Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/142

130 will give me pleasure, and in the proportion, I shall imagine it gives them pain. I should have another pleasure, of higher relish, if our epistles were to be perused by persons of higher rank. And who knows, considering the mighty importance we are of, whether that may not happen? How would these persons stare, to see such a thing as sincere cordial friendship subsist inviolate, and grow and strengthen from year to year, in spite of distance, absence, and mutual inutility!

But enough on this. Let us turn to other subjects. I have read, in the golden verses of Pythagoras, or in some other collection of wise apophthegms of the ancients, that a man of business may talk of philosophy, a man who has none may practise it. What do you think of this maxim? Is it exact? I have a strange distrust of maxims. We make as many observations as our time, our knowledge, and the other means we have, give us the opportunity of making on a physical matter. We find that they all correspond, and that one general proposition may be affirmed as the result of them. This we affirm, and in consequence, this becomes a maxim among our followers, if we have any. Thus the king of Siam affirmed, that water was always in a fluid state; and I doubt not but the talapoins (do they not call them so?) held this maxim. Neither he, or they, had ever climbed the neighbouring mountains of Ava; their observations were confined to the burning climate they inhabited. It is much the same in moral maxims, founded on observations of the conduct of men; for there are other moral maxims of universal truth, as there are moral duties of eternal obligation. We see what the conduct is, and