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 <gr> oi pleones cacoioe, "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. We
frequently fall into errour and folly, not because
the true principles of action are not known, but
because, for a time, they are not remembered;
and he may therefore be justly numbered among
the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great
rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily
impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent
recollection to recur habitually to the mind.
However those who have passed through half the
life of man, may now wonder that any should require
to be cautioned against corruption, they will
find that they have themselves purchased their
conviction by many disappointments and vexations
which an earlier knowledge would have spared them;
and may see, on every side, some entangling themselves
in perplexities, and some sinking into ruin,
by ignorance or neglect of the maxim of Bias.
Every day sends out, in quest of pleasure and
distinction, some heir fondled in ignorance, and
flattered into pride. He comes forth with all the
confidence of a spirit unacquainted with superiors, and
all the benevolence of a mind not yet irritated by
opposition, alarmed by fraud, or embittered by
cruelty. He loves all, because he imagines himself
the universal favourite. Every exchange of salutation
produces new acquaintance, and every acquaintance
kindles into friendship.
Every season brings a new flight of beauties into
the world, who have hitherto heard only of their own
charms, and imagine that the heart feels no passion
but that of love. They are soon surrounded by
admirers whom they credit, because they tell them
only what is heard with delight. Whoever gazes
upon them is a lover; and whoever forces a sigh, is
pining in despair.
He surely is a useful monitor, who inculcates to
these thoughtless strangers, that the MAJORITY ARE
WICKED; who informs them, that the train which
wealth and beauty draw after them, is lured only
by the scent of prey; and that, perhaps, among all
those who crowd about them with professions and
flatteries, there is not one who does not hope for
some opportunity to devour or betray them, to glut
himself by their destruction, or to share their spoils
with a stronger savage.
Virtue presented singly to the imagination or the
reason, is so well recommended by its own graces,
and so strongly supported by arguments, that a
good man wonders how any can be bad; and they
who are ignorant of the force of passion and interest,
who never observed the arts of seduction, the
contagion of example, the gradual descent from one
crime to another, or the insensible depravation
of the principles by loose conversation, naturally
expect to find integrity in every bosom, and
veracity on every tongue.
It is, indeed, impossible not to hear from those
who have lived longer, of wrongs and falsehoods,
of violence and circumvention; but such narratives
are commonly regarded by the young, the heady,
and the confident, as nothing more than the murmurs
of peevishness, or the dreams of dotage; and,
notwithstanding all the documents of hoary wisdom,
we commonly plunge into the world fearless and
credulous, without any foresight of danger, or
apprehension of deceit.
I have remarked, in a former paper, that credulity
is the common failing of unexperienced virtue; and
that he who is spontaneously suspicious, may be
justly charged with radical corruption; for, if he has
not known the prevalence of dishonesty by information,
nor had time to observe it with his own eyes,
whence can he take his measures of judgment but
from himself?
They who best deserve to escape the snares of
artifice, are most likely to be entangled. He that
endeavours to live for the good of others, must
always be exposed to the arts of them who live only
for themselves, unless he is taught by timely
precepts the caution required in common transactions,
and shewn at a distance the pitfalls of treachery.
To youth, therefore, it should be carefully
inculcated, that, to enter the road of life without caution
or reserve, in expectation of general fidelity and
justice, is to launch on the wide ocean without the
instruments of steerage, and to hope that every wind
will be prosperous, and that every coast will afford
a harbour.
To enumerate the various motives to deceit and
injury, would be to count all the desires that prevail
among the sons of men; since there is no ambition
however petty, no wish however absurd, that
by indulgence will not be enabled to overpower the
influence of virtue. Many there are, who openly and
almost professedly regulate all their conduct by their
love of money; who have no other reason for action
or forbearance, for compliance or refusal, than that
they hope to gain more by one than by the other.
These are indeed the meanest and cruellest of human
beings, a race with whom, as with some pestiferous
animals, the whole creation seems to be at war; but
who, however detested or scorned, long continue to
add heap to heap, and when they have reduced one
to beggary, are still permitted to fasten on another.
Others, yet less rationally wicked, pass their lives
in mischief, because they cannot bear the sight of
success, and mark out every man for hatred, whose
fame or fortune they believe increasing.
Many who have not advanced to these degrees
of guilt are yet wholly unqualified for friendship,
and unable to maintain any constant or regular
course of kindness. Happiness may be destroyed
not only by union with the man who is apparently
the slave of interest, but with whom a wild opinion
of the dignity of perseverance, in whatever cause,
disposes to pursue every injury with unwearied and
perpetual resentment; with him whose vanity inclines
him to consider every man as a rival in every
pretension; with him whose airy negligence puts
his friend's affairs or secrets in continual hazard,
and who thinks his forgetfulness of others excused
by his inattention to himself; and with him whose
inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of
choice through varieties of friendship, and who
adopts and dismisses favourites by the sudden
impulse of caprice.
Thus numerous are the dangers to which the
converse of mankind exposes us, and which can be
avoided only by prudent distrust. He therefore that,
remembering this salutary maxim, learns early to
withhold his fondness from fair appearances, will
have reason to pay some honours to Bias of Priene,
who enabled him to become wise without the cost
of experience.