"Let us go and hear Socrates; there I will be a pupil with you";
and, maintaining this doctrine of the Stoic sect, "that virtue was
sufficient to make a life completely happy, having no need of any other
thing whatever"; except of the force of Socrates, added he.

That long attention that I employ in considering myself, also fits rile
to judge tolerably enough of others; and there are few things whereof I
speak better and with better excuse. I happen very often more exactly to
see and distinguish the qualities of my friends than they do themselves:
I have astonished some with the pertinence of my description, and have
given them warning of themselves. By having from my infancy been
accustomed to contemplate my own life in those of others, I have acquired
a complexion studious in that particular; and when I am once interit upon
it, I let few things about me, whether countenances, humours,
or discourses, that serve to that purpose, escape me. I study all,
both what I am to avoid and what I am to follow. Also in my friends,
I discover by their productions their inward inclinations; not by
arranging this infinite variety of so diverse and unconnected actions
into certain species and chapters, and distinctly distributing my parcels
and divisions under known heads and classes;

"Sed neque quam multae species, nec nomina quae sint,
Est numerus."

["But neither can we enumerate how many kinds there what are their
names."--Virgil, Georg., ii. 103.]

The wise speak and deliver their fancies more specifically, and piece by
piece; I, who see no further into things than as use informs me, present
mine generally without rule and experimentally: I pronounce my opinion by
disjointed articles, as a thing that cannot be spoken at once and in
gross; relation and conformity are not to be found in such low and common
souls as ours. Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every
piece keeps its place and bears its mark:

"Sola sapientia in se tota conversa est."

["Wisdom only is wholly within itself"--Cicero, De Fin., iii. 7.]

I leave it to artists, and I know not whether or no they will be able to
bring it about, in so perplexed, minute, and fortuitous a thing, to
marshal into distinct bodies this infinite diversity of faces, to settle
our inconstancy, and set it in order. I do not only find it hard to
piece our actions to one another, but I moreover find it hard properl