VIII. There are qualities also, which give people the reputation of able and learned men, when in reality they are quite the reverse. Gravity and circumspection, whether they are natural or artificial, contribute much to produce this effect. Gravity, says Magdalen Scuderi in one of her moral conversations, is a bodily mystery, invented to conceal the defects of the mind; and if it is carried to excess, elevates the person who wears this appearance, to the rank of an oracle. But I can see no reason why a person on this account, should be esteemed more than a man, because that the nearer he resembles a statue, he in reality is by so much less than a man; nor why risibility, being the distinguished mark of rationality, he should be esteemed the most rational, who is the least addicted to laughter. The ingenious French author Montaigne, says pleasantly, that among the whole brute creation, there is no animal so grave as an ass. IX. Aristotle considered melancholy as a token of ingenuity. But I can’t tell why he did this; for every day’s experience convinces us, that there are melancholy people who are very dull and stupid. If we were to judge of things as they appear to us at first sight, we might be easily induced to confound the stupid with the thoughtful, and to mistake the one for the other. People of dark and gloomy geniuses, have in some measure, the air and appearance of profound thinkers; but if we reflect, we shall be convinced, that insociability is not a characteristic quality appertaining to a rational being. In those who look as if they were always absorbed in thought, the negotiation or operation of the interior part of the soul seems to be inverted. Instead of the understanding surveying and contemplating the species, the species seem to seize upon, and take possession of the understanding; and instead of the mind being master of the object, the object appears as if it was master of the mind; and the species that appear to seize upon it seem as if they bound it down, and kept it confined. A person in this state should not be said to be contemplative, but ought more properly to be compared to a man that is stunned; the immobility of whose thoughts, keeps his reason in a state of suspence. I observe, that there is no brute of a more festive and sociable disposition than a dog; and that there is no one which is endued with a more noble instinct; yet, maugre this experience, I look upon the opposite extreme to excessive gravity to be the worst symptom of the two; for men who are always giggling and bantering, are generally very superficial.