Those wise men might have their reasons for this different practice.
They most of them, I think, set up for Politicians and Legislators, as
well as Philosophers; and in that infancy of arts and commerce, when
distant nations had small intercourse with each other, it might be of
real advantage to them, at least it might serve their reputation with
the people, to spend some years in voyages to such countries as were in
the highest fame for their wisdom or good government.
Besides, the Sages of those times made a wondrous mystery of their
wisdom: a sure sign, perhaps, that they were not over-stocked with
it. It was confined to certain schools and fraternities; or was locked
up still more closely in the breasts of particular persons. Knowledge
was not then diffused in books and general conversation, as amongst
us; but was to be obtained by frequenting the academies or houses of
those privileged men, who, by a thousand ambitious arts, had drawn to
themselves the applause and veneration of the rest of the world.
All this might be said in favour of your Lordship’s old Sages. Yet one
of them, who deserved that name the best, was no great Traveller. I
remember to have read, that SOCRATES had never stirred out of _Athens_;
and that, when his admirers would sometimes ask him why he affected
this singularity, he was used to say, _That Stones and Trees did not
edify him_: intimating, I suppose, that the sight of fine towns and
fine countries, which the voyagers of those days, as of ours, made
a matter of much vanity, was the principal fruit they had reaped to
themselves from their fashionable labours.
However, allowing your lordship to make the most of these respectable
authorities for the use of travelling, it must still be remembered,
that they are wide of our present purpose. They were _Sages_, that
travelled: and we are now inquiring, whether this be the way for
young men to _become_ Sages. PLATO might pick up more learning in his
Voyages, than any body since has been able to understand; and yet a
youth of eighteen be little the wiser for staring away two or three
years in mysterious _Egypt_.