Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/68

 have been and are now being attempted; all of which this supersedes amicably by inclusion. For hitherto nearly all plans of reform have been trying to get plentiful fruit from a barren tree, and clean water from a foul stream; while this would first make the tree fruitful and the fountain pure. And hitherto nearly every reformer, whether social or political, moral or religious, has endeavoured to make a large number of men and women (not to speak of children), and has usually hoped to make in the course of time all other men and women (of whom no two can be quite like each other and no one quite like the reformer; and of whose various characters and temperaments, minds, bodies and circumstances he could know little or nothing), think and believe and act in precisely the same way as himself. But in the scheme I venture to propose, every man will modestly limit himself to the reform of one person only; which person he knows and loves infinitely better than any one else; and which person is of exactly the same character, temperament, mind and body, and always situated in exactly the same circumstances, as himself, the reformer.

II.

As this point is of capital importance, I think it well to bring to my assistance against all previous and other reformers (for whom, however, my feelings are of the most benevolent nature), two or three passages from writers of authority. And first I will quote from one of the most solid and useful sections of one of the greatest works of perhaps the greatest of our divines; Section ix. of "A Tale of a Tub:" being "A dissertation concerning the original, the use, and improvement of Madness in a Commonwealth." And I may remark that this subject has been strangely neglected