draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and that, which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them, like an unready horse that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period,' but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. Certainly it is good to compound employments of both; for that will be good for the present, because the virtues of either age may correct the defects of both; and good for succession, that young men may be learners, while men in age are actors; and, lastly, good for extern2 accidents, because authority followeth old men, and favour and popularity youth; but, for the moral part, perhaps, youth will have the preeminence, as age hath for the politic. A certain Rabbin, upon the text, 'Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams,'3 inferreth that young men are admitted nearer to God than old, because vision is a clearer revelation than a dream; and, certainly, the more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth; and age doth profit* rather in the powers of understanding, than in the virtues of the will and affections. There be some have an over-early ripeness in their years, which fadeth betimes: these are, first, such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is soon turned; such as was Hermogenes the rhetorician, whose books are exceeding subtle, who afterwards waxed stupid: a second sort is of those that have some natural dispositions, which have better grace in youth than in age, such as is a fluent and luxurious speech, which becomes youth well, but not age; so Tully saith of Hortensius, 'Idem 1 Period. Completion; perfection. In light-conserving stones, the light will appear greater or lesser, until they come to their utmost period.'-Digby. 2 Extern. 3 Joel ii. 28. 4 Profit. External. 'When my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart, In compliment extern, 'tis not long after, But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve, For daws to peck at.'-Shakespere. To improve. That thy profiting may appear unto all men.' 1 Tim. iv. 15. It is a great means of profiting yourself to copy diligently excel lent designs.-Dryden. 5 Waxed. xiii. 46. To grow; to become. Paul and Barnabas waxed bold.'-Acts D D manebat, neque idem decebat:" the third is of such as take too high a strain at the first, and are magnanimous more than tract of years can uphold; as was Scipio Africanus, of whom Livy saith in effect, Ultima primis cedebant."" Many readers of Aristotle's admirable description (in the Rhetoric) of the Young and the Old, (in which he gives so decided a preference to the character of the young,) forget, that he is describing the same man at different periods of life, since the old must have been young. As it is, he gives just the right view of the character of the 'natural man,' (as the Apostle Paul expresses it,) which is, to become on the whole,-gradually 1 He remained the same; but the same was no longer becoming to him.'Cic. Brut. 95. 2 Tract. Course. 'My fansies all are fled, And tract of time begins to weave Grey haires upon my head.'-Lord Vaux. (This is supposed to be the original of Shakespere's 3The last fell short of the first.'-Livy, xxxviii. 53. worse, when no superior and purifying principle has been implanted. Some people fancy that a man grows good by growing old, without taking any particular pains about it. But The older the crab-tree the more crabs it bears,' says the proverb. Unless a correcting principle be engrafted, though a man may, perhaps, outgrow the vices and follies of youth; but other vices, and even worse, will come in their stead. If, indeed, a wilding tree be grafted, when young, with a good fruit tree, then, the older it is, if it be kept well pruned, the more good fruit it will bear. 'A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time?' Many are apt to overlook, with regard to mental qualifications, what Bacon has here said, that the junior in years may be the senior in experience. And this may be, not only from his having had better opportunities, but also from his understanding better how to learn from experience. Several different men, who have all had equal, or even the very same, experience, that is, have been witnesses or agents in the same transactions, will often be found to resemble so many different men looking at the same book: one, perhaps, though he distinctly sees black marks on white paper, has never learned his letters; another can read, but is a stranger to the language in which the book is written; another has an acquaintance with the language, but understands it imperfectly; another is familiar with the language, but is a stranger to the subject of the book, and wants power or previous instruction to enable him fully to take in the author's drift; while another again perfectly comprehends the whole. The object that strikes the eye is to all of these persons the same; the difference of the impressions produced on the mind of each is referable to the differences in their minds."1 And this explains the fact, which I have already touched upon in the notes on the Essay Of seeming Wise,' namely, the great discrepancy that we find in the results of what are called Experience and Common-sense, as contradistinguished from Theory. 1 Political Economy, Lect. iii. Men are apt not to consider with sufficient attention, what it is that constitutes Experience in each point; so that frequently one man shall have credit for much Experience, in what relates to the matter in hand, and another, who, perhaps, possesses as much, or more, shall be underrated as wanting it. The vulgar, of all ranks, need to be warned, first, that time alone does not constitute Experience; so that many years may have passed over a man's head, without his even having had the same opportunities of acquiring it, as another, much younger: secondly, that the longest practice in conducting any business in one way, does not necessarily confer any experience in conducting it in a different way e. g. an experienced Husbandman, or Minister of State, in Persia, would be much at a loss in Europe; and if they had some things less to learn than an entire novice, on the other hand they would have much to unlearn; and, thirdly, that merely being conversant about a certain class of subjects, does not confer Experience in a case, where the Operations, and the End proposed, are different. It is said that there was an Amsterdam merchant, who had dealt largely in corn all his life, who had never seen a field of wheat growing: this man had doubtless acquired, by Experience, an accurate judgment of the qualities of each description of corn,-of the best methods of storing it, of the arts of buying and selling it at proper times, &c.; but he would have been greatly at a loss in its cultivation; though he had been, in a certain way, long conversant about corn. Nearly similar is the Experience of a practised lawyer, (supposing him to be nothing more,) in a case of Legislation. Because he has been long conversant about Law, the unreflecting attribute great weight to his legislative judgment; whereas his constant habits of fixing his thoughts on what the law is, and withdrawing it from the irrelevant question of what the law ought to be ;-his careful observance of a multitude of rules, (which afford the more scope for the display of his skill, in proportion as they are arbitrary and unaccountable,) with a studied indifference as to that which is foreign from his business, the convenience or inconvenience of those Rules-may be expected to operate unfavourably on his judgment in questions of Legislation and are likely to counterbalance the advantages of his superior knowledge, even in such points as do bear on the question. : 'Again, a person who is more properly to be regarded as an antiquarian than anything else, will sometimes be regarded as high authority in some subject respecting which he has perhaps little or no real knowledge or capacity, if he have collected a multitude of facts relative to it. Suppose for instance a man of much reading, and of retentive memory, but of unphilosophical mind, to have amassed a great collection of particulars respecting the writers on some science, the times when they flourished, the numbers of their followers, the editions of their works, &c., it is not unlikely he may lead both others and himself into the belief that he is a great authority in that science; when perhaps he may in reality know-though a great deal about it-nothing of it. Such a man's mind, compared with that of one really versed in the subject, is like an antiquarian armoury, full of curious old weapons,-many of them the more precious from having been long since superseded, as compared with a wellstocked arsenal, containing all the most approved warlike implements fit for actual service. In matters connected with Political-economy, the experience of practical men is often appealed to in opposition to those who are called Theorists; even though the latter perhaps are deducing conclusions from a wide induction of facts, while the experience of the others will often be found only to amount to their having been long conversant with the details of office, and having all that time gone on in a certain beaten track, from which they never tried, or witnessed, or even imagined a deviation. So also the authority derived from experience of a practical miner, i. e. one who has wrought all his life in one mine,-will sometimes delude a speculator into a vain search for metal or coal, against the opinion perhaps of Theorists, i. e. persons of extensive geological observation. "It may be added, that there is a proverbial maxim which bears witness to the advantage sometimes possessed by an observant bystander over those actually engaged in any transaction: -The looker-on often sees more of the game than the players.' Now the looker-on is precisely (in Greek Oswpòs) the Theo rist. "When then you find any one contrasting, in this and in other subjects, what he calls 'experience,' with 'theory,' you will usually perceive on attentive examination, that he is in reality |