But Dr. Johnson must cordially have assented to Sir Thomas Browne's
inferential admonition. “Live,” says that Religious Physician and
Christian Moralist,—“live unto the dignity of thy nature, and leave it
not disputable at last whether thou hast been a man, or since thou art
a composition of man and beast, how thou hast predominantly passed thy
days, to state the denomination. Un-man not, therefore, thyself by a
bestial transformation, nor realize old fables. Expose not thyself by
fourfooted manners unto monstrous draughts and caricature
representations. Think not after the old Pythagorean concert what
beast thou mayest be after death. Be not under any brutal
metempsychosis while thou livest and walkest about erectly under that
scheme of man. In thine own circumference, as in that of the earth,
let the rational horizon be larger than the sensible, and the circle
of reason than of sense: let the divine part be upward, and the region
of beast below: otherwise it is but to live invertedly, and with thy
head unto the heels of thy antipodes. Desert not thy title to a divine
particle and union with invisibles. Let true knowledge and virtue tell
the lower world thou art a part of the higher. Let thy thoughts be of
things which have not entered into the hearts of beasts; think of
things long past, and long to come; acquaint thyself with the
choragium of the stars, and consider the vast expansion beyond them.
Let intellectual tubes give thee a glance of things which visive
organs reach not. Have a glimpse of incomprehensible, and thoughts of
things, which thoughts but tenderly touch. Lodge immaterials in thy
head, ascend unto invisibles; fill thy spirit with spirituals, with
the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion, and thy life with
the honour of God; without which, though giants in wealth and dignity,
we are but dwarfs and pygmies in humanity, and may hold a pitiful rank
in that triple division of mankind into heroes, men and beasts. For
though human souls are said to be equal, yet is there no small
inequality in their operations; some maintain the allowable station of
men, many are far below it; and some have been so divine as to
approach the apogeum of their natures, and to be in the confinium of
spirits.”
CHAPTER CCX.
A QUOTATION FROM BISHOP BERKELEY, AND A HIT AT THE SMALL CRITICS.
_Plusieurs blameront l'entassement de passages que l'on vient de voir;
j'ai prévu leurs dédains, leurs dégoûts, et leurs censures
magistrales; et n'ai pas voulu y avoir égard._
BAYLE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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