

 wonder at a puppet-show, if we look behind the curtain. 

 With regard to greatness ; as Alexander, after having been 

 used to great armies, and the conquests of large provinces in 

 Asia, when he received accounts of battles from Greece, 

 which were commonly for a pass, a fort, or some walled 

 town, imagined he was but reading Homer s battle of the 

 frogs and the mice ; so if a man considers the universal 

 frame, the earth and its inhabitants will seem to him but as 

 an ant-hill, where some carry grain, some their young, some 

 go empty, and all march but upon a little heap of dust. 



Learning also conquers or mitigates the fear of death and 

 adverse fortune, which is one of the greatest impediments to 

 virtue and morality ; for if a man s mind be deeply seasoned 

 with the consideration of the mortality and corruptibility f 

 things, he will be as little affected as Epictetus, who one day 

 seeing a woman weeping for her pitcher that was broken, 

 and the next day a woman weeping for her son that was 

 dead, said calmly, &quot; Yesterday I saw a brittle thing broken, 

 and to-day a mortal die.&quot; b And hence Virgil excellently 

 joined the knowledge of causes and the conquering of fears 

 together as concomitants : 



&quot; Felix qui potuit re rum cognoscere causas, 

 Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatuni, 

 Subjecit pedibus ; strepitumque Acherontis avari.&quot; 



It were tedious to enumerate the particular remedies 

 which learning affords for all the diseases of the mind, some 

 times by purging the morbific humours, sometimes by open 

 ing obstructions, helping digestion, increasing the appetite, 

 and sometimes healing exulcerations, &c. But to sum up 

 all, it disposes the mind not to fix or settle in defects, but to 

 remain ever susceptible of improvement and reformation j 



b See Epictetus, I nchir. c. 33, with the. gomment ot Simplicius. 

 . ii. 490, 



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