The instruction comes then upon our own authority:we frame the precept after our own experience,and yield to fact when we resist speculation.But this is not the only advantage of instruction by example;for example appeals not to our understanding alone,but to our passions likewise.Example assuages these,or animates them;sets passion on the side of judgment,and makes the whole man of a piece;which is more than the strongest reasoning and the clearest demonstration can do:and thus forming habits by repetition,example secures the observance of those precepts which example insinuated.Is it not Pliny,my lord,who says,that the gentlest,he should have added the most effectual,way of commanding,is by example?"Mitius jubetur exemplo."The harshest orders are softened by example,and tyranny itself becomes persuasive.What pity it is that so few princes have learned this way of commanding!But again:the force of examples is not confined to those alone,that pass immediately under our sight:the examples,that memory suggests,have the same effect in their degree,and a habit of recalling them will soon produce the habit of imitating them.In the same epistle,from whence I cited a passage just now,Seneca says that Cleanthes had never become so perfect a copy of Zeno,if he had not passed his life with him;that Plato,Aristotle,and the other philosophers of that school,profited more by the example,than by the discourse of Socrates.[But here,by the way,Seneca mistook;for Socrates died two years according to some,and four years according to others,before the birth of Aristotle:and his mistake might come from the inaccuracy of those who collected for him;as Erasmus observes,after Quintilian,in his judgment on Seneca.]But be this,which was scarce worth a parenthesis,as it will;he adds that Metrodorus,Hermachus,and Polyaenus,men of great note,were formed by living under the same roof with Epicurus,not by frequenting his school.These are instances of the force of immediate example.But your lordship knows that the citizens of Rome placed the images of their ancestors in the vestibules of their houses;so that,whenever they went in or out,these venerable bustoes met their eyes,and recalled the glorious actions of the dead,to fire the living,to excite them to imitate and even to emulate their great forefathers.The success answered the design.The virtue of one generation was transfused,by the magic of example,into several:and a spirit of heroism was maintained through many ages of that commonwealth.Now these are so many instances of the force of remote example;and from all these instances we may conclude,that examples of both kinds are necessary.
The school of example,my lord,is the world:and the masters of this school are history and experience.I am far from contending that the former is preferable to the latter.I think upon the whole otherwise:but this Isay,that the former is absolutely necessary to prepare us for the latter,and to accompany us whilst we are under the discipline of the latter,that is,through the whole course of our lives.No doubt some few men may be quoted,to whom nature gave what art and industry can give to no man.But such examples will prove nothing against me,because I admit that the study of history,without experience,is insufficient,but assert,that experience itself is so without genius.Genius is preferable to the other two;but I would wish to find the three together:for how great soever a genius may be,and how much soever he may acquire new light and heat,as he proceeds in his rapid course,certain it is that he will never shine with the full lustre,nor shed the full influence he is capable of,unless to his own experience he adds the experience of other men and other ages.Genius,without the improvement,at least of experience,is what comets once were thought to be,a blazing meteor,irregular in his course,and dangerous in his approach;of no use to any system,and able to destroy any.Mere sons of earth,if they have experience without any knowledge of the history of the world,are but half scholars in the science of mankind.And if they are conversant in history without experience,they are worse than ignorant;they are pedants,always incapable,sometimes meddling and presuming.The man,who has all three,is an honor to his country,and a public blessing:and such,I trust,your lordship will be in this century,as your great-grandfather,was in the last.
I have insisted a little longer on this head,and have made these distinctions the rather,because though I attribute a great deal more than many will be ready to allow,to the study of history,yet I would not willingly even seem to fall into the ridicule of ascribing it to such extravagant effects,as several have done from Tully down to Casaubon,La Mothe le Vayer,and other modern pedants.When Tully informs us,in the second book of his Tusculan disputations,that the first Scipio Africanus had always in his hands the works of Xenophon,he advances nothing but what is probable and reasonable.
To say nothing of the retreat of the ten thousand,nor of other parts of Xenophon's writings;the images of virtue,represented in that admirable picture the Cyropaedia,were proper to entertain a soul that was fraught with virtue,and Cyrus was worthy to be imitated by Scipio.So Selim emulated Caesar,whose commentaries were translated for his use against the customs of the Turks;so Caesar emulated Alexander;and Alexander,Achilles.There is nothing ridiculous here,except the use that is made of this passage by those who quote it.But what the same Tully says,in the fourth book of his academical disputations,concerning Lucullus,seems to me very extraordinary.
