Every condition has, with regard to this life, its inconveniences, and every condition has likewise its advantages; though its position to the eye of the beholder may be so varied, as that at some times the misery may be concealed, and at other times the happiness; but to judge only by the eye, is not the way to discover truth. We may pass by men, without being able to distinguish whether they are to be numbered among those whose felicities, or whose sorrows, preponderate; as we may walk over the ground, without knowing, whether its entrails contain mines of gold, or beds of sand.

Nor is it less certain, that, with respect to the more important prospects of a future state, the same impartiality of distribution may be generally remarked; every condition of humanity, being exposed on one side, and guarded on the other; so that every man is burthened, though none are overwhelmed; every man is obliged to vigilance, but none are harrassed beyond their strength. The great business therefore of every man is to look diligently round him, that he may note the approaches of the enemy; and to bar the avenues of temptation, which the particular circumstances of his life are most likely to lay open; and to keep his heart in perpetual alarm against those sins which constantly besiege him.2 If he be rich, let him beware, lest when he is “full, he deny God,” and say, “who is the Lord?” If he be poor, let him cautiously avoid to “steal,” and, “take the name” of his “God in vain.”3

There are some conditions of humanity, which are made particularly dangerous by an uncommon degree of seeming security; conditions, in which we appear so compleatly fortified, that we have little to dread, and therefore give ourselves up too readily to negligence and supineness;4 and are destroyed without precaution, because we flattered ourselves, that destruction could not approach us. This fatal slumber of treacherous tranquillity may be produced and prolonged by many causes, by causes as various as the situations of life. Our condition may be such, as may place us out of the reach of those general admonitions, by which the rest of mankind are reminded of their errours, and awakened to their duty; it may remove us to a great distance from the common incitements to common wickedness, and therefore may superinduce a forgetfulness of our natural frailties, and suppress all suspicions of the encroachments of sin.-And the sin to which we are particularly tempted may be of that insidious and seductive kind, as, that without alarming us by the horrours of its appearance, and shocking us with the enormity of any single acts, may, by slow advances, possess the soul, and in destroying us differ only from the atrociousness of more apparent wickedness, as a lingering poison differs from the sword; more difficultly5 avoided, and more certainly fatal.

To temptations of this subtle insinuating kind, the life of men of learning seems above all others to be exposed. As they are themselves appointed the teachers of others, they very rarely have the dangers of their own state set before them; as they are, by their abstraction and retirement, secluded from the gaieties, the luxuries, and the pageantries of life, they are willingly persuaded to believe, that because they are at a great distance from the rocks on which conscience is most frequently wrecked, that therefore they sail with safety, and may give themselves to the wind, without a compass.6 The crimes, from which they are in danger, are not those from which the mind has been taught to shrink away with horrour, or against which, the invectives of moral or theological writers have generally been directed; and therefore they are suffered to approach unregarded, to gain ground imperceptibly upon minds directed to different views; and to fix themselves at leisure in the heart, where perhaps they are scarcely discovered ’till they are past eradication.

To these causes, or to some of these, it must surely be imputed, that learning is found so frequently to fail in the direction of life; and to operate so faintly and uncertainly in the regulation of their conduct, who are most celebrated for their application and proficiency. They have been betrayed, by some false security, to with-hold their attention from their own lives; they have grown knowing, without growing virtuous; and have failed of the wisdom which is the gift of the Father of lights,7 because they have thought it unnecessary to seek it, with that anxiety and importunity, to which only it is granted; they have trusted to their own powers, and were “wise in their own conceits.”8

There is perhaps no class of men, to whom the precept given by the Apostle to his converts against too great confidence in their understandings, may be more properly inculcated, than those who are dedicated to the profession of literature; and are therefore necessarily advanced to degrees of knowledge above them who are dispersed among manual occupations, and the vulgar parts of life; whose attention is confined within the narrow limits of their own employments, and who have not often leisure to think of more than the means of relieving their own wants, by supplying the demands of others.

