True misanthropy consists not in pointing out the faults and follies of men, but in encouraging them in the pursuit. They who wish well to their fellow-creatures are angry at their vices and sore at their mishaps; he who flatters their errors and smiles at their ruin is their worst enemy. But men like the sycophant better than the plain-dealer, because they prefer their passions to their reason, and even to their interest. XXXV 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