By benefit of this, in little time he enlarged his knowledge to a great extent in every science. Himself, in the beginning of the treatise which he has composed of Content and Peace of Mind, makes mention of those collections, or common places, which he had long since drawn together for his own particular occasions; and it is from this rich cabinet that he has taken out those excellent pieces which he has distributed to posterity, and which give us occasion to deplore the loss of the residue, which either the injury of time, or the negligence of copiers, have denied to us. On this account, though we need not doubt to give him this general commendation, that he was ignorant of no sort of learning, yet we may justly add this farther,—that whoever will consider through the whole body of his works, either the design, the method, or the contexture of his discourses, whether historical or moral, or questions of natural philosophy, or solutions of problems mathematical; whether he arraigns the opinions of other sects, or establishes the doctrines of his own; in all these kinds there will be found both the harmony of order, and the beauty of easiness: his reasons so solid and convincing, his inductions so pleasant and agreeable to all sorts of readers, that it must be acknowledged he was master of every subject which he treated, and treated none but what were improvable to the benefit of instruction. For we may perceive in his writings the desire he had to imprint his precepts in the souls of his readers, and to lodge morality in families, nay even to exalt it to the thrones of sovereign princes, and to make it the rule and measure of their government. Finding that there were many sects of philosophers then in vogue, he searched into the foundation of all their principles and opinions; and not content with this disquisition, he traced them to their several fountains; so that the Pythagorean, Epicurean, Stoic, and Peripatetic philosophy, were familiar to him. And though it may be easily observed, that he was chiefly inclined to follow Plato, whose memory he so much reverenced, that annually he celebrated his birth-day, and also that of Socrates; yet he modestly contained himself within the bounds of the latter academy, and was content, like Cicero, only to propound and weigh opinions, leaving the judgment of his readers free, without presuming to decide dogmatically. Yet it is to be confessed, that in the midst of this moderation, he opposed the two extremes of the Epicurean and Stoic sects; both which he has judiciously combated in several of his treatises, and both upon the same account,—because they pretend too much to certainty in their dogmas, and to impose them with too great arrogance; which he, who, following the Academists, doubted more and pretended less, was no way able to support. The Pyrrhonians, or grosser sort of Sceptics, who bring all certainty in question, and startle even at the notions of common sense, appeared as