To tell you my opinion now of the _liberal sciences_; I have no great esteem for any thing that terminates in profit or money; and yet I shall allow them to be so far beneficial, as they only _prepare_ the understanding without _detaining_ it. They are but the rudiments of wisdom, and only then to be learned when the mind is capable of nothing better, and the knowledge of them is better worth the keeping than the acquiring. They do not so much as pretend to the making of us virtuous, but only to give us an aptitude of disposition to be so. The _grammarian’s_ business lies in a _syntax_ of speech; or if he proceed to _history_, or the measuring of a _verse_, he is at the end of his line; but what signifies a congruity of periods, the computing of syllables, or the modifying of numbers, to the taming of our passions, or the repressing of our lusts? The _philosopher_ proves the body of the sun to be large, but for the true dimensions of it we must ask the _mathematician_: _geometry_ and _music_, if they do not teach us to master our hopes and fears, all the rest is to little purpose. What does it concern us which was the elder of the two, Homer or Hesiod? or which was the taller, Helen or Hecuba? We take a great deal of pains to trace Ulysses in his wanderings, but were it not time as well spent to look to ourselves that we may not wander at all? Are not we ourselves tossed with tempestuous passions? and both _assaulted_ by terrible _monsters_ on the one hand, and _tempted_ by _syrens_ on the other? Teach me my duty to my country, to my father, to my wife, to mankind. What is it to me whether Penelope was _honest_ or not? teach me to know how to be so myself, and to live according to that knowledge. What am I the better for putting so many parts together in _music_, and raising a harmony out of so many different tones? teach me to tune my affections, and to hold constant to myself. _Geometry_ teaches me the art of _measuring acres_; teach me to _measure my appetites_, and to know when I have enough; teach me to divide with my brother, and to rejoice in the prosperity of my neighbor. You teach me how I may hold my own, and keep my estate; but I would rather learn how I may lose it all, and yet be contented. “It is hard,” you will say, “for a man to be forced from the fortune of his family.” This estate, it is true, was my _father’s_; but whose was it in the time of my _grandfather_? I do not only say, what _man’s_ was it? but what _nation’s_? The _astrologer_ tells me of Saturn and Mars in _opposition_; but I say, let them be as they will, their courses and their positions are ordered them by an unchangeable decree of fate. Either they produce and point out the effects of all things, or else they signify them; if the former, what are we the better for the knowledge of that which must of necessity come to pass? If the latter, what does it avail us to foresee what we cannot avoid? So that whether