With these, and such as these, placed sometimes, by whatever means, in much higher stations, a man of learning has such frequent opportunities of comparing himself; and is so strongly incited, by that comparison, to indulge the contemplation of his own superiority; that it is not to be considered as wonderful, that vanity creeps in upon him; that he does not willingly withdraw his imagination from objects that so much flatter his passions, that he pursues the train of thought, from one reflection to another, places himself and others, in every situation, in which he can appear with advantage in his own eyes; rises to comparisons with still higher characters, and still retains the habit of giving himself the preference; and in all disputable cases turns the balance in his own favour, by super-adding, from his own conceit, that wisdom, which by nature he does not possess, or by industry he has not acquired.9

This wisdom in his own conceit is very easily at first mistaken for qualities, not in themselves criminal, nor in themselves dangerous; nor is it easy to fix the limits, in speculation, between a resolute adherence to that which appears truth, and an obstinate obtrusion of peculiar notions upon the understanding of others; between the pleasure that naturally arises from the enlargement of the mind, and increase of knowledge, and that which proceeds from a contempt of others, and the insolent triumphs of intellectual superiority. Yet though the confines of these qualities are nearly alike, their extremes are widely different, and it will soon be discovered, how much evil is avoided by repressing that opinion of ourselves, which vanity suggests; and that confidence, which is gained only “by measuring ourselves by ourselves,”1 dwelling on our own excellence, and flattering ourselves with secret panegyricks.

As this false claim to wisdom, is the source of many faults, as well as miseries, to men of learning, it seems of the utmost importance, to obviate it in the young, who may be imagined to be very little tainted, and suppress it in others, whose greater advances, and more extensive reputation, have more endangered them; nor can any man think himself so innocent of this fault, or so secure from it, as that it should be unnecessary for him to consider, First, the dangers, which men of learning incur, by being wise in their own conceits.

Secondly, the proper means, by which that pernicious conceit of wisdom may be avoided or suppressed.

In order to state with more accuracy the dangers which men, dedicated to learning, may be reasonably imagined to incur, by being wise in their own conceits; it is necessary to distinguish the different periods of their lives; and to examine, whether this disposition is not in its tendency equally opposite to our duty, and, by inevitable consequence in its effects, equally destructive of our happiness, in every state.

The business of the life of a scholar is to accumulate, and to diffuse, knowledge; to learn, in order that he may teach. The first part of his time is assigned to study, and the acquisition of learning; the latter, to the practice of those arts which he has acquired, and to the instruction of others who have had less time, or opportunities, or abilities, for improvement. In the state therefore of a learner, or of a teacher, the man of letters is always to be considered; and if it shall appear, that, on whatever part of his task he is employed, a false opinion of his own excellence will naturally and certainly defeat his endeavours;2 it may be hoped, that there will be found sufficient reason, why no man should “be wise in his own conceit.”

Since no man can teach what he has never learned, the value and usefulness of the latter part of life must depend in a great measure upon the proper application of the earlier years; and he that neglects the improvement of his own mind, will never be enabled to instruct others. Light must strike on the body, by which light can be reflected. The disposition therefore, which best befits a young man, about to engage in a life of study, is patience in enquiry; eagerness of knowledge; and willingness to be instructed; a due submission to greater abilities and longer experience; and a ready obedience to those, from whom he is to expect the removal of his ignorance, and the resolution of his doubts.

