Such is the uncertainty in which we are always
likely to remain with regard to questions wherein
we have most interest, and which every day affords
us fresh opportunity to examine: we may examine,
indeed, but we never can decide, because our faculties
are unequal to the subject; we see a little, and
form an opinion; we see more, and change it.
This inconstancy and unsteadiness, to which we
must so often find ourselves liable, ought certainly
to teach us moderation and forbearance towards
those who cannot accommodate themselves to our
sentiments: if they are deceived, we have no right
to attribute their mistake to obstinacy or negligence,
because we likewise have been mistaken; we
may, perhaps, again change our own opinion: and
what excuse shall we be able to find for aversion and
malignity conceived against him, whom we shall then
find to have committed no fault, and who offended
us only by refusing to follow us into errour?
It may likewise contribute to soften that
resentment which pride naturally raises against
opposition, if we consider, that he who differs from us,
does not always contradict us; he has one view of
an object, and we have another; each describes
what he sees with equal fidelity, and each regulates
his steps by his own eyes: one man with Posidippus,
looks on celibacy as a state of gloomy
solitude, without a partner in joy, or a comforter in
sorrow; the other considers it, with Metrodorus, as
a state free from incumbrances, in which a man is
at liberty to choose his own gratifications, to
remove from place to place in quest of pleasure, and
to think of nothing but merriment and diversion:
full of these notions one hastens to choose a wife,
and the other laughs at his rashness, or pities his
ignorance; yet it is possible that each is right, but
that each is right only for himself.
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