I forbore to heat my imagination with needless controversies, to discuss questions confessedly uncertain, and refrained steadily from gratifying my vanity by the support of falsehood.
By this method I am at length recovered from my argumental delirium, and find myself in the state of one awakened from the confusion and tumult of a feverish dream. I rejoice in the new possession of evidence and reality, and step on from truth to truth with confidence and quiet.
I am, SIR, &c.
PERTINAX.
Numb. 96. Saturday, February 16, 1751.
Quod si Platonis musa personat verum, |
Boethius. |
Truth in Platonick ornaments bedeck'd, |
I T is reported of the Persians, by an ancient writer, that the sum of their education consisted in teaching youth to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak truth.
The bow and the horse were easily mastered, but it would have been happy if we had been informed by what arts veracity was cultivated, and by what preservatives a Persian mind was secured against the temptations to falsehood.
There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth; the need of palliating our own faults, and the conve-