How unlikely any one, wise in his own conceit, is to excite, or promote in himself, such inclinations, may be easily determined. It is well known that study is not diligently prosecuted, but at the expence of many pleasures and amusements; which no young man will be persuaded to forbear, but upon the most cogent motives, and the strongest conviction. He that is to draw truth from the depths of obscurity, must be fully informed of its value, and the necessity of finding it; he that engages in a state, opposite to the pleasures of sense, and the gratification of every higher passion, must have some principle within, strongly implanted, which may enforce industry, and repel temptation. But how shall he, who is already “wise in his own conceit,” submit to such tedious and laborious methods of instruction? Why should he toil for that, which, in his own opinion, he possesses; and drudge for the supply of wants, which he does not feel? He has already such degrees of knowledge, as, magnified by his own imagination, exalt him above the rest of mankind; and to climb higher, would be to labour without advantage.

He already has a wide extent of science within his view, and his willingness to be pleased with himself does not suffer him to think, or to dwell on the thought of any thing beyond; and who that sees all, would wish to see farther? That submission to authority, and that reverence for instruction, which so well becomes every man at his first entrance upon new regions of learning, where all is novelty, confusion, and darkness, and no way is to be found through the intricacies of opposite systems, but by tracing the steps of those that have gone before; that willingness to receive implicitly, what farther advances only can enable him to prove, which initiation always supposes; are very little to be expected from him, who looks down with scorn upon his teacher, and is more ready to censure the obscurity of precepts, than to suspect the force of his own understanding. Knowledge is to be attained, by slow and gradual acquisitions, by a careful review of our ideas, and a regular superstructure of one proposition on another; and is therefore the reward only of diligence and patience. But patience is the effect of modesty; pride grasps at the whole, and what it cannot hold, it affects to despise; it is rather solicitous to display, than encrease, its acquisitions; and rather endeavours, by fame, to supply the want of knowledge, than by knowledge to arrive at fame.

That these are not imaginary representations, but true copies of real life, most of those, to whom the instruction of young men is intrusted, will be ready to confess; since they have often the dissatisfaction of finding, that in proportion as greater advances have been made in the first period of life, there is less diligence in the second. And that, as it was said of the ancient Gauls, that they were more than men in the onset, and less than women in the shock;3 it may be said in our literary contentions, that many, who were men at school, are boys at the college.

Their ardour remits, their diligence relaxes, and they give themselves to a lazy contemplation of comparative excellence, without considering that the comparison is hourly growing less advantageous, and that the acquisitions which they boast, are mouldering away.

Such is the danger to a learner, of too early an opinion of his own importance; but if we suppose him to have escaped in his first years this fatal confidence, and to be betrayed into it by a longer series of successful application, its effects will then be equally dangerous, and as it hinders a young man from receiving instruction, it will obstruct an older student in conveying it.

There is no employment in which men are more easily betrayed to indecency and impatience, than in that of teaching; in which they necessarily converse with those, who are their inferiours, in the relation by which they are connected, and whom it may be sometimes proper to treat with that dignity which too often swells into arrogance; and to restrain with such authority as not every man has learned to separate from tyranny. In this state of temporary honour, a proud man is too willing to exert his prerogative; and too ready to forget that he is dictating to those, who may one day dictate to him. He is inclined to wonder that what he comprehends himself is not equally clear to others; and often reproaches the intellects of his auditors, when he ought to blame the confusion of his own ideas, and the improprieties of his own language. He reiterates therefore his positions without elucidation, and enforces his assertions by his frown, when he finds arguments less easy to be supplied. Thus forgetting that he had to do with men, whose passions are perhaps equally turbulent with his own, he transfers by degrees to his instruction the prejudices which are first raised by his behaviour; and having forced upon his pupils an hatred of their teacher, he sees it quickly terminate in a contempt of the precept.4

But instruction extends farther than to seminaries of students, or the narrow auditories of sequestered literature. The end of learning, is to teach the publick, to superintend the conduct, watch over the morals, and regulate the opinions of parishes, dioceses, and provinces; to check vices in their first eruption, and suppress heresies in the whispers of their rise.5 And surely this awful, this arduous task, requires qualities, which a man, “wise in his own conceit,” cannot easily attain; that mildness of address, that patience of attention, that calmness of disputation, that selection of times, and places, and circumstances, which the vehemence of pride will not regard. And, in reality, it will generally be found, that the first objection and the last to an unacceptable pastor, is, that he is proud, that he is too wise for familiarity, and will not descend to the level, with common understandings.6

