Thus mankind have gone on from century to
century: some have been advising others how to act,
and some have been teaching the advisers how to
advise; yet very little alteration has been made in
the world. As we must all by the law of nature enter
life in ignorance, we must all make our way through
it by the light of our own experience; and for any
security that advice has been yet able to afford,
must endeavour after success at the hazard of
miscarriage, and learn to do right by venturing to do
wrong.
By advice I would not be understood to mean,
the everlasting and invariable principles of moral and
religious truth, from which no change of external
circumstances can justify any deviation; but such
directions as respect merely the prudential part of
conduct, and which may be followed or neglected
without any violation of essential duties.
It is, indeed, not so frequently to make us good
as to make us wise, that our friends employ the
officiousness of counsel; and among the rejectors of
advice, who are mentioned by the grave and sententious
with so much acrimony, you will not so often
find the vicious and abandoned, as the pert and the
petulant, the vivacious and the giddy.
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