We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such
at least as would carry us farther than can be easily imagined: but it
is only the exercise of those powers which gives us ability and skill
in anything, and leads us toward perfection.
A middle-aged ploughman will scarce ever be brought to the carriage and
language of a gentleman, though his body be as well proportioned, and
his joints as supple, and his natural parts not any way inferior. The
legs of a dancing-master, and the fingers of a musician, fall, as it
were, naturally without thought or pains, into regular and admirable
motions. Bid them change their parts, and they will in vain endeavor
to produce like motions in the members not used to them, and it will
require length of time and long practice to attain but some degrees
of a like ability. What incredible and astonishing actions do we find
rope-dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to! not but that sundry
in almost all manual arts are as wonderful; but I name those which the
world takes notice of for such, because, on that very account, they
give money to see them. All these admired motions, beyond the reach
and almost the conception of unpractised spectators, are nothing but
the mere effects of use and industry in men whose bodies have nothing
peculiar in them from those of the amazed lookers-on.
As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it
is; and most even of those excellencies which are looked on as natural
endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the
product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated
actions. Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery, others for
apologues and apposite diverting stories. This is apt to be taken for
the effect of pure nature, and that the rather, because it is not got
by rules, and those who excel in either of them never purposely set
themselves to the study of it as an art to be learnt. But yet it is
true, that at first some lucky hit which took with somebody, and gained
him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts
and endeavors that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in
it without perceiving how; and this is attributed solely to nature,
which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that
natural disposition may often give the first rise to it; but that never
carries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone
that brings the powers of the mind as well as those of the body to
their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and
never produces anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of
discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same
matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but from
Westminster Hall to the Exchange will find a different genius and turn
in their ways of talking; and one can not think that all whose lot fell
in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred at
the university or inns of court.
To what purpose all this, but to show that the difference so observable
in men’s understandings and parts does not arise so much from the
natural faculties as acquired habits? He would be laughed at that
should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger at past
fifty. And he will not have much better success who shall endeavor at
that age to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never
been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all
the best precepts of logic or oratory. Nobody is made anything by
hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle
the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well
hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and
instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker,
or strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right
reasoning consists.
This being so, that defects and weakness in men’s understandings, as
well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own
minds, I am apt to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature,
and there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies
in want of a due improvement of them. We see men frequently dexterous
and sharp enough in making a bargain, who if you reason with them about
matters of religion appear perfectly stupid.