Such is the consequence of too high an esteem of our own powers and knowledge;7 it makes us in youth negligent, and in age useless; it teaches us too soon to be satisfied with our attainments; or it makes our attainments unpleasing, unpopular, and ineffectual; it neither suffers us to learn, nor to teach; but withholds us from those, by whom we might be instructed, and drives those from us, whom we might instruct.8 It is therefore necessary to obviate these evils, by enquiring, Secondly, by what means this pernicious conceit of wisdom may be avoided or suppressed.

It might be imagined, if daily experience did not shew us how vainly judgements are formed of real life, from speculative principles; that it might be easy for any man to extirpate a high conceit of human learning from his own heart, or that of another; since one great purpose of knowledge is to shew us our own defects, follies, and miseries; yet whatever be the reason, we find none more subject to this fault, than those, whose course of life ought more particularly to exempt them from it.

For the suppression of this vain conceit, so injurious to the professors of learning, many considerations might be added to those, which have already been drawn from its effects. The reasons indeed, why every man should be humble, are inseparably connected with human nature; for what can any man see, either within or without himself, that does not afford him some reason to remark his own ignorance, imbecillity and meanness? But on these reflections, it is less proper to insist, because they have been explained already, by almost every writer upon moral and religious duties, and because, in reality, the pride which requires our chief caution, is not so much absolute, as comparative. No man so much values himself upon the general prerogatives of human nature, as upon his own peculiar superiority to other men; nor will he therefore be humbled, by being told of the ignorance, the weakness, and wickedness of humanity, for he is satisfied with being accounted one of the most knowing among the ignorant; the most able, among the weak; and the most virtuous, among the wicked.

The pride of the learned therefore can only be repressed by shewing, what indeed might easily be shewn, that it is not justifiable, even upon comparison with the rest of men; for without urging any thing in derogation from the dignity, and importance of learning in general, which must always, either immediately, or by the intervention of others, govern the world, it will be found, that they who are most disposed to be swelled to haughtiness by their own attainments, are generally so far from having any just claim to the superiority which they exert, that they are betrayed to vanity by ignorance; and are pleased with themselves, as a hind with his cottage, not because, upon enquiry, they are convinced of the reasonableness of the preference; but because they overvalue the little they possess, for want of knowing its littleness; and are contented with their own state, as a blind man feels no loss from the absence of beauty. Nor needs there any other proof of the origin of literary pride, than that it is chiefly to be found amongst those, who have secluded themselves from the world, in pursuit of petty enquiries, and trivial studies.

To such men it should be recommended, that before they suffer themselves to fix the rule of their own accomplishments, and look down on others with contempt, they should enjoin themselves to spend some time in enquiring into their own pretensions; and consider who they are whom they despise, and for what reason they suffer themselves to indulge the arrogance of contempt. Such an examination will soon drive back the pedant to his college, with juster conceptions, and with humbler sentiments; for he will find that those, whom he imagined so much below his own exaltation, often flourish in the esteem of the world, while he himself is unknown; and teaching those arts, by which society is supported, and on which the happiness of the world depends; while he is pleasing himself with idle amusements, and wasting his life upon questions, of which very few desire the solution.

But if this method of obtaining humility be ineffectual, he may however establish it, upon more strong and lasting principles, by applying himself to the duties of religion, and the word of God.

That sacred and inscrutable word, which will shew him the inefficacy of all other knowledge, and those duties which will imprint upon his mind, that he best understands the sacred writings who most carefully obeys them. Thus will humility fix a firm and lasting basis, by annihilation of all empty distinctions and petty competitions, by shewing, that “one thing only is necessary”9 and that “God is all in all.”1