For you'll soon relish Ease and
Inactivity, and be in Love with Sloth, which was once your
Aversion." This can hardly fail of raining the best Capacity,
especially, if from a neglect of severer Business, Men run into a
Dissolution of Manners, which is the too common Consequence. The
greatest Minds have thus been often wholly enervated, and the
best Parts buried in utter Obscurity.
[K] Natura infirmitatis humanae, tadiora sunt remedia
quam mala; & ut corpora lente augescunt, cito extinguuntur,
sic ingenia studiaque oppresseris, facilius quam revocaveris;
subit quippe ipsius inertiae dulcedo, et invisa primo desidia
postremo amatur. Tacit. Vit. Agricol. c. 3.
Though the Rules of Art may be of great Service to improve a
_Genius_, it is very prejudicial, in many Cases, to fetter it
self with these Rules, or confine itself within those Limits
which others have fixed. How little would Science have been
improv'd, if every new _Genius_, that applies himself to any
Branch of it, had made other Mens Light, his _ne plus_ _ultra_,
and resolved to go no farther into it, than the Road had been
beaten before him. No doubt there were Men of as good natural
Abilities in the Ages before the Revival of Learning, as there
have been since. But they were cramped with the Jargon of a wordy
and unintelligible Philosophy, and durst not give themselves the
Liberty to think in Religion, without the Boundaries fixed by the
Church, for fear of Anathemas, and an Inquisition.
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