failings, or deficiencies, or neglects, in yourself, which before escaped you. You will see the unreasonableness and vanity of your self-sufficiency, when you observe how much you are surpassed by others in knowledge and goodness. Their proficiency will make your defects the more obvious to you. And, by the lustre of their virtues, you will better see the deformity of your vices; your negligence, by their diligence; your pride, by their humility; your passion, by their meekness; and your folly, by their wisdom.

Examples not only move, but teach and direct much more effectually than precepts; and shew us, not only that such virtues may be practised, but how; and how lovely they appear when they are. And, therefore, if we cannot have them always before our eyes, we should endeavour to have them always in our mind; and especially that of our great Head and Pattern, who hath set us a lovely example of the most innocent conduct, under the worst and most disadvantageous circumstances of human life.

CHAP. V.

Of cultivating such a Temper as will be the best disposition to Self-Knowledge.

V. 'IF a man would know himself, he must, with great care, cultivate that temper which will best dispose him to receive this knowledge.'

Now, as there are no greater hinderances to self-knowledge than pride and obstinacy, so there is nothing more helpful to it than humility and an openness to conviction.

1. One, who is in quest of self-knowledge, must,

above all things, seek humility. And how near an affinity there is between these two, appears from hence, that they are both acquired the same way. The very means of attaining humility are the properest means for attaining self-knowledge. By keeping an eye every day upon our faults and wants, we become more humble; and, by the same means, we become more self-knowing. By considering how far we fall short of our rule and our duty, and how vastly others exceed us, and especially by a daily and diligent study of the word of God, we come to have meaner thoughts of ourselves; and, by the very same means, we come to have a better acquaintance with ourselves.

A proud man cannot know himself. Pride is that beam in the eye of his mind, which renders him quite blind to any blemishes there. Hence, nothing is a surer sign of self-ignorance than vanity and ostentation.

Indeed, true self-knowledge and humility are so necessarily connected, that they depend upon, and mutually beget each other. A man that knows himself, knows the worst of himself, and therefore cannot but be humble; and an humble mind is frequently contemplating its own faults and weaknesses, which greatly improves it in self-knowledge. So that self-acquaintance makes a man humble; and humility gives him still a better acquaintance with himself.

2. An openness to conviction is no less necessary to self-knowledge than humility.

As nothing is a greater bar to true knowledge than an obstinate stiffness in opinion, and a fear to depart from old notions, which (before we were capable of judging perhaps) we had long taken up for the truth; so nothing is a greater bar to self

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knowledge, than a strong aversion to part with those sentiments of ourselves which we have been blindly accustomed to, and to think worse of ourselves than we are used.

And such an unwillingness to retract our sentiments, in both cases, proceeds from the same cause, viz. a reluctance to self-condemnation. For he that takes up a new way of thinking, contrary to that which he hath long received, therein condemns himself of having lived in an error; and he that begins to see faults in himself he never saw before, condemns himself of having lived in ignorance and sin. Now this is an ungrateful business, and what self-flattery gives us a strong aversion to.

But such an inflexibility of judgment, and hatred of conviction, is a very unhappy and hurtful turn of mind. And a man, that is resolved never to be in the wrong, is in a fair way never to be in the right.

As infallibility is no privilege of the human nature, it is no diminution to a man's good sense or judgment to be found in an error, provided he is willing to retract it. He acts with the same freedom and liberty as before: whoever be his monitor, it is his own good sense and judgment that still guides him; which shines to great advantage in thus directing him against the bias of vanity and self-opinion. And in thus changing his sentiments, he only acknowledges that he is not, what no man ever was, incapable of being mistaken. In short, it is more merit, and an argument of a more excellent mind, for a man freely to retract when he is in the wrong, than to be overbearing and positive when he is in the right.

A man, then, must be willing to know himself, before he can know himself. He must open his

eyes, if he desires to see; yield to evidence and conviction, though it be at the expense of his judgment, and to the mortification of his vanity.

CHAP. VI.

To be sensible of our false Knowledge, a good step to Self-Knowledge.

VI. 'WOULD you know yourself, take heed and guard against false knowledge.'

See that the light that is within you be not darkness;' that your favourite and leading principles be right. Search your furniture, and see what you have to unlearn. For oftentimes there is as much wisdom in casting off some knowledge which we have, as in acquiring that which we have not; which, perhaps, was what made Themistocles reply, when one offered to teach him the art of memory, that he had much rather he would teach him the art of forgetfulness.'

A scholar, that hath been all his life collecting of books, will find in his library, at last, a great deal of rubbish; and, as his taste alters, and his judgment improves, he will throw out a great many as trash and lumber, which, it may be, he once valued and paid dear for, and replace them with such as are more solid and useful. Just so should we deal with our understandings; look over the furniture of the mind; separate the chaff from the wheat, which are generally received into it together; and take as much pains to forget what we ought not to have learned, as to retain what we ought not to forget. To read froth and trifles all our life, is the way always to retain a flashy and juvenile turn; and only to contemplate our first

(which is generally our worst) knowledge, cramps the progress of the understanding, and is a great hinderance to a true self-knowledge. In short, would we improve the understanding to the valuable purposes of self-knowledge, we must take as much care what books we read, as what company we keep.

"The pains we take in books or arts, which treat of things remote from the use of life, is a busy idleness. If I study (says Montaigne), it is for no other science than what treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to live and die well.'. Rule of Life.

It is a comfortless speculation, and a plain proof of the imperfection of the human understanding, that, upon a narrow scrutiny into our furniture, we observe a great many things which we think we know, but do not; and a great many things which we do know, but ought not; that of the knowledge which we have been all our lives collecting, a good deal of it is mere ignorance, and a good deal of it worse than ignorance. To be sensible of which is a very necessary step to self-acquaintance.-See part i. ch. 13.

CHAP. VII.

Self-Inspection peculiarly necessary upon some particular occasions.

VII. 'WOULD you know yourself, you must very carefully attend to the frame and emotions of your mind, under some particular incidents and occasions.'

Some sudden accidents which befal you when the mind is most off its guard, will better discover