Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/87

 for the mastery, till, like some wise monarch who has reduced his realm to submission, she at length wields her undisputed sceptre, and tranquilly exercises her hereditary rights. Self knowledge is necessary to improvement; hence, its great importance to the young, whose business it is to improve. She who wishes to acquire knowledge must be convinced that she possesses little; and if she candidly observes her own deficiencies, the limited nature of her attainments, and the imperfect use she makes of those attainments, she will feel inclined to that humble and teachable disposition which is the beginning of all wisdom. It is the attempt of vanity to repress this conviction, to make the mind contented with low degrees of knowledge, to puff it up with shewy accomplishments, because, like all despotic governments, her sway is built upon the ignorance and weakness of the subject.

Self knowledge is favourable to the virtue of candour. When we perceive errors and imperfections in others, this teaches us that we are chargeable with the same ourselves; and when we feel inclined to condemn some more visible failure, this points us within our own hearts to the same sources of frailty, and teaches us that in the same circumstances our own conduct might have been equally censurable. This represses the spirit of scandal and detraction, that friend