Without doubt, there is no extending our acquaintance with the world, but we run the risk of catching its vices, as well as virtues. Yet, push this conclusion as far as it will go, and you shut up mankind in absolute and incurable barbarism. Such is the unhappy condition of human nature, that in striving to cultivate its powers, you furnish the opportunities, at least, of its corruption. Yet to leave it in that sordid state, for fear of those abuses, is methinks but acting with the weak apprehension of fond mothers; who deny their children the liberty of stirring from the fire-side, for fear of the dirt or damp air, which, in their field-exercises, may chance to incommode them.
MR. LOCKE.
The allusion would be apt, if the health of the mind, as of the body, depended on the use of such liberty; or if it were true, that one could as little help breathing the air of vice, as that of the heavens. But, though I have heard much of the dangers to which Virtue is exposed in this bad world, I have never understood that Vice is its proper element.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
Yet methinks, Sir, it will be hard to keep clear of it in any part of the world, that I am acquainted with: unless perhaps you take this happy Island of ours to be as free from Vice, as a Neighbouring one, they say, is from Venom.
MR. LOCKE.
There are, however, degrees in Vice, as well as varieties of it; and I cannot think it necessary for us to be greater proficients than we are, or to import new species of it; by rambling into countries where it may chance to rage with greater virulence, or where such modes of it, at least, prevail, as are luckily unknown to us. And such, I doubt, were the fruits of our Italian and French travels.
But allowing that Vice were of every clime, the same every where, and equally malignant, I should still imagine our youth to be safer from the infection at home, under the eye and wing of their own parents or families, than wandering at large in foreign countries, with as little care of others, as prudence of their own, to guard them from this danger.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
Yes, if they were turned loose into this wicked world, and left to their own devices. But, what if some sage Philosopher—