I am not very patriotic in my notions, nor prejudiced in favour of my own countrymen; and one reason is, I wish to have as good an opinion as I can of human nature in general. If we are the paragons that some people would make us out, what must the rest of the world be? If we monopolize all the sense and virtue on the face of the globe, we ‘leave others poor indeed,’ without having a very great superabundance falling to our own share. Let them have a few advantages that we have not—grapes and the sun!
XXXVI
When the Persian ambassador was at Edinburgh, an old Presbyterian lady, more full of zeal than discretion, fell upon him for his idolatrous belief, and said ‘I hear you worship the sun!’—‘In faith, Madam,’ he replied, ‘and so would you too if you had ever seen him!’
XXXVII
‘To be direct and honest is not safe,’ says Iago. Shakspeare has here defined the nature of honesty, which seems to consist in the absence of any indirect or sinister bias. The honest man looks at and decides upon an object as it is in itself, without a view to consequences, and as if he himself were entirely out of the question; the prudent man considers only what others will think of it; the knave, how he can turn it to his own advantage or another’s detriment, which he likes better. His straightforward simplicity of character is the reverse of what is understood by the phrase, a man of the world: an honest man is independent of and abstracted from material ties. This character is owing chiefly to strong natural feeling and a love of right, partly to pride and obstinacy, and a want of discursiveness of imagination. It is not well to be too witty or too wise. In many circles (not including the night-cellar or a mess-table) a clever fellow means a rogue. According to the French proverb, ‘Tout homme reflechi est méchant.’ Your honest man often is, and is always set down as no better than an ass.
XXXVIII
A person who does not tell lies will not believe that others tell them. From old habit, he cannot break the connection between words and things. This is to labour under a great disadvantage in his transactions with men of the world: it is playing against sharpers with loaded dice. The secret of plausibility and success is point-blanc lying. The advantage which men of business have over the dreamers and sleep-walkers is not in knowing the exact state of a case, but in telling you with a grave face what it is not, to suit their own purposes. This is one obvious reason why students and book-worms are so often reduced to their last legs. Education (which is a study and discipline of abstract truth) is a diversion to the instinct of lying and a bar to fortune.
XXXIX
Those who get their money as wits, spend it like fools.