XXIV. And indeed, intellectual heaviness, is more difficult to be remedied than the other. I defy you to spur a slow understanding into reasoning with any agility; nor can you make it advance a step faster without causing it to stumble; and he who, left to his own natural heaviness, might possibly hit upon something right, if he is hurried, would be for ever making mistakes and blunders. Load such a man with political lessons, and you will find, that it would have the effect of a burden laid upon a dull beast; which would make him to move more heavily than he did before. While he is revolving in his mind precepts and examples, and examining them one by one, to determine which is adaptable to the circumstances and matter he is to determine upon, he lets slip the opportunity of giving his vote in the cabinet, or of acting in the business. XXV. But supposing the matter in question admits of delay, he will scarce find in all his expedients acquired by study, one, which in all its circumstances, will exactly quadrate with the case in debate, for the expecting to find repeated in their full extent, the same identical complex of accidents, is entertaining a metaphysical idea, and wandering out of the ordinary course of nature. It may be objected to this reasoning, that a person of ability, might modify and suit the doctrines he has been taught, by making a few alterations in them, to fit the case in question: I answer, that the same talents that it would require to do this, would enable him, without resorting to this auxiliary aid, to find out a proper expedient in the business himself. And it is worthy of observation, that an expedient, which a man who is to negotiate a business hits upon himself, although in general it may be inferior to one that might be acquired by study, still it may do better for that particular occasion, than the one of superior quality, which was the offspring of another understanding. There is no man whatever, who does not with more dexterity, carry into execution his own ideas, than those of other people; for these are plants which thrive but ill, when they are transplanted from their own native soil. Every one comprehends the force, the use, and the opportuneness of a maxim, which springs from the source of his own mind; and on account of the correspondence and agreement there is, between the reasoning and the operative faculties in one and the same person, a man’s head, accommodates itself well to the execution of the means, which his own understanding invented.