I learnt it from the great master of life, EXPERIENCE: A doctor, little heard of in the schools, but of more authority with men of sense, than all the solemn talkers of the porch, or cloister, put together.
DR. MORE.
After much reserve, I confess, you begin to express yourself very clearly. But, good Sir, not to take up your conclusion too hastily, have the patience to hear—
MR. WALLER.
Have I not, then, heard, and sure with patience enough, your studied harangues on this subject? You have discoursed it, I must own, very plausibly. But the impression, which fine words make, is one thing, and the conviction of reason, another. And, not to waste more time in fruitless altercation, let ME, if you please, read you a lecture of morals: not out of ancient books, or the visions of an unpractised philosophy, but from the schools of business and real life. Such a view of things will discredit these high nations, and may serve, for the future, to amend and rectify all your systems.
DR. MORE.
Commend me to a man of the world, for a rectifier of moral systems!—Yet, if it were only for the pleasure of being let into the secrets of this new doctrine of Accommodation, I am content to become a patient hearer, in my turn; and the rather, as the day, which you see, wears apace, will hardly give leave for interruption, or indeed afford you time enough for the full display of your wit on this extraordinary subject.
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,