MR. WALLER.
We have day enough before us, for the business in hand. ’Tis true, this wood-land walk has not the charms, which you lately bestowed on a certain philosophical garden[16]. But the heavens are as clear, and the air, that blows upon us, as fresh, as in that fine evening which drew your friends abroad, and engaged them in a longer debate, than that with which I am now likely to detain you. For, indeed, I have only to lay before you the result of my own experience and observation. All my arguments are plain facts, which are soon told, and about which there can be no dispute. You shall judge for yourself, how far they will authorize the conclusion I mean to draw from them.
The point, I am bold enough to maintain against you philosophers, is, briefly, this; “That sincerity, or a scrupulous regard to truth in all our conversation and behaviour, how specious soever it may be in theory, is a thing impossible in practice; that there is no living in the world on these terms; and that a man of business must either quit the scene, or learn to temper the strictness of your discipline with some reasonable accommodations. It is exactly the dilemma of the poet,
Vivere si recte nescis, discede peritis;
of all which I presume, as I said, to offer my own experience, as the shortest and most convincing demonstration.”