absurd to him on the other side; for there is a kind of positiveness in granting nothing to be more likely on one part than on another, which his Academy avoided by inclining the balance to that hand where the most weighty reasons, and probability of truth, were visible. The moral philosophy, therefore, was his chiefest aim, because the principles of it admitted of less doubt; and because they were most conducing to the benefit of human life. For, after the example of Socrates, he had found, that the speculations of natural philosophy were more delightful than solid and profitable; that they were abstruse and thorny, and much of sophism in the solution of appearances:—that the mathematics, indeed, could reward his pains with many demonstrations, but though they made him wiser, they made him not more virtuous, and therefore attained not the end of happiness: for which reason, though he had far advanced in that study, yet he made it but his recreation, not his business. Some problem of it was his usual divertisement at supper, which he mingled also with pleasant and more light discourses; for he was no sour philosopher, but passed his time as merrily as he could, with reference to virtue. He forgot not to be pleasant while he instructed, and entertained his friends with so much cheerfulness and good humour, that his learning was not nauseous to them; neither were they afraid of his company another time. He was not so austere as to despise riches, but, being in possession of a large fortune, he lived, though not splendidly, yet plentifully; and suffered not his friends to want that part of his estate which he thought superfluous to a philosopher. The religion he professed, to speak the worst of it, was heathen. I say, the religion he _professed_; for it is no way probable that so great a philosopher, and so wise a man, should believe the superstitions and fopperies of Paganism; but that he accommodated himself to the use and received customs of his country. He was indeed a priest of Apollo, as himself acknowledges; but that proves him not to have been a Polytheist.