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Unit 27: Swift: Thoughts on Various Subjects ...

Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men’s power to be agreeable. The reason, Notes
therefore, why conversation runs so low at present, is not the defect of understanding, but pride,
vanity, ill-nature, affectation, singularity, positiveness, or some other vice, the effect of a wrong
education.
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honours have
been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess
that these honours were more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they
had not been told: whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and
consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a maxim, that whoever desires the character
of a proud man, ought to conceal his vanity.
Law, in a free country, is, or ought to be, the determination of the majority of those who have
property in land. One argument used to the disadvantage of Providence I take to be a very strong
one in its defence. It is objected that storms and tempests, unfruitful seasons, serpents, spiders,
flies, and other noxious or troublesome animals, with many more instances of the like kind,
discover an imperfection in nature, because human life would be much easier without them; but
the design of Providence may clearly be perceived in this proceeding. The motions of the sun and
moon — in short, the whole system of the universe, as far as philosophers have been able to
discover and observe, are in the utmost degree of regularity and perfection; but wherever God
hath left to man the power of interposing a remedy by thought or labour, there he hath placed
things in a state of imperfection, on purpose to stir up human industry, without which life would
stagnate, or, indeed, rather, could not subsist at all: Curis Accuunt Mortalia Corda [“Inciting the
human heart by anxiety”-Virgil].
Praise is the daughter of present power. How inconsistent is man with himself! I have known
several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and counsels governed by foolish
servants. I have known great Ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none
but dunces. I have known men of great valour cowards to their wives. I have known men of the
greatest cunning perpetually cheated.
I knew three great Ministers, who could exactly compute and settle the accounts of a kingdom, but
were wholly ignorant of their own economy. The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-
inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious.
Princes usually make wiser choices than the servants whom they trust for the disposal of places:
I have known a prince, more than once, choose an able Minister, but I never observed that Minister
to use his credit in the disposal of an employment to a person whom he thought the fittest for it.
One of the greatest in this age owned and excused the matter from the violence of parties and the
unreasonableness of friends.
Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy when great ones are not in the way. For want of
a block he will stumble at a straw. Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary
to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them
upon the score of their age. Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.
Love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women
from the contrary. If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years past, I
am in some concern for future ages how any man will be learned, or any man a lawyer. Kings are
commonly said to have LONG HANDS; I wish they had as LONG EARS.
Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth are said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to
speak things that surprise and astonish. Strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful
kings! If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue. If they
live, they are often prodigies indeed, but of another sort.

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