21. Many other proceedings in the conduct of life, are condemned as vanity and impertinence, though not half so inconsistent with the character of man, nor so disagreeable to his present posture. The pens of moral writers have been all along employed against them who spent their short and uncertain lives, which ought to be spent in pursuing an infinitely higher interest, in gaping up and down after honour and preferments, in long and frequent attendances at court, in raising families, in getting estates, and the like. These are condemned not only for their particular viciousness, as crimes of ambition and covetousness, but for what they have all in common, as they are misspendings of time, and unconcerning employments. 22. Now I would fain know, whether any of these be more expensive of our time, more remote from the main business of life, and consequently more impertinent, than to be busily employed in the niceties and curiosities of learning? And whether a man that loiters away six weeks in court-attendances, be not every whit as _accountably_ employed, as he that spends the same time in solving a mathematical question, as Mr. _Des Cartes_ in one of his epistles confesses himself to have done? Why should the prosecution of learning be the only thing excepted from the vanities and impertinences of life? 23. And yet so it is. All other unconcerning employments are cried down merely for being so, as not consistent with the present state of man, with the character he now bears. This alone is not content with the reputation of innocence, but stands for positive merit and excellence. To say a man is a lover of knowledge, and a diligent enquirer after truth, is thought almost as great an encomium as you can give him; and the time spent in the study, though in the search of the most impertinent truth, is reckoned almost as laudably employed as that in the chapel. ’Tis learning only that is allowed (so inconsistent with itself is human judgment) not only to divide, but to devour the greatest part of our short life; and that is the only thing which with credit and public allowance stands in competition with the study of virtue: nay, by the most is preferred before it, who had rather be accounted learned than pious. *24. But is not this a strange competition? We confess that knowledge is a glorious excellence. Yet rectitude of will is a far greater excellence than brightness of understanding: and to be good, is a more glorious perfection than to be wise and knowing, this being if not the only, certainly the principal difference between an angel and a devil. _’Tis far better_, to use the expression of Mr. _Poiret_, _like an infant without much reasoning, to love much, than like the devil, to reason much without love_.