Page:Johnson - Rambler 4.djvu/93

 

 

Numb. 175. Tuesday, Nov 19, 1751.

 

Rari quippe boni, numero vix sunt totidem quot Thebarum portæ, vel divitis ostia Nili.	Juv.
Good men are scarce; the just are thinly sown: They thrive but ill, nor can they last when grown; And should we count them, and our store compile, Yet Thebes more gates could show, more mouths the Nile.	Creech.

 

NONE of the axioms of wisdom which recommend the ancient sages to veneration, seem to have required less extent of knowledge, or perspicacity of penetration, than the remarks of Bias, that οἱ πλέονες κακοί, the majority are wicked.

The depravity of mankind is so easily discoverable, that nothing but the desert or the cell can exclude it from notice. The knowledge of crimes intrudes uncalled and undesired. They whom their abstraction from common occurrences hinders from seeing iniquity, will quickly have their attention awakened by feeling it. Even he who ventures not into the world, may learn its corruption in his closet. For what are treatises of morality, but persuasives to the practice of duties, for which no arguments would be necessary, but that we are continually tempted to violate or neglect them? What are all the records of history, but narratives of successive villanies, of treasons and usurpations, massacres and wars?

But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare and abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truths in a few words.