DIONYSIUS.

It is well!

Thou fhalt fee him no more. I will

order thee to be put to death immediately.

PYTHIAS.

Pardon the feelings of a man who fympathizes with his dying friend. But remember it was Pythias who was devoted by thee to deftruction. I come to fubmit to it, that I may redeem my friend. Do not refufe me this confolation in my last hour.

DIONYSIUS.

I cannot endure men, who defpife death, and fet my power at defiance.

DAMON.

Thou canst not, then, endure virtue.

DIONYSIUS.

No: I cannot endure that proud, difdainful virtue, which contemns life; which dreads no punishment; and which is infenfible to the charms of riches and pleasure.

DAMON.

Thou feeft, however, that it is a virtue, which is not infenfible to the dictates of honour, juftice, and friendship.

DIONYSIUS.

Guards, take Pythias to execution. We shall fee whether Damon will continue to defpife my autho rity.

DAMON.

Pythias, by returning to fubmit himself to thy pleafure, has merited his life, and deferved thy favour; but I have excited thy indignation, by refigning myself to thy power, in order to fave him: Be fatisfied, then, with this facrifice, and put me to death.

PYTHIAS.

Hold, Dionyfius! remember, it was Pythias alone who offended thee: Damon could not

DIONYSIUS.

Alas! what do I fee and hear! where am I? How miferable; and how worthy to be fo! I have hitherto known nothing of true virtue. I have spent my life in darkness and error. All my power and honours are infufficient to produce love. I cannot boaft of having acquired a fingle friend, in the courfe of a reign of thirty years. And yet these two perfons, in a private condition, love one another tenderly, unrefervedly confide in each other, are mutually happy, and ready to die for each other's prefervation.

PYTHIAS,

How couldft thou, who haft never loved any perfon, expect to have friends? If thou hadft loved and refpected men, thou wouldst have fecured their love and refpect. Thou haft feared mankind; and they fear thee; they deteft thee.

DIONYSIUS.

Damon, Pythias, condefcend to admit me as a third friend, in a connexion fo perfect. I give you your lives; and I will load you with riches.

DAMON.

We have no defire to be enriched by thee; and, in regard to thy friendship, we cannot accept or enjoy it, till thou become good and juft. Without thefe qualities, thou canst be connected with none but trembling flaves, and base flatterers. To be loved and efteemed by men of free and generous minds, thou must be virtuous; affectionate, difinterefted, beneficent;

and know how to live in a fort of equality with those who fhare and deferve thy friendship.

PENELON, Archbishop of Cambray.

SECTION III.

LOCKE AND BAYLE.

Chriflianity defended against the Cavils of Scepticism.

BAYLE.

YES, we both were philofophers; but my philofophy was the deepeft. You dogmatized: I doubted.

LOCKE.

Do you make doubting a proof of depth in philofophy? It may be a good beginning of it; but it is a bad end.

BAYLE.

No:-the more profound our fearches are into the nature of things, the more uncertainty we shall find; and the most fubtle minds fee objections and difficulties in every system, which are overlooked or undiscoverable by ordinary understandings.

LOCKE.

It would be better then to be no philofopher, and to Continue in the vulgar herd of mankind, that one may have the convenience of thinking that one knows fomething. I find that the eyes which nature has given me, fee many things very clearly, though fome are out of their reach, or difcerned but dimly. What opinion ought I to have of a phyfician, who fhould offer me an eye-water, the use of which would at firft fo fharpen my fight, as to carry it farther than ordinary

vifion; but would in the end put them out? Your philofophy is to the eyes of the mind, what I have fuppofed the doctor's noftrum to be to thofe of the body. It actually brought your own excellent understanding, which was by nature quick-fighted, and rendered more fo by art and a fubtilty of logick peculiar to yourselfit brought, I fay, your very acute underftanding to fee nothing clearly; and enveloped all the great truths of reafon and religion in mifts of doubt.

BAYLE.

I own it did ;--but your comparison is not juft. I did not fee well, before I used my philofophic eye-water: I only fuppofed I faw well; but I was in an error, with all the rest of mankind. The blindness was real, the perceptions were imaginary. I cured myfelf first of those false imaginations, and then I laudably endea voured to cure other men.

LOCKE.

A great cure indeed! and don't you think that, in return for the fervice you did them, they ought to erect you a ftatue?

BAYLE.

Yes; it is good for human nature to know its own weakness. When we arrogantly prefume on a ftrength we have not, we are always in great danger of hurting ourselves, or at leaft of deferving ridicule and contempt, by vain and idle efforts.

LOCKE.

I agree with you, that human nature fhould know its own weakness; but it fhould alfo feel its ftrength, and try to improve it. This was my employment as a philofopher. I endeavoured to difcover the real powers of the mind, to fee what it could do, and what

H

it could not; to reftrain it from efforts beyond its ability; but to teach it how to advance as far as the faculties given to it by nature, with the utmost exertion and 'moft proper culture of them, would allow it to go. In the vaft ocean of philofophy, I had the line and the plummet always in my hands. Many of its depths I found myself unable to fathom; but, by caution in founding, and the careful obfervations I made in the courfe of my voyage, I found out fome truths of fo much use to mankind, that they acknowledge me to have been their benefactor.

BAYLE.

Their ignorance makes them think fo. Some other philofopher will come hereafter, and fhow thofe truths to be falfehoods. He will pretend to difcover other truths of equal importance. A later fage will arife, perhaps among men now barbarous and unlearned, whofe fagacious difcoveries will difcredit the opinions of his admired predecessor. In philosophy, as in nature, all changes its form, and one thing exists by the deftruction of another.

LOCKE.

Opinions taken up without a patient investigation, depending on terms not accurately defined, and principles begged without proof, like theories to explain the phænomena of nature, built on fuppofitions inftead of experiments, muft perpetually change and deftroy one another. But fome opinions there are, even in matters not obvious to the common fenfe of mankind, which the mind has received on fuch rational grounds. of afsent, that they are as immoveable as the pillars of heaven; or (to speak philofophically) as the great laws of Nature, by which, under God, the universe is